Last month porn website Playboy.com admitted that a hacker had broken through its security and stolen customer details, including credit card numbers. Someone claiming to be part of the data heist contacted victims via e-mail with proof that their Playboy accounts had been hacked.

On August 17th 2000 a 17 year-old youth hacked into one of Eircom's Internet service providers, gaining access to sensitive customer details. The firm changed 30,000 customer e-mail passwords, causing major disruption to many consumer and business Internet users. The youth was subsequently caught by Garda.