The suspect allegedly threatened to sell stolen data to contacts in eastern Europe unless he was given money by the Web site, according to police in Berlin.

SchuelerVZ, an online forum for German high school students, said the stolen data of thousands of users included their name, age, gender and photos.

SchuelerVZ said it had taken additional steps to protect user data and stressed that particularly sensitive data – such as e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, photo albums, usernames, and passwords – were not compromised.

SchuelerVZ and several sister sites together have about 15 million members in Germany.

Several German companies report data thefts

SchuelerVZ is only one of several companies to recently announce that customer data had been compromised.

Karstadt, a German department store, recently told clients it had discovered an unspecified data breach with some of its store credit cards. Clients were told they should get new cards for security reasons, although the company said "only a fraction" of its 900,000 Master Cards were compromised.

Meanwhile, the names, client numbers, addresses, and telephone numbers of 27,000 clients of the German financial service provider AWD were hacked into and released on the Internet, according to German public broadcaster NDR. In addition to those protected data, contract details including client insurance policies and investments were part of the stolen data.

AWD, however, said most of the stolen information was outdated. It said the most recent details were from the year 2001, with most of the data coming from the mid 1990s.

th/dpa/AP/Reuters/AFP
Editor: Chuck Penfold