Bloke allegedly stole, sold private info belonging to 'tens of millions' globally

A man suspected of stealing personal data belonging to tens of millions of people worldwide and selling that info on cybercrime forums has been arrested by Dutch police. The 25-year-old now faces charges of violating data privacy and computer trespassing laws, and laundering cryptocurrency valued at around $491,000, according …

[Yorick Hunt]

That's not how you do it!

The poor bastage's biggest crime was that he aimed too low. If he'd followed in the footsteps of Zuckerberg, Schmidt, Nadela, etc., he would've been praised rather than prosecuted.

[Plest]

Re: That's not how you do it!

I'm not saying those guys are squeaky clean and I'm certainly no fan of theirs, I'm sure they've bent the rules here and there, but it's a bit of stretch to outright call 'em criminals just 'cos they've got more in their wallets than most of us will earn in a lifetime.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: That's not how you do it!

From a moral perspective no, but from a public person/tax-payers perspective only lawyers understand that very subtle difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. From a layman's perspective they do all come over as criminals, even if in matter of tax-paying fact they are squeaky clean!!!!

[Gene Cash]

Re: That's not how you do it!

Well considering their main business is now selling our personal information, I call them criminals.

[chivo243]

WTF - WFH

Surely, using one's home connection to do this kind of "fact finding" is breaking Hackers Rule #1?

Pedant as he is the most surprised icon!

[heyrick]

was it worth the $500k and prison jumpsuit?

The way things are, the crypto fraud will likely hurt more than the distribution of personal information.

I long for a day when an arsehole that does something like this gets a more reasonable fine, like at least €100 per person (convertible, if he's broke, into one day behind bars per person).

[Plest]

What a waste of time!

All that effort for around a 1/3 of what most averge paid techies will make in a lifetime, let alone the top-notch ones will make! What a total bellend!