The German eMagazine wiwo.de published an article concerning an operation named "gold donkey" where investigators were able to obtain 1.2 million bank accounts and other personal information on German Citizens from about 21 million accounts that were offered for sale by a black market information group. The account information is also matched with T-mobile personal data information about the users bank accounts and T-mobile phone data. A correlation of Bank Account PAN, name, address, birthdate, phone numbers etc... It is suspected the data might have been obtained by outsourced call centers and marketing strategists performed over the years by vendors like Vodaphone, German Telekom, Kabel or even Banking institutions.
The magazine goes on later to state that today there is not enough uniformity in call center operations with data protection standards. Each enterprise decides which technical safety measures are met and how much money is invested into IT infrastructure to protect against abuse. IT Security Standards for Call Center Operations was not regulated by the legislature. It is also suspected the attackers armed with certain information from call centers or marketing databases could have made fake call center calls and obtained bank account information via subscription renewals scams for Lotto etc...
Also in Germany this week Stripes.com (Stars and Stripes) reported thousands of U.S. Army hospital patient records were reported missing when a laptop containing the data was lost. The laptop was reported missing on Oct 4th and the victims were not notified until Nov. 24th that their data might be compromised. The U.S. Army reports the data on the laptop was encrypted.
Digital organized crime is trying to data mine as much information as possible about individuals, and is gathering it or buying stolen information to feed data mining applications and databases that can correlate various disparate information across the world about who you are and your personal profile of Bank Accounts, buying habits, relatives, relationships, present and past residences, where you make your purchases, and even when you're at home.
These correlated databases on your historical digital and related physical history is extremely valuable not only to those who may want to wire transfer 20.00 dollars anonymously out of 21 million bank accounts crossing multiple international jurisdictions, but also to those who want to completely assume your identity and make it their own.
English Reference: PC World .
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