Tough criminal penalties for stolen data

As reported by Associated Press a US court has imposed an eight year prison sentence on a person convicted of 120 counts of unauthorised access to data, 2 counts of access device fraud and 1 count of obstruction of justice. The owner of Snipermail Ink a company that distributed internet ads to email addresses had, using decription software to obtain passwords, accessed more than 1 billion records in 4789 computer files in Acxiom (one of the world’s largest data management companies) which included names, telephone numbers, street and email addresses.

The prosecution claimed the data was worth $58 million but a data management expert testified that almost all the stolen data could have been purchased for less than $50,000.