Security News > 2023 > January > Dutch suspect locked up for alleged personal data megathefts
The Public Prosecution Service in the Netherlands has just released information about an unnamed suspect arrested back in December 2022 for allegedly stealing and selling personal data about tens of millions of people.
The suspect is being investigated for multiple offences: possessing or publishing "Non-public" data, possessing phishing software and hacking tools, computer hacking, and money laundering.
Intriguingly, the investigation was triggered by the appearance on a cybercrime forum of a multi-million record stash of personal data relating to Austrian residents.
The team has strong indications that the suspect was operating under that user name and that he had, for a long time, been offering non-public personal data - including patient data from medical records - on the forum for payment under that name.
We can't help wondering whether the Austrian radio and TV licence fee collection company might attract the interest of investigators of different sort, this time from the Austrian data protection regulators rather than the police.
As the Dutch prosecutors point out, it is the individuals whose data actually gets stolen who are the primary victims here.