Slashdot Mirror
21 Million German Bank Accounts For Sale
anerva writes "Black market criminals are offering to sell details on 21 million German bank accounts for €12M ($15.3M), according to an investigative report (German; Google translation) published Saturday. In November reporters for WirtschaftsWoche (Economic Week) had a face-to-face meeting with criminals in a Hamburg hotel, according to the magazine. Posing as buyers working for a gambling business, the journalists were able to strike a price of €0.55 per record, or €12M for all the data. They were given a CD containing the 1.2 million accounts when they asked for assurances that the information they would be buying was legitimate." 21 million is three in four existing German bank accounts.
Couldn't you just buy one to begin with and then use that German bank account to buy the rest?
The police are too busy raiding game developer buildings with shotguns and listening in on Skype calls.
Even their criminality is impressively efficient :-)
I record my sleeptalking
Yah, ho hum. I mean, I bought my first 21 million German bank accounts YEARS AGO. Nothing to see here folks.
This morning the entire banking system in Germany collapsed due to 3 in 4 Germans transferring money out of the country to banks in neighboring countries....
I think the taggers in this story need to learn how to spell "Scheiße"
Who wants a mass list anyway, you can't target spam at people just because they're German and they have a bank account, and stealing that many identities begs the question, "why?"
Yeah, who could have use for the equivalent of 21 million valid direct debit cards.
the Linux desktop market share in Germany is only 25%.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
lmao.
buying bank accounts in bulk is soo..... 2007...
> In theory, if the banking system were known to be compromised in such a huge way, and
> there were no way of knowing if your own bank account was compromised or not, shouldn't
> there be a massive bank run?
This is Germany. There will be no bank run until it is properly planned, organized, and regulated.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
21 million is three in four existing German bank accounts.
I have for sale EVERY VISA NUMBER EVER ISSUED! From 4000 0000 0000 0000 to 4999 9999 9999 9999! (Note: some numbers may not be valid.)
I will sell them for US $1,000,000 MILLIONS US DOLLARS. Contact me via this website.
Act now and I'll throw in every Master Card ever issued. (5000 0000 0000 0000 to 5999 9999 9999 9999) (Same disclaimer as above.) And no identity thief would be complete without a REAL SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER to go with it, eh? Guess what? That's right--I'VE GOT THEM ALL TOO! (001-01-0001 to 999-99-9999)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Plus, in Norway there were Vikings. And Vikings rank only slightly behind Pirates and Ninjas on the Cool-O-Meter (tm, patent pending).
I manage a team of payment processing staff who do work for superannuation companies, local councils, payroll companies, etc, and we process around 17,000 cheques every evening, which is roughly three metric fucktons. We're one of nine offices in the country, one of many such companies, and I'm in Australia, which has a population of about eighty people, I think. There are lots of cheques, they're just not part of most slashdotters' lives.