Australian Man Arrested for Stealing Netflix, Spotify Passwords

The value of passwords stolen amounted to almost 300,000 Australian dollars.

The man stole passwords of accounts worth almost 300,000 Australian dollars.

(Photo: Reuters)

An Australian man has been arrested for selling stolen subscription details from services like Netflix and Spotify, from which he made a profit of around 300,000 Australian dollars (Rs 1.47 crore).

"The man was allegedly behind the website WickedGen.com, which boasted to have 120,000 users and sold Netflix, Spotify and Hulu logins stolen from almost one million accounts," CNET reported on Wednesday.

Evan Leslie McMahon, a 21-year-old IT worker, reportedly made the money from selling stolen subscription details from streaming services.

He was charged with multiple cyber crime offences and appeared in court. The website was shut down later.

“The account details were obtained through credential stuffing, which sees a list of previously stolen or leaked usernames, email addresses and corresponding passwords re-used and sold for unauthorised access,” the Australian Federal Police was quoted as saying in a statement.

While account sharing is common (roughly one third of streaming users say they would quit a service like Netflix if it tried to stop password sharing), account stealing is a different matter, the report added.