Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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 is, how much of this information is real?
A massive flood of fake information would dilute the value of stolen i.d. right?
But, I thought information wants to be free?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Sell a man a phish he can scam for a day, but teach him how to phish and he can scam for himself for a lifetime.
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).
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
The question is, how much of this information is being sold in other countries, perhaps in a more sophisticated manner?
All of it, of course. Sooner or later we're going to have to get used to the idea that the concept of preserving privacy as a society disproportionately benefits individuals and groups with the resources to acquire and disseminate information regardless of the obstacles in their way.
It's too late to save privacy as most people currently envision it. What we need to be doing as a society is focus on transparency and equality-- ensuring that all parties in the social contract stand on an equal footing with regard to what information is publicly available. Secrecy is most dangerous when the powers that be insist that it be one-sided...
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I think this has always been around, but with the proliferation of the digital era, it becomes easier to make a thousand copies of something.
Look at medical records, it used to take a few minutes while they looked for your chart. At the medical clinic I currently go to they can locate you instantly. When you go into the doctor's office, he has your information on-screen. If something like a patient's chart goes missing, there's physical evidence that it's gone. But if a computer is poorly secured, you may not ever realized it was compromised.
What really bothers me is who is purchasing this information. My medical records would be pretty harmless to most people, but what if a coworker with a grudge were to find out about a deadly allergy I have? There's always that scary potential you don't necessarily think about. What if a terrorist uses your identity to get into the country and commit nefarious deeds? Could you be imprisoned while they go free?
What is going on in Russia IS a little scary, but is it really any different that buying the same information from one the businesses operating in the US like choicepoint? The government and industry buys information from HUGE databases legally here in the united states, but for some reason people make it seem scarier when it is a Russian kiosk instead of an american corporation even though both exercise about the same amount of restraint and ethics concerning to whom they will sell information.
The rule of thumb is: Do not worry about the means of transport, but the destination.
In other words - don't worry if the encryption used to send the data is 128 bit or 1024. No one will bother try to sniff'n'hack it anyways. Worry about whom you're giving your info to. Sure - they may have cheap DVD's, but in order to sell you cheap goods, they must save money in other areas. Security is (sadly) one of the first things to go.
Underholdning.info
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.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Sorry to hear about your shift key.
... three periods. You only need one! ;)
Also, I like how you can't put a period after "St." but can end every sentence with
My other car is first.
Forget grammar just stick words together see like this isn't that easy
It's being sold in India. I've met "vendors" who do the round of direct marketing agencies peddling CDs for information. The last I checked, about a year ago, a data CD came for 10c/record...
I've given a lot of thought to the subject lately, and really, I've decided I don't care much. In fact, I honestly believe that anyone who stole my identity would after a quick perusal of what they've stolen feel guilty and probably credit me a couple of hundred bucks or so.
Hey, you can't steal what isn't there, and my credit is already wrecked beyond belief. You'd have to be a pretty desperate scammer to steal my identity.
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
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.
You forgot the sheep. It gets lonely out in the woods.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
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.
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.
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
...but there aren't enough moderation points available in the /. system to stave off the flow of bad "In Soviet Russia..." _AND_ "PROFIT!" jokes that are going to flood in from this one.
;)
If you think you have a good one, please save someone a mod point by keeping it to yourself, because if it isn't already redundant, it soon will be.
This message brought to you by the Moderator Points Association of America (MPAA) *ducks*
--
I'm commenting on this story to prevent myself from burning moderator points on useless comments like this one
that they haven't scammed detail from places like say, the NYTimes subsriber database. "Mr A Butthole, Kansas" and "Phil McCrackin, Washington" might find unwanted junk mail winging their way towards them.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
People burned by that one could go for a class action lawsuit against either Mastercard their service supplier or the software vendor or a combination. There's no excuse for using tools known to be defective in a networked context.
Increasingly that said same vendor has been associated with breaches of security and failures. A year ago it was voting machines now this...