Personal data of 3,897 SBI customers found on dark web; what account holders should do

Personal information of 3,897 customers of State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest public sector bank, has been found on the dark web. It includes customers' names, mobile numbers, dates of birth, email addresses, home addresses and loan details. Cyber criminals can use such information to defraud account holders.

Consider the risk. A call comes from an unknown number. The caller claims to be an SBI employee and recites your real name, date of birth, home address and loan details. Hearing such accurate information, you may trust the caller, but the person need not be a bank employee. The caller could be a cyber criminal.

Whether one's data has been leaked is not easy to know. SBI has not released any list or method by which customers can check for themselves whether their information was leaked. Customers should therefore stay alert. This does not mean, however, that every customer's data has been leaked.

If money is stolen from a bank account because of a data leak, will the bank refund it? Under RBI rules, a customer bears no loss if the fraud is due to a fault of the bank or a deficiency in its system. If the fault lies neither with the bank nor the customer but with a third party, the customer can get zero liability by reporting it within three working days. In such cases, the bank must temporarily credit the money to the customer's account within 10 working days of receiving the complaint. But if you have yourself given your OTP or PIN to a fraudster, the liability for the loss may fall on you.

If you get a suspicious call or message claiming to be from the bank, do not share personal information, your OTP or your PIN with anyone. Do not blindly trust a caller even if the person has given correct details.

If you fall victim to cyber fraud, call 1930 immediately or file a complaint at cybercrime.gov.in. Inform your bank as well. If the bank does not resolve your complaint within 30 days, or you are not satisfied with its reply, you can file a complaint free of charge with the RBI Ombudsman at cms.rbi.org.in.

Data theft does not mean money has been stolen from your account. But if your personal information reaches fraudsters, the risk of fraud can rise, so caution is essential.