A 29-year-old man from Odense has just been charged with illegally reselling unsuspecting users’ login credentials to various streaming services.
In 2022, Rights Alliance reported a person to NSK – the Danish Section for Rights Protection – for illegally selling access to streaming services on the internet. Now NSK has filed charges in the case against a 29-year-old man from Odense. According to the indictment, he has in several cases resold lists with a total of approximately 500,000 leaked login details for various entertainment and streaming services belonging to unknowing users. He is also accused of having created a sales function on a website where buyers could individually purchase existing users’ login information for specific services, including YouSee, TV2 Play, Viaplay, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Podimo.
Deputy prosecutor at NSK, Brian Kaas Borgstrøm, says:
“It is our belief that the defendant has exploited data leaks to obtain random paying customers’ login information for a number of popular streaming services and then resell the information both collectively and individually. This has allowed the buyers to abuse the accounts of the real customers.”
NSK will seek a prison sentence in the case.
Read NSK’s press release here (Danish)
Private logins as a business model
With the significant development in streaming content and services in recent years, Rights Alliance sees a trend where criminals exploit unknowing users’ login credentials to grab a share of the attractive streaming market. Personal login credentials for entertainment services are in high demand as the demand for content is exploited by criminals, who then make the full profit from selling cheap subscriptions to existing users’ accounts on streaming services.
Maria Fredenslund, CEO of Rights Alliance, says:
“Illegal resale of users’ private login information to streaming services happens on a large scale and affects both the vulnerable users, streaming services and rights holders. Cases like this help to highlight that criminals are constantly developing new models to illegally make content available for their own profit – regardless of the fact that their crime affects unknowing people.”
The past year has seen several cases of hacking and illegal resale of users’ login credentials. In June, a 41-year-old man was sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence for, among other things, copying and sharing Ekstra Bladet+ articles using other people’s passwords, and in July, NSK arrested the third suspect behind an organized sale of unauthorized access credentials for streaming and news services.
Also read: Six months imprisonment for illegal sharing of books and articles