The man had been arrested last weekend on suspicion of stealing data from a popular website for German students, SchuelerVZ.de. Authorities said he had threatened to sell it to contacts in eastern Europe unless the Web site's operators gave him 80,000 euro ($117,824). Berlin police apprehended the man, whose name has not been released, when he met with representatives of parent company VZ-Netzwerke to demand the money.

The man, from the Bavarian city of Erlangen, had allegedly copied the names, ages, gender and profile photos of more than a million users as part of the scheme.

About 1.6 million data sets from the social network were posted on blog Netzpolitik.org, but police say that they were not posted by the man in custody. It is unknown how that poster obtained the data - it may have been obtained by hacking into the 20-year-old's computer, or it may have been obtained by the poster himself.

Police say the 20-year-old had also collected data from VZ-Netzwerke sites StudiVZ and MeinVZ, but had not yet released it.

The VZ networks have more than 15 million members in total.


svs/AP/dpa/AFP
Editor: Andreas Illmer