Antti Vilpponen writes:
Not exactly a startup news per se, but a healthy reminder to all those working with user credentials in their online services. One of the largest, if not the largest, online identity thefts has just occured (sic) in Finland. The service to be breached was Älypää, a Sanoma bought gaming site. The sad part is that while an identity breach of this magnitude is always bad – this has been made worse by Sanoma actually storing the passwords in plain text, making them usable anywhere.
MuroBBS, a Finnish forum for tech enthusiasts, has posted a thread on the breach. They are suspecting that the breach might have something to do with the break ins of the two SDP politician websites over the weekend here in Finland.
Read more on ArcticStartup. Financial data were not involved, but as Vilpponen notes, so many people re-use login credentials across different accounts that there is still cause for worry.
Update: The Helsinki Times puts the number at 127,000.