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Tom Espiner

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Security Bullet In

Communiques from the security front, sir

Tuesday 9 December 2008, 5:59 PM

21m German bank details were for sale

Posted by Tom Espiner

Fancy getting your hands on the bank details of 21 million German citizens? The AFP is reporting that the German Wirtschaftswoche magazine was offered those details -- all it had to do was pay 12 million euros for them.

After a clandestine meeting with the vendors, two Wirtschaftswoche reporters came away with 1.2 million account details on a CD, which they then handed to police.

I wonder how much the CD cost them? If 21 million details cost 12 million euros, I reckon 1.2 million details would cost about 685,000 euros -- quite an expensive story, if the reporters paid up. I'd imagine they took the details away for verification before handing over any cash though...


Comments on this post

1000215420

Assuming that there is not a great deal of difference between German banks security and British banks security, I wonder when, if not already occurred, that my bank details will be in possession of someone else.
And if this happens just to a bank, what chance is there for the planned National Database, operated under the auspices of the Home Office (Ugh!) to remain secure?
If a man can make a secure database then another man can break that security.

Updated by 1000215420 on Dec 14, 2008 8:18 PM


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