Webster’s definition of a leak is such: to enter or escape through an opening usually by a fault or mistake. Data leaks are becoming more commonplace and with various outcomes and consequences. I mean who could forget about when Seth Rogen and that guy we don’t talk about anymore made fun of a a literal Dictator and a bunch of people who worked for Sony couldn’t deposit paychecks for months, or the one that happened with Facebook or the other one that happened to Facebook or that one time when Facebook leaked a bunch of user data. And just when I thought I had seen it all one of the consequences is exposing a Multimillion dollar money laundering scheme.
Your Average Twitch user will purchase bits and then when your favorite streamer does a good 360 no scope in COD or builds the big ass worm from Dune in Minecraft, you can offer them bits as a sort of monetary applause. The average exchange rate comes to one cent per bit, so if you are receiving tens or even hundreds of thousands of bits you can make a pretty penny. The thing about it is generally you have to high amount of viewers and followers before your bit intake is enough to make any real amount of money, and therein lies the rub. So cut to the Twitch Data Leak, the main thing that was leaked was the payouts for several Twitch streamers. We all knew that the big guys were pulling down a shitload, but a few accounts from Turkey didn’t make any sense. These were accounts with relatively low followers and subs, bringing in huge amounts of donations from Bits. Imagine if you saw someone busking, but they were only playing Wonderwall over and over and over and over, and then looked into the guitar case to see nothing but crisp hundred dollar bills. The money was coming from stolen credit card numbers and then being dumped onto these streams in crazy high amounts, then the funds were transferred to bank accounts having used twitch as a virtual middleman. Twitch has taken quick and decisive action in deactivating these accounts and is working closely with the Police cybercrime unit, and has deactivated over 150 Turkey-based accounts at the time of this writing.
The Approximate end result was something in the neighborhood of about $10 Million dollars. That is a lot of money, that’s approximately one million Arby’s Combos . This will lead to reformed guidelines from Twitch and a lot of aggressive finger wagging in all directions. In all this performative Monday Morning Justice, let’s not forget: If the Data had not been leaked we would have never known about these Walter White-esque plots. So I guess what I’m saying is win some lose some. What took down these criminals was the fact the accounts they were using to do this were not viral, because of these had been super popular streams they may have flown under the radar for a bit longer. So just remember: you too can engage in International Financial Crimes, just don’t forget to like and subscribe.
