No doubt about it -- gamers love a good hacker story. Today's special comes from Malaga, Spain where somebody thought it'd be a great idea to blackmail Nintendo.
Come on, people. It's one thing to steal the data of Nintendo users, but it's another thing to attempt to blackmail Nintendo with it.
Police in Spain have arrested a man in the southern province of Malaga suspected of stealing the user data of Nintendo gamers, who allegedly then tried to blackmail Nintendo with the unlawfully-gathered information. According to Spain's Ministerio del Interior (Ministry of the Interior), the individual who cannot be named stole data belonging to 4,000 gamers.
It is claimed that the man contacted the Spanish data protection agency and accused Nintendo of negligence. The police said that when Nintendo did not respond to the man's accusations, he began leaking some of the data online. Authorities claim that the man was prepared to release the entire contents of the user database onto the Internet.
At this juncture, it is not clear if the alleged theft took place within Nintendo's own online system or that of a third-party. Nintendo is unable to comment on this matter as an active investigation is still being carried out by the Spanish authorities.
We live in an age where data is more exposed than ever, but the laws protecting that data are pretty cut and dried. It's not newsworthy to use that the guy got himself arrested -- only that he thought he could get away with what he was doing. Seriously, this is Nintendo. Do you know
what that company does to hackers and pirates?
