A while ago I published a post “The Creative Scam Artists” in which I was wondering about how the thieves were obtaining our personal information and how they come up with their scam ideas.  Well, after some extensive research, I found out that, yes, indeed, the thieves HAVE manuals, how -to guides, tutorials, advice, scam ideas, attack kits, etc.

As many of us have known all along, there is this huge Underground Market or Black market in existence.  Online forums are heavily utilized for trading stolen information.  These forums could be easily found online and have many advertisements for various “goods”.    Some of those forums could be easily joined by anyone and some of them are by invitation only.   What is disturbing to me is the fact that those forums contain job postings for hackers, skimmers, phishers, scam developers, malicious code developers, etc.

According to the recent Symantec’s underground market report, credit card information is the most popular commodity for sale and requested more frequently.   Most likely this is because the credit card information is easy to compromise and use.    Using credit cards is awfully easy online: fraudulent charges are noticed too late.  The complete credit card information including information such as Name, billing address, number, expiration date, CVV2 (2 or 4 digit number on the back) is more valuable of course.  The price range for this information is from $0.10 to $25.00.  Credit cards belonging to the United States go for top dollar, by the way.  And, yes, they use the Costco formula: the more you buy the less you pay.

Your bank account information, which includes your name, account number, the banking branch name and location, routing information, log in information, phone numbers, authentication information, the account balance and other items, ranges from $10.00-$1000.00.  The more funds are in the account the more expensive the information is.

The email addresses range from $0.30 to $40.00 per MB.  Email passwords go between $4.00 and $30.00.  Once thieves get a hold of this information, they can use it for sending spam and phishing emails in and out.  With email passwords, the thieves can gain access into the victim’s email account.  Most people keep a lot of sensitive information in there with logins to various sites and such.

Full Identity information, which may consist of a name, address, phone, numbers, SSN, Driver’s license number, date of birth, mother’s maiden name,  and many other components, ranges from measly $0.90 to $25.00.  Usually, full identities are sold in bulk.  Wow!  I really thought it would go for more money.

Since the information is so cheap and the return on investment is so high, we are always in danger of becoming victims to this crime.  More reasons to be educated on the Identity Theft issue.

For more information, go to Symantec’s website.