u/AdvancedSeat3885

Hey everyone,

I am a 25-year-old student, writing this to understand a shocking technical flaw in the Indian banking system that completely compromised my data privacy.

The Issue:

About 4 years ago, due to a massive backend blunder, SBI mapped my personal mobile number to a complete stranger's bank account. I discovered this when UPI cashbacks and random transfers sent to my number started routing directly into that stranger's account instead of mine.

The Response:

When I visited the branch, I faced the typical SBI lunch-time drama—nobody took this serious cyber and financial risk seriously. The bank finally woke up and delinked the number only after I officially dragged them to the RBI Ombudsman. In their written apology, the Chief Manager tried to downplay it by saying the stranger's account was "inactive"—which is complete BS because live UPI funding was still actively passing through it!

As a student, this put me at a massive risk. If that account had been used by scammers or money launderers as a mule account, the cyber cell or tax authorities would have come straight after me since my number was officially mapped to it.

I want to ask the community here:

1:Is this kind of catastrophic database mapping blunder normal or common in a major nationalized bank like SBI?

2:Have any of you faced or heard of similar mobile-number mapping errors in other public or private sector Indian banks?

3:How reliable is the backend infrastructure of the Indian financial sector if an individual's personal identity can be wrongly tied to a stranger's funds for 4 long years without any system alerts?

Looking forward to your insights and guidance on this.

Hey Reddit family,

I am a 25-year-old student, and I am putting this up here to understand if this is standard practice or a massive data privacy breach by one of India’s largest public sector banks. I am honestly shaken by the absolute carelessness of State Bank of India (SBI).

Here is exactly how I discovered this mess:

About 3 to 4 years ago, SBI’s backend system made a ridiculous technical blunder and incorrectly mapped/linked my personal mobile number to another random person’s bank account at a branch in Jammu.

Back then, my phone was running a bit laggy, so for that quite obvious reason, I decided to factory reset the entire device. After formatting, I downloaded all my apps again and started setting up my UPI from scratch. Like most of us do, I was just fast-forwarding through the setup screens, tapping next/forward quickly to complete the activation. Since my own account was with SBI, I was 100% sure that since the mobile number is mine, the SBI account popping up has to be mine. Honestly, kaun dhyan deta hai bhai jab apna khud ka number ho link? You just assume it's your own account. So I completed the setup without doubting anything.

Since it was just a student account, I wasn’t tracking it heavily. But around that time, when I received a cashback / someone sent money to that linked number via UPI, the funds never showed up in my actual balance. When I investigated the transaction details, to my absolute horror, I realized that the account officially tied to my number belonged to a complete stranger (let's call him X)! For nearly 4 years, SBI had literally tied my identity and phone number to someone else's account without my knowledge.

The Bank’s Pathetic Response & Harassment:

I live very far away from my home branch, so I immediately called SBI Customer Care. They flatly refused to help over the phone and told me I must visit the branch in person.

I managed to travel all the way and visited the branch. But as you all know, there is this typical SBI lunch-time drama—whenever you visit, it's always lunch time. And when I finally spoke to them, they didn’t take this massive security issue seriously at all. They just said, "The officer who handles this specific department is not available right now. Come back later." I had to return home empty-handed because I had my classes to attend. I faced immense mental harassment while they kept dragging this out.

Suddenly They Wake Up (With a Lame Excuse):

When I got tired of their excuses, I officially dragged them to the RBI Ombudsman. Guess what? Immediately after filing the RBI complaint, I received an official email from the Chief Manager. They finally "delinked" the number and literally admitted in writing that it was a technical error on the bank's part.

But here is the catch—in that official email, the Chief Manager specifically mentioned that the stranger’s account was "inactive", as if trying to justify or downplay their massive blunder!

The Ultimate Legal & Cyber Risk (Why their excuse is completely BS):

I want to understand, how does an "inactive account" clear the bank of its guilt? Even if the account was technically inactive, funding and transactions were still happening through it via UPI, just like my cashback/money got credited there!

What if that account was being used by fraudsters for illegal funding, money laundering, or cyber scams? In India, cybercriminals heavily target mule and inactive accounts. Since my personal mobile number was officially mapped to that stranger’s identity in SBI’s live systems for years, I would have been the first person the police, income tax department, or cyber cell would arrest! My entire career, reputation, and future as a student could have been ruined instantly for a mistake I never made.

I want to open this up for discussion:

1:Is an "inactive account" a valid excuse for a nationalized bank like SBI when they literally compromise a student's data privacy for 4 years?

2:Have any of you faced this "seat-shifting/officer not available" drama at SBI when reporting serious security flaws?

3:I have already demanded compensation from the RBI Ombudsman for the severe risk and mental agony I faced. Do you think I should settle now that they’ve fixed the error, or should I fight till the end in Consumer Court (e-Jagriti)?

As a student, my entire career and future were at stake here. If that stranger’s account had been caught in any illegal funding or scam, how would I have proven my innocence to the cyber cell when the bank's system officially tied my number to it? Has anyone here dealt with such extreme legal risks due to bank negligence?

Looking forward to your thoughts and legal advice on this.

Hey Reddit family,

​I am a 25-year-old student, and I am putting this up here to understand if this is standard practice or a massive data privacy breach by one of India’s largest public sector banks. I am honestly shaken by the absolute carelessness of State Bank of India (SBI).

​Here is exactly how I discovered this mess:

About 3 to 4 years ago, SBI's backend system made a ridiculous technical blunder and incorrectly mapped/linked my personal mobile number to another random person's bank account at a branch in Jammu.

​Back then, my phone was running a bit laggy, so for that quite obvious reason, I decided to factory reset the entire device. After formatting, I downloaded all my apps again and started setting up my UPI from scratch. Like most of us do, I was just fast-forwarding through the setup screens, tapping next/forward quickly to complete the activation. Since my own account was with SBI, I was 100% sure that since the mobile number is mine, the SBI account popping up has to be mine. Honestly, kaun dhyan deta hai bhai jab apna khud ka number ho link? You just assume it's your own account. So I completed the setup without doubting anything.

​Since it was just a student account, I wasn't tracking it heavily. But around that time, when I received a cashback / someone sent money to that linked number via UPI, the funds never showed up in my actual balance. When I investigated the transaction details, to my absolute horror, I realized that the account officially tied to my number belonged to a complete stranger (let's call him X)! For nearly 4 years, SBI had literally tied my identity and phone number to someone else's account without my knowledge.

​The Bank's Pathetic Response & Harassment:

I live very far away from my home branch, so I immediately called SBI Customer Care. They flatly refused to help over the phone and told me I must visit the branch in person.

​I managed to travel all the way and visited the branch. But as you all know how typical government bank culture is—first, it was their endless "Lunch Time", and when I finally spoke to them, they didn’t take this massive security issue seriously at all. They just said, "The officer who handles this specific department is not available right now. Come back later." I had to return home empty-handed because I had my classes to attend. I faced immense mental harassment while they kept dragging this out.

​Suddenly They Wake Up (With a Lame Excuse):

When I got tired of their excuses, I officially dragged them to the RBI Ombudsman. Guess what? Immediately after filing the RBI complaint, I received an official email from the Chief Manager. They finally "delinked" the number and literally admitted in writing that it was a technical error on the bank's part.

​But here is the catch—In that official email, the Chief Manager specifically mentioned that the stranger's account was "Inactive", as if trying to justify or downplay their massive blunder!

​The Ultimate Legal & Cyber Risk (Why their excuse is completely BS):

I want to understand, how does an "inactive account" clear the bank of its guilt? Even if the account was technically inactive, funding and transactions were still happening through it via UPI, just like my cashback/money got credited there!

​What if that account was being used by fraudsters for illegal funding, money laundering, or cyber scams? In India, cybercriminals heavily target mule and inactive accounts. Since my personal mobile number was officially mapped to that stranger's identity in SBI's live systems for years, I would have been the first person the police, income tax department, or cyber cell would arrest! My entire career, reputation, and future as a student could have been ruined instantly for a mistake I never made.

​I want to open this up for discussion:

​Is an "inactive account" a valid excuse for a nationalized bank like SBI when they literally compromise a student's data privacy for 4 years?

​Have any of you faced this "seat-shifting/officer not available" drama at SBI when reporting serious security flaws?

​I have already demanded compensation from the RBI Ombudsman for the severe risk and mental agony I faced. Do you think I should settle now that they've fixed the error, or should I fight till the end in Consumer Court (e-Jagriti)?

​As a student, my entire career and future were at stake here. If that stranger's account had been caught in any illegal funding or scam, how would I have proven my innocence to the cyber cell when the bank's system officially tied my number to it? Has anyone here dealt with such extreme legal risks due to bank negligence?

​Looking forward to your thoughts and legal advice on this. This needs to be a wake-up call for banking privacy in India

P.S. — I am a new user on Reddit, so please excuse me if I made any mistakes in formatting or sharing this post. My bad! I am genuinely looking for your help and guidance on what steps I should take next. Also, for some reason, I am not getting the option to upload images/screenshots directly here—I'm not sure if it's a glitch or something else. Because of this, I have attached my Twitter (X) post link where I have shared all the solid proofs, including the RBI portal complaint. Thank you in advance for your support!

​

I am literally so done with iQOO and their pathetic service. If anyone here is planning to buy an iQOO Neo series phone, please do yourself a favor and search Twitter or Reddit first. The number of hardware issues in the Neo series is insane. Don't repeat my mistake.

I bought this iQOO Neo 9 Pro, and without even using it for any heavy tasks, the battery health suddenly started dropping out of nowhere. Within just 1 year and 7-8 months, it went straight down to 74%. Since it was giving very low battery backup, I contacted them. I live 180 kilometers away from the service center, and when I asked why this was happening to a premium phone, they straight up told me I would have to pay from my own pocket to replace it. I tried explaining my issue, but they didn't care. So I posted about it on Twitter, and luckily, my post went viral. Only after that viral pressure, they contacted me and said "come to the center, we will change it under goodwill."

But when I traveled all the way there, they ran a test and the device failed the Kernel Test 2 to 3 times continuously! I asked them what a Kernel Test failure means, but they completely misguided me and blamed it on a software patch, hiding the fact that it's a core hardware defect. While sitting there, the phone started shutting down and switching on automatically over and over again. When I pointed this out, they casually said "maybe it has some hardware issue." I got scared and told them I won't take this phone back if it has hardware failures. They tried to pacify me saying "don't worry, it will be fine." Then they dropped another bomb saying "your device is not in warranty, otherwise we would have escalated this motherboard/hardware failure." I told them I bought it in pre-booking, but they started rejecting it saying "your device IMEI is not showing pre-booking in our system." Finally, they just swapped the battery under goodwill, ran a test which passed this time, and sent me back.

Within just 3 to 4 months of this battery swap, the real horror started. The phone started lagging heavily and randomly shutting down on its own. Then the main issue started—Call Interface Freezing. To be very specific, the entire phone screen doesn't freeze permanently, but whenever I get an incoming call, the call screen freezes completely. The touch stops working on that specific call screen, so I can neither pick up the call nor reject it. How can a device with a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor and 256GB storage behave like this? My phone has absolutely NO physical damage, NO water damage, it is updated to the latest software, and out of 256GB, only 50 to 60GB of space is full! The rest of the phone is completely empty. How can someone trust a brand when a flagship-grade device fails like this under standard conditions? This call freezing issue kept happening through two or three consecutive updates—first in April, then May, and even in the latest June update, it is still there. When I contacted them again, they arrogantly said "we already changed your battery, now we have nothing to do with this." I asked them who will take responsibility for a defective product, and after a massive fight and pressure on Twitter for 10-15 days, their own technician finally admitted their mistake. He admitted they were only told to replace the battery earlier, so they ignored the hardware loop. After this heavy pressure, they finally told me "we have ordered the part, come to the service center and we will replace your motherboard."

I traveled 180 kilometers again and reached the service center around 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM. But as soon as I walked in, they completely flipped their words! They told me "we won't replace it directly, first we will perform a hardware test, and if it passes, only then we will think about replacing it." I was shocked. I told them "you ordered the part on my name, made me travel 180km as a student, and now you are saying you will just test it?" They ran their automated diagnostic system and it blindly showed "hardware is OK." But they had absolutely no answers for why the call screen was freezing and why the device was lagging. Their systems couldn't even detect a live issue! I didn't back down. I handed the phone directly to their State Manager who was present there. Within just 10 to 15 minutes of him handling the device, an incoming call came and the call screen froze right in front of his eyes!

They were caught red-handed and had absolutely no answers. Finally, around 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM, after seeing the pressure, they agreed to change the motherboard but still arrogantly said "your phone has no issues according to our system, we are doing this under goodwill." And guess what? Within just 9 days of a complete motherboard replacement, the exact same call interface freezing and severe lagging returned! It is so bad now that even basic day-to-day apps and standard system operations are lagging and failing to run properly on this hardware.

After it failed again, I sent them every video proof showing the motherboard replacement did nothing. And do you know what their support team sent me in an email today? They said, "Sir, we need to observe your device now." Are they out of their minds? I am a student. I don't live in that city. I have to waste my money, travel 180 kilometers all over again, and ruin my studies just so they can "observe" a device that has already failed a motherboard replacement after a live freeze confirmation? What kind of a joke is running under the name of iQOO and Vivo?

What am I supposed to do now? They are playing games with me, making me their lab rat, and asking me to bring the device for "observation" again and again when their own diagnostic systems can't even detect the problem! And despite knowing everything, they are completely refusing to help me. What do I do with this defective piece of junk that can permanently die or shut down at any moment in the future? How can a student like me afford to pay so much money repeatedly? Look at today's smartphone market, the prices of devices have gone sky-high! How can anyone ever trust this iQOO Neo series again?

I am completely done with this. I am not going back to any service center to be their lab rat. I am filing a formal complaint on the E-Jagriti consumer forum .. I have all the job sheets, email proofs, and call recordings ready.

Seriously guys, stay away from the Neo series. Check the history of complaints before throwing your money away.

My Twitter thread for reference/proof