Thieves Take the Cake

Two very hungry German couriers ate a fruit cake destined for a German newspaper and in its place mailed a box of credit card data. The data including names, addresses and card transactions ended up at the Frankfurter Rundschau daily. The mix-up triggered an alarm, and police advised credit card customers with Landesbank Berlin to check their accounts for inconsistencies. Fruitcake must be different in Germany for people to want to use it as something other than a paperweight.

Comments

Whatever.

[cromar]

Whatever, fruit cake is delicious. Just don't buy the cheap, sucky grocery store kind and you will be in for a treat or find a recipe and make some...

Re:Whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever, fruit cake is delicious. Just don't buy the cheap, sucky grocery store kind and you will be in for a treat or find a recipe and make some...

Fruit cake is handy stuff. My dog is still using the piece from last year as a chew toy and I used the rest to weather strip the windows. I asked for more this year so I could redo the doors as well what with fuel oil prices so high and all. It also comes in handy to plug mouse holes with. It's the only thing I've found they won't chew on.

Re:Whatever.

[goatpunch]

The stuff that passes for 'fruitcake' in the US/Canada is just sad, half the replies to this story are just stating how sucky that artificial insubstantial crap is.

This stuff was the ultimate fruit cake, German Stollen:

Stollen > British Fruitcake > North American Fruitcake

idle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, seriously: What the hell is the point of idle if you're just going to post fluff in all the other sections anyway?

Re:idle?

[Opportunist]

This is far from fluff. It's actually a security issue that has some "funny" (ymmv) outcome.

These couriers ate a stollen (NOT a fruitcake!) that was supposed to go to party A, and to make it less obvious, they took a package from party B and delivered it to A instead, thinking that whether they get 4 or 5 parcels won't make the difference. Well, problem is that this "misdelivered" parcel contained the very personal bank account data of people on microfiche. This raises a few rather interesting questions.

First, why does a bank deliver its data on microfiche anymore? I may be old fashioned, but this is even a wee bit dated for my tastes.

Second, why do they trust unencrypted customer data to couriers? I could see if those couriers are in house and had a serious background check (hell, I worked for a bank for a brief while, and the time it took to get all the papers necessary was almost more than the time I spent working for them!), but these are just some delivery boys. And they get unencrypted, plain text readable but very sensitive and classified data into their hands. Before you ask, yes, Germany has some rather strict secrecy laws concerning bank accounts. Even courts need (in theory... ya know, these days...) some rather good reason to peek into your financial data, bank clerks face stiff fines and unemployment if they only consider talking about your account with some third party, etc. And here these very sensitive informations are put into the hands of some delivery boys that were quite obviously not checked.

And finally, why did the German minister of interior, Mr. Paranoid himself, suddenly get VERY quiet about his demands of more through investigation when data gets "lost"? Only weeks ago he was all about it, now suddenly, nothing is said anymore.

But the diversion worked. Everyone's laughing about the stolen stollen and how hilariously dumb the delivery boys were. The underlying problem gets ignored. Appearantly it's true, if you want to cover up a story, just fabricate a more intersting or at least hilarious story on top of it so everyone will point and laugh and stop thinking.

because..

[db10]

German couriers like to have their cake and eat it too.

Stollen!

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't fruitcake, it was Christstollen. And no, that's not the same, despite what Wikipedia falsely claims.

Re:Stollen!

[himizu]

You mean, the cake is a lie?

Re:Stollen!

[Adrian Lopez]

Christstollen? Gestohlen!

Re:Stollen!

[Trogre]

Which Wikipedia will no doubt now correctly claim. Thanks for fixing it!

This wasn't fruit cake.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read TFA, it was stollen, a whole different thing. And while stollen may have its own problems (it's something like five hundred calories fora small slice) it's damn tasty.

Wow. Hoax?

[Ecuador]

I actually had to RTFA because I could not figure out what on earth this is about. So, two couriers decide to steal a cake sent to a newspaper. To COVER the theft, they replaced it with a package intended to a bank, without even opening it. That package happened to contain microfilmed (?!) of transactions.
This must be a hoax, the sheer stupidity of "hiding" a CAKE theft with a second theft. Then banks sending around transactions and customer data in MICROFILMS????
Am I missing something, or is this just a hoax?

Re:Wow. Hoax?

[Sique]

No. It is for real. That's what actually happened. The couriers stole the fruit cake, and to cover it, they took one of six packages intended for a bank and relabelled it with the address sticker of the newspaper.

Re:Wow. Hoax?

[burni]

Don't joke about microfilms!

For archiving over a long term they have some unbeatable pro's

(+) 100years+
(+) lowtech data retrival (even Gallileo could extract information!)
(+) burn it when the deadline is met (faster & more secure than erasing tapes)

(-) slow data retrival (but this is just data which has to be archived, and won't be accessed
anymore)

Re:Wow. Hoax?

[Opportunist]

It's not entirely a hoax. Actually, bank data surfaced at a newspaper. Actually, said newspaper wrote a story about it. Actually, the whole country was up in arms about bank data being stolen.

Whether or not it is credible that a bank is delivering account data on microfiche (to whom, anyway?), whether or not it is credible that two couriers steal a stollen (ya know, they ain't so terribly expensive and stealing a cake means you're FIRED, and I only write it in bold because I don't want to bug you with an H1 tag because you are not only out of a job you are also out of pretty much any job that doesn't come with fries), whether or not it is credible that they are so braindead to replace a stolen stollen by stealing another package (to a BANK) and send it to a NEWSPAPER instead... that's up to you.

I certainly am not accusing the German investigators of fabricating a story to save at least the little credibility banks in Germany still have, I don't like legal problems with powers that have more money than dead $deity himself.

ACH!!!

[snowgirl]

ACH! Mine stollen ist stolen!!!