{"id":199462,"date":"2017-09-22T18:30:31","date_gmt":"2017-09-22T16:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=199462"},"modified":"2017-09-22T17:09:30","modified_gmt":"2017-09-22T15:09:30","slug":"heres-how-much-your-identity-sells-for-on-the-dark-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/199462\/heres-how-much-your-identity-sells-for-on-the-dark-web\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s how much your identity sells for on the Dark Web"},"content":{"rendered":"

How much is your personal data worth to you? A\u00a0lot.<\/em>\u00a0And how much is it worth to an identity thief? You may be surprised, or insulted, or enraged, to find out.<\/p>\n

Verified high-limit credit cards from countries including the U.S., Japan, and\u00a0South Korea are\u00a0selling on the dark web for the bitcoin equivalent of about $10 to $20, according to an annual report on cybercrime by Secureworks, a unit of Dell Inc.<\/p>\n

The dark web is \u201cthe collection of Internet forums, digital shop fronts and chat rooms that cybercriminals use to form alliances, trade tools and techniques, and sell compromised data that can include banking details, personally identifiable information and other content,\u201d as Secureworks defines it.<\/p>\n

Verified means\u00a0the seller has tested out transactions on the card\u00a0and found it hasn\u2019t been canceled yet. For scammers on a budget, there\u2019s unverified stolen credit card data, which comes out to pennies a card when bought in bulk.<\/p>\n

This is a screen grab of merchandise\u00a0for sale on\u00a0the dark web. It\u2019s\u00a0a little fuzzy but you get the awful idea.<\/p>\n

Credit cards generally aren\u2019t selling any cheaper on the dark web these days, said Alex Tilley, a senior security researcher on Secureworks\u2019 counter\u00a0threat unit research team. But\u00a0buyers are more likely to get higher-quality cards today, ones\u00a0with sizable limits and suitable properties for\u00a0fraud.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t as\u00a0hit-or-miss as it used to be\u2014a welcome change for criminals, chilling news for most of us.<\/p>\n

Business credit cards are in favor, since they sometimes\u00a0have no limit on spending, Tilley said.<\/p>\n

Those\u00a0and high-end personal cards\u2014say,\u00a0a\u00a0Platinum American Express that has been verified\u00a0and has an 85 percent rating (judged by the seller to have an 85 percent chance of being\u00a0successfully used in a fraud)\u2014will go for $15 to $20.<\/p>\n

A regular Mastercard that doesn\u2019t have a big limit might go for $9. An underground market inexplicably called Trump\u2019s Dumps is one of the many sellers of this kind of stolen credit card data.<\/p>\n

But wait, there\u2019s more. Underground markets also sell full identities of individuals just like you for as little as $10 apiece.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re called fullz, \u201cdossiers that provide enough financial, geographic and biographical information on a victim to facilitate identity theft or other impersonation-based fraud,\u201d the report explains. Fullz can help a criminal get past those irritating \u201csecret questions\u201d that sites ask to verify your identity.<\/p>\n

Recently, Secureworks\u2019 researchers have seen more offers of bulk pre-verified card details, along with more identifying information about the owners.<\/p>\n

In some cases, offers even include the cardholder\u2019s mother\u2019s maiden name. Still, they cost just $10 to $12. Below is a fullz\u00a0offer with\u00a0a lot of\u00a0personal identification on\u00a0a Korean consumer.<\/p>\n

In fact, the prices Secureworks cites for these examples of personal data are lower than what fraudsters have been willing to\u00a0pay for documents like W-2s, which can be used to file false tax returns. Tax-filing data, which don\u2019t expire,\u00a0can go for about\u00a0$40 to $50<\/strong><\/a>, according to a report from IBM\u2019s security research group, known as the IBM X-Force, published earlier this year.<\/p>\n

The researchers found one vendor selling W-2 and 1040 returns as a package for $30; if a buyer wanted information on that person\u2019s adjusted gross income it would be another $20.<\/p>\n

No piece of personal information is innocuous, Tilley said. Criminals will amass bits of data on people,\u00a0waiting until they have enough that their fraud attempt is likely to succeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is valuable,\u201d he said. One\u00a0bit of information \u201ccould be the last piece of a puzzle someone needed to take out a loan in your name. You don\u2019t know how far along criminals are until it\u2019s too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

Credit monitoring and freezes could be the only hope of protecting yourself, Tilley\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is that you put a lot of trust in the third-party companies that hold your data, and that\u2019s a little out of your control.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0The\u00a0loophole hackers can use to get around South African banks\u2019 SMS verification<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may be surprised or enraged to find out how much your personal details are worth online. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":66004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[1850,12332,26],"class_list":["post-199462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-bloomberg","tag-dark-web","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199462"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200560,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199462\/revisions\/200560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}