Possibly the worst mass invasion of internet privacy ever

In January, a bank in Edina, Minnesota, received a request for a $28,500 wire transfer from someone claiming to be local resident Douglas Junker. Though bolstered with a faked picture of a passport, the request later turned out to be fraudulent, and local cops were reportedly stymied on how to catch the thief. 

Until, that is, they came up with a novel idea: Hoping to find out how the fraudster got the picture, Edina Police Detective David Lindman applied for a search warrant to obtain the names, email addresses, account information and IP addresses of everyone in the entire town of 50,000 who had searched for any variation of the victim’s name between Dec. 1, 2016, and Jan. 7, 2017. 

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here