MEXICO CITY: Unemployed and tempted by the above-average salary, 28-year-old Karen applied to work at a call centre for Mexican loan app CashBox – unaware that her job would be to threaten and intimidate anyone who failed to pay up on time.
In the five days she lasted in the job, bosses ordered her to harass clients as soon as they missed a repayment by mining their contact lists, text messages and pictures, which the app had access to – in violation of Mexico’s privacy law.
“Many of us in the call centre were scared and didn’t even know if what we were doing was legal,” Karen told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, asking to use a pseudonym for fear of reprisals.
“They take advantage of people in need of a job,” she said, adding that workers were routinely bullied by supervisors, made to work unpaid overtime and given no proper job contracts.
CashBox did not respond to requests for comment.
In August, the Thomson Reuters Foundation found that it was among 29 loan apps with millions of downloads in the Google Play Store that have been reported to authorities for unscrupulous lending practices – such as sky-high interest rates and commissions – and illegal debt collection tactics.
These ranged from threatening phone calls and text messages to distributing among the client’s contacts photographs that had been edited into explicit images.
Last month, police in Mexico…
