Big data leak of bank customers in Poland. The Financial Ombudsman responds

“Due to possible data leakage, customers of banks and the related blocking of some payment cards, sent letters to financial institutions regarding the submission of explanations” – informed w. Recall that last week there was a huge leak of personal data, in which millions of passwords and logins were made public. A file called “.pl.txt” has appeared on the Internet, which has over 6.2 million lines. Each of them contains the e-mail address from which the stolen data comes from, as well as the login and password used on this website. The information about the leak has been confirmed

Did the data leak hurt Poles?

The Financial Ombudsman has become interested in the case and wants to determine the scale of the problem and the number of blocked accounts. indicates that will check the communication, corrective and remedial actions taken by the institutions and verify the number of complaints submitted in connection with these events and the manner of their consideration, and above all whether the banks offer compensation for those affected by the blocking of funds. The Ombudsman will try to determine the scale of the negative impact of the data leak on the life situations of Poles, e.g. inability to use the funds, rejected planned transactions or unrealized automatic orders.

Victims can file complaints

The official communiqué indicated that data leaks, especially from financial institutions, are very risky. In particular, considering: “numerous cases of activities related to extortion of funds as a result of cybercrime and fraud using fake news”. By the way, the Financial Ombudsman reminded that in the event of “disclosure by the client of unauthorized transactions or use of the disclosed data for an individual social engineering or phishing attack, you should contact the bank as soon as possible with information about the event and file a complaint in the event of a loss“.