Here is a bit of a twist, or digression on the theme.
For checking accounts it is fairly easy to determine any banks Routing number.
There have also been so many leaks and compromises of institutions that archive this data, not to mention if an old paper check gets into the wrong hands.
If you ever had a requirement to enter a bank account number to pay a bill, this data is as vulnerable as a credit card, and worse.
… ironiclly, the credit agencies themselves, perhaps even government web sites , I suppose, have had major breaches.
On one level, perhaps we have to act, and be diligent in monitoring, as if all this data is “out there” just waiting for the black hat to weigh the cost/benefit of taking advantage of it.
So when a checking account gets compromised and passed around for sale on the
illegal web, it is there forever and serves sort of as an entry point to compromising that person’s identity on an ongoing basis …
One thing I wonder is if black hats are also, with a routing number in hand, using code to generate possible combinations of bank account numbers and simply trying random keys in any lock …
;-(