According to Moscow’s media, a database made up of “prostitutes’, pimps’ and brothel owners’ address books” is now for sale on the open market. The database contains explicit personal details on the private patrons of the aforementioned places of ill repute. Access to the database costs only 1,500 rubles (58 USD / 43 euro) and – or so the sellers claim – allows one to find out about the foibles of members of the Duma, bankers, high-ranking officials and military personnel. At first sight, it would seem to be a leak originating with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But InfoWatch advises against making hasty conclusions. The appearance on the market of a genuine database of this sort – compiled from a number of sources – is very unlikely.
On Saturday, 13th January, the Moscow paper Moskovskii Komsomlets shocked everyone with its publication about a client database of the capital’s prostitutes. According to the journalists, for 1,500 rubles (58 USD / 43 euro) any interested person can gain access to the Paveletsky Vokzal database which contains the addresses, telephone numbers, police workups for big criminal cases and compromising information of an intimate nature against big-name and not-so-big-name clients of Moscow’s brothels. MK goes on: The police’s database contains 138 address books, each containing between 30 and 500 addresses and telephone numbers. In addition, the database contains summaries of bugged telephone conversations, a description of their connections and other information on a total of 90,000 people.
In the view of the MK journalist, the database became available on Moscow’s less reputable markets about a month ago with around 1,000 disks and all trails pointing in the direction of the Ministry of Intenal Affairs. Nevertheless, InfoWatch experts doubt that the saucy database is genuine.
Denis Zenkin, InfoWatch’s Markeing Director said, “This disk contains a complete range of data, most of which has been available for some time. What is new is the client list of Moscow brothels, thanks to which people are snapping up the database directory now, whereas earlier nobody wanted to buy it. This is a good example of a case where it would have been worth inventing a database like this in order to increase sales. I’m afraid that this is exactly what the sellers of this private database have done in this case.”
“And in fact, one has only to look at the promotional advertising of recent years to realize that the MIA’s address books, information about criminals under investigation and other materials have been on sale for several years. However, the hullabaloo has gone up as a result of this delicate database information.”
“The task of collecting such delicate information not simple. The police would first have to go to the trouble of procuring the pimps’ and prostitutes’ address books, then enter and compile them into one database. But then we have to ask ourselves the key question: Would the high-ranking clients of Moscow brothels really be so short-sighted as to give out personal information such as addresses, telephone numbers, job titles, surnames and so on? Personally, I doubt it.”
Thus, it seems premature to come to any conclusions about the MIA leak. The attraction of a “saucy” database is an excellent marketing approach for such illegal traders. In addition, the very fact of the appearance of such a database – whether genuine or not – is an indication of the informational anarchy in Russian society, where both the people and their government not only tolerate the illegal dissemination of private information, but allow illegal businesses to prosper as a result.
