All of this started around a month ago, when hundreds of thousands of people in India got an SMS telling them that they needed to reset the ATM pin for their debit cards. They were also told that the limit on international transactions on their cards was reduced to Rs 7,000. No other information was provided, even though customers of several banks, including the big ones like HDFC and ICICI, got these messages.

This was a very cryptic message and low on information. Why the PIN needed to be changed? What really happened? Were the customers at some serious risk from cyber criminals? Was the information related to their cards leaked? None of these questions were answered.