In America and in other parts of the world, customer privacy is taken very seriously. And right so, because of the implications of the theft of the customer information. To illustrate, a common man in USA does his banking and other finance related transactions over the internet and over phone. Rarely does he visit the physical bank branches. And to do these transactions, he needs a set of personal identification information such as birthdate, Social Security number (SSN), home phone number, etc. Imagine, if all this information got into the hands of someone. Not only can the person open new accounts, apply for credit, pay bills etc, but the thief can make fraudulent transactions and completely wipe out the assets of the common man. In India, the customer information privacy is also considered a big issue. But due to the nature of the transaction processing in Indian Banking scenario, it is more difficult to process withdrawals, open bank accounts etc over the phone just with personal information. To sum up, in terms of financial losses due to customer data theft.. we would have to say that this is part of the operational framework and the losses cannot be quantified, but are certainly huge. Huge to the extent of making a company bankcrupt.