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21 Million German Bank Accounts For Sale

Posted by kdawson on from the black-marks dept.

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.

2 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. I did it last week by ZiggyM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I live in Lima Peru. Last week a teller at my bank made me wait 10 minutes while she waited for the safe to open to give me some cash. In the meantime I went to a computer terminal without a keyboard, and access to only a webpage with the bank rates (windows, no start menu, no access to desktop etc). The machine was supposedly locked so that you couldnt navigate away or do anything except scroll the page and click a few links. Well, they forgot do disable right-click. 7 steps later I was able to access their internal network, and had access to a lot of internal information on individual machines. I went to the branch manager and showed him. He was surprised and embarassed, and took note of the steps I took. It was amazing how easy was to do it. The 7 steps were clever, but not impossible.

  2. Re:21 million is 3/4 of accounts? by quarrel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had the same reaction re the number of accounts. It is small.

    However, Germany isn't all that small.

    So some back of the envelope calcs:

    They claim 21/.75 = 28M bank accounts in Germany

    It's got roughly 80M people. Assume something like 2.2 people per househould (dunno what it is in Germany), and you get 36M. You gotta figure each household has at least one. I don't know how things really work in Germany, but I assume they're like the rest of the developed world and you essentially can't function without a bank account.

    Then there are businesses. Even very small businesses will run several accounts.

    I think the 28M bank accounts is just bullshit. It's gotta be heaps higher.

    Surely 100M wouldn't be that big a figure even?

    --Q