12/29/2008: Data Theft Booming At Christmas
Data Theft Booming At Christmas
The theft of data is apparently booming at christmas time. Bank account- and credit card data seems to be particularly popular. Two spectacular cases are in the focus of public interest in Germany.
Every week has a new data scandal – that is what the month of December in 2008 has in store for the German public.
First, the bank account data of 21 million German citizens was being offered for sale to the German weekly Wirtschaftswoche. As a sample, the reporters of the magazine received a CD comprising the data of 1.2 million bank clients. The CD supposedly held names, account numbers, bank routing numbers and in some cases even detailed information about funds so that some economic damage might very well have be done with this data. As Wirtschaftswoche reports the data had apparently been collected by employees and service providers using leaks in the company or the call center.
And only a few days later, the daily Frankfurter Rundschau reports that it had been leaked the sensitive data of thousands of credit card owners anonymously via mail. The data is allegedly on microfiches which had been stolen from a courier.
Experts criticize the refusal to use effective encryption technologies when it comes to archiving and storing sensitive data in general.
Users of ARTEC’s EMA® E-Mail Archive Appliance do not have to worry about issues like that because the incident oriented archiving approach of the device gives them the necessary means to prevent mishaps like that before they occur.
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