In October of 2016 I reported to you about a Russian hacker, Yevgeny Nikulin’s  arrest in the Czech Republic twelve hours after an International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol)  Red Notice was issued notifying law enforcement officials that Nikulin who operates with impunity inside Russia was vacationing with his girl friend in Prague.  A Red Notice is akin to an international arrest warrant.  Nikulin was under indictment in California for hacking into LinkedIn, Dropbox and another company, Formspring. Through hacking into these companies, Nikulin was able to steal personal information on more than 167 million people.  Prague’s High Court has just upehld a lower court’s ruling that enables Nikulin to be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges.  The court’s decision, however, must be approved by the Czech Justice Minister.
TIPS
Nikulin is the second Russian hacker arrested after leaving the safe confines of Russian on vacation.  In 2014, Roman Valerevich Seleznev was arrested in Guam and extradited to the United States where he was convicted of hacking into the cash register systems of American companies.  Zeleznev was convicted on 38 counts last summer and sentenced to 27 years in prison.  This case, once again, illustrates that regardless of how protective we are of personal information that can be used for purposes of identity theft, we are only as safe as the places with the weakest security that hold our information.  For that reason, you should limit, as much as you can, the amount of personal information provided to any company, agency or any other entity with which you conduct business.