According to Politiken, full packages of Danes’ personal information, including date of birth, address, credit card number and control code, telephone number, and email address and password, can be easily purchased online for as little as 75 kroner.
The newspaper took to the so-called darknet and used the website AlphaBay, the world’s biggest underground marketplace, to search for and buy the information in order to verify if doing so was as easy as online advertisements made out.
They managed to purchase the information of two Danes, named Luis and Lisbeth, from two separate vendors for 75 kroner and 98 kroner respectively. Politiken then contacted the identity theft victims, who confirmed that the information was accurate.
State also to blame
TV2 News reports that such data is often stolen from webshops, but Anders Kjærulff, an IT expert and radio host, said that leaks from the state are also to blame.
“The Danish state has done its bit to put the information in circulation,” he said.
“There was the famous Robinson list that came out in 2014: 900,000 Danes who had asked not to be registered were sent out everywhere and everyone could pretty much download it, including CPR number and address.”
According to a 2015 study into internet crime, in 2014 some 34,000 Danes were victims of ID theft, while almost 75,000 had their payment cards misused online.
