I was excited to learn that the data from my dutch phone was sold to a criminal gang and used to create a botnet, but I’m not sure that makes me any less of a criminal. Regardless of what the legal ramifications are, I’m just glad it was something that could be used against me instead of the people I love.
Technically the data from my phone was sold to a Dutch criminal gang. But the fact that they didn’t just take it from me is pretty damning. This is not because it was a bad sale, as it would have been if it had been. It’s because I am still a criminal.
The fact that its illegal to sell data to a criminal gang is pretty damning. The Netherlands as a country is pretty notorious for their strong stance against illegal data sharing. In fact, if you are in the Netherlands and ever got a phone call from a police officer, you could be facing a prison sentence of up to 8 years for illegally selling data.
It’s also pretty clear that you have to be a good cop to be able to find and report such data to the police. It’s quite possible for a gang to have a pretty bad record when it’s in the hands of the government.
This is a little ironic considering how much data Netherlands is selling illegally, but it happens.
It’s not really a surprise that they have this problem. The Dutch government has a very strict policy about data and the internet in general. Data is only sold on a case by case basis, and it’s only available to people with a good business relationship with those who buy.
This policy is quite a bit stricter than that of any other EU country. As a result, even though Holland has a pretty decent reputation for data protection and privacy, the Dutch government can’t keep a close eye on it. But that’s a problem when you’re selling data to criminals, especially if your clients don’t look too closely at your records.
The Dutch government has tried to make some things more transparent (and less private), but its hard to know how effective these measures have been since its all under the control of the same companies. In the Netherlands, there is an e-crime portal that tracks all online data thefts, but the government doesn’t know how often this is visited or how often its found to actually be used for an illegal purpose.
So who really knows? The e-crime portal gets around 500,000 hits a month, and of those, just over half are stolen data. Although there are limits and penalties for these crimes, it seems clear that there is huge potential abuse of these data sales. Although the Dutch government has been aware of this problem for some time, there is no guarantee that this problem is going to be corrected any time soon.
Data that is sold for illegal purposes is a big problem for the Dutch government. The e-crime portal has been used to sell data, sometimes for illegal and sometimes legal purposes. The portal is part of a program by the Netherlands’ data protection authority to sell all kinds of personal data from government employees, police, military, politicians and so on. In addition, it is also used to sell data from the police to criminals for a fee. A criminal can then use that data to commit crimes.
