General Chat

Yes.

Vast ( I mean vast ) chunks of highly confidential data are now held in India making back office operations much cheaper. Yeah, it goes well beyond help desk people with little brains and only English as she is spoke.

As well as the banks ( of course ) the NHS and DVLA are now shifting their back end to India too.

The problem with all this is

(a) if the high speed link to the sub-continent goes down then the scheme is toast. The link was in fact cut in the Med a couple of years ago and took weeks to fix.

(b) there is a medium but real war risk

(c) Indian technical skills are so-so and depend a lot on following procedures without really understanding what they are doing. This has already caused some severe UK bank outages. Crashed systems are much easier to compromise.

(c) India is the original land of the kick back. It is already the source of most of the bulk identity thefts.

By and large using a main credit card / debit card for anything to do with the internet , iPhone etc is unwise. A much better plan is to have a 2nd account or one of those debit cards you can charge with cash for foreign travel for eBay etc etc. Always change your PIN - it is not true that the bank has no record of it with at least 2 banks.

Did you know that the former head of security of Lloyds bank anti-fraud is doing time ?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/21/lloyds-anti-fraud-boss-jailed

Paranoia is the best policy but only with the people you trust.

good luck