Saturday, November 27, 2004

Article: Dumpster-diving meth-heads collect info for ID thieves

The Edmonton Sun is reporting on how sensitive personal information related to senior Alberta bureaucrats found their way into a drug-bust crime scene. (See PIPEDA and Canadian Privacy Law: Incident: Massive leak of personal information in Edmonton, Alberta.) Apparently, dumpster-diving meth-heads are selling found personal information to ID thieves:

Documents dug out of dumpsters:

"...Personal data including credit reports for provincial bureaucrats recently recovered by cops appears to have fallen into the wrong hands due to 'dumpster diving,' say police. 'My feeling is yes, most of that stuff came from dumpster diving,' city police Det. Bob Gauthier said yesterday, after cops showed the hundreds of documents recovered.

'Dumpster divers' or 'binners,' as police call them, are people who in some cases are addicted to methamphetamine and hunt garbage bins for personal information. They then sometimes exchange the data for drugs. "

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