Forget Phishing Just Buy Personal Info

Iago writes "If you need information about a person in Moscow, just go to the market and buy it. The Globe and Mail reports that along with the usual pirated software, cd's etc. you can find out information such as the bank records of your competitors, motor vehicle information and tax returns. The question is, how much of this information is being sold in other countries, perhaps in a more sophisticated manner?"

Comments

Known about this for years

[pcmanjon]

They've been doing this for years in other countries. What most people don't realise is that most of these stories you hear about personal information/security breaches (Lexis Nexis, etc etc etc) usually goes to thugs like this.

These thugs sell this information to people in the black market. This isn't new stuff neither, the news just seems to hover on this and "identity theft" a lot recently. It's been happening since the 80's.

A better question

[Anonymous Coward]

A better question is, how much of this information is real?

Re:A better question

[temcat]

Most of it is real, believe me. Whay fake something as big as countrywide database when you can easily bribe the right person and get the real thing. Recently there was a scandal when a Central Bank (!) database was stolen. But this is for big boys; as to the general public, stolen mobile operators databases are very popular here, because we don't have official telephone directories with personal phone numbers.

Disinformation?

[Anonymous Coward]

A massive flood of fake information would dilute the value of stolen i.d. right?

Buy from gangster, get burnt

[Willeh]

Yeah right, and what's to say this information is actually valuable? TFA says that at least some of it is, but just like bulk email lists there's bound to be a lot of chaff in all of it, due to natural entropy of data, etc etc.

And it's not like these lists ever get refreshed much, so what you end up with is increasingly less useful data in these lists, and the vendors don't even care about it. It's just the nature of the beast (and the overall state of former Russia, where anything goes).

not just Moscow

[Ingvar77]

In every major Russian city you can obtain almost for free a database with phone numbers(including cell), addresses, car registry and pasports for all citizens of this city.
Even more, it's hard to find a PC in my own city that doesn't have a "Megapolice" database, which contains all above information accessible throught a single easy-to-use interface.

"Private Eye" CD

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago in Israel a CDROM started circulating with information about more-or-less the entire population. The database was probably leaked from the Ministry of Interior. It was originally used by a private investigations firm but a copy leaked and started circulating freely.

IMHO, once it's out there it's everyone's civil duty to get a copy, just to level the playing field.

Buying Personal Info, U.S. Style

[divide overflow]

The easiest way to buy personal information here in the U.S. is to set up a fake company, then request the desired information from one of the major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, or ChoicePoint. Back in February ChoicePoint admitted to releasing the information on at least 145,000 consumers to fake companies.

What is unusual about this?

[dan dan the dna man]

In the UK I've had the ... pleasure (?) ... of knowing some exceedingly dodgy people with very good technical skills. This information has been available to criminals with the requistite amount of cash as long as hackers (sorry crackers) decided they could make a fast buck doing companies rather than pootling around insecure university networks.

Nothing new here and it certianly isn't limited to dodgy stalls in Moscow markets or corrupt outsourced callcentre employees.