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Your Identity Is Worth Less Than $15
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "One of the more interesting tidbits in Symantec's Global Internet Threat Report (PDF, 105 pages) is the price sheet, which suggests that someone's 'full identity' is worth in the range of $1-$15. Your email password goes for $4-$30 and your bank account might fetch $10-$1000. With those prices, I wonder how often they pay more for the bank account than is actually in it? There's also an executive summary (PDF, 36 pages)."
Of course this article is wrong. Just look at how much all these politicians care about us.
So when the British government introduce their fantastic, shiney, new, biometric, uhackable ID card system, can we get them to buy our ID off us?
Is crushing a suspect's child's testicles illegal?
John Yoo: "No, [if] the President thinks he needs to do that."
Whilst I am sure identity theft is a very real problem, I'm not sure I want Symantec to be my source of information about it. They have done more to reduce internet security than most, with bloated, unusable virus checkers that people end up simply disabling. Furthermore, there is a pretty obvious marketing angle to all of this.
a bank account might fetch $10-$1000. With those prices, I wonder how often they pay more for the bank account than is actually in it?
How much do you assume the average person has in their bank accounts? I realize that living at home with your parents and not having to pay for rent, utilities, food, and clothes may allow you to skate by with a very low monthly balance, but the vast majority of people who work for a living have to have the cash on hand (in their checking account, anyway) to pay for all these necessities.
But I don't suppose someone whose name is "I don't believe in imaginary property" would have a very solid grasp of the real world.
to get you hooked, the first post is free.
Though now I am setting myself up to fail this one..
liqbase
From TFA - "Bank accounts were the most commonly advertised item for sale on underground economy servers known to Symantec"
I'm curious as to where this data came from. Is it public record from court cases? Or does Symantec know more than the cops?
is not so much what the identity is "worth", but rather how easy it is to steal. If your identity is going for say, $6 "retail", then it must have been very easy to steal for them to sell it and turn a buck at that price, especially considering the additional business risk. Hey that's lunch at McDonalds.
The reality is probably placing greater value on the actual identity and the money that can be scammed from it, it's just that there are so many identity thieves out there and it's so easy to do, that the market for stolen IDs is saturated.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
1. Open lots of bank accounts
2. Sell them
3. Profit
(It'd be funnier if it didn't sound so plausible)
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
what should be done is for banks to work together with law enforcement and create a bunch of fake identities with flags on them that when used it automatically notifies the police and sends all information to the police (photos, fingerprints & whatever else)...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
to money launderers. If someone has an empty, neglected bank account they will probably be much less likely to report suspicious activity on it. A fraudster could use the account to have various payments for spam, cracking etc. put into the bank account, then he could make an ATM card linked to that account and draw the money without ever having to use his own name or even go through the trouble of creating a fake identity.
Monstar L
Your Identity Is Worth Less Than $15
(checks bank balance...)
Yeah, that's about right...*sigh*...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I don't know why it took y'all so long to figure that out. I've known for years that my identity is worth roughly $1.50
My family is full of Nutts, especially Uncle Dick.
1) Create bank account with $1 in it.
2) Sell account number for $10-$1000
3) Profit!
Check out page 3 of the executive summary. In Jan-Jun of 07, they found that 89% of web vulnerabilities were in ActiveX plugins in IE. 1% of vulnerabilities were in Mozilla extensions.
I think we have a clear winner here...
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
My bank account, however, is another matter; nothing gained nothing lost
If your bank account can clear a 6-figure check, then the ability to access that money must be worth more than 1k, right?
stuff |
Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something,
nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to
thousands:
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of about 15 bucks.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
2. Sell account information.
3. Close bank account.
Repeat.
to me, anyway. It would be worth risking jail on murder charges, if I ever somehow met the person who stole my identity, wrecked my credit score, etc.
I wouldn't pay more than a buck and half for my identity.
No one with a financial brain keeps any substantial amount of money in bank accounts.
Any emergency savings you have should be held in money market accounts or short / medium term GICs.
Smart people let their money work for them.
I have an OK job, few debits, and no kids - and I *NEVER* have more than $100 cash in my bank account at any time. I pay for everything with credit card to accumulate points and/or cash back, and pay it in full every month, and the surplus goes into retirement funds and money market accounts.
Keeping money in bank accounts is foolishness.
Why aren't we using several gpg keys for everything?
Gpg to sign into email
Gpg to log into computer
etc? beats the shit out of many of the alternatives...
And shit like Pidgin plain text passwords piss me off to no end, you just know something is going to harvest those..
Isn't the whole problem of "identity theft" that it gives the thief access to your e-mail passwords and bank account information? If not, what's the point of identity theft?
"Hi, I'm Mark."
"No you're not."
"Damn. That was a wasted dollar..."
I wonder what to combination on my luggage is worth.
- President "Anonymous Coward" Skroob
[Symantec has] " done more to reduce internet security than most, with bloated, unusable virus checkers..."
Whenever I encounter a computer with Symantec software installed, I uninstall it before doing anything else. My experience with Symantec is that the company's software is VERY buggy.
"Furthermore, there is a pretty obvious marketing angle to all of this."
Having insecurity is profitable for Microsoft, anti-malware software companies, and weapons investors like Cheney and Bush. It's a simple business model:
1) Do evil.
2) Profit!
What'd be the source for the price list?
Are those guys into this market?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
..because banks will let you overdraw by ridiculous amounts as long as they expect that you'll pay them back in full, plus overdraft fees. I've had someone get ahold of my check card number and charge a $1600 trip to Peru on it with $600 in the account, and the bank didn't bat an eye.
When apparently you can just dumpster dive behind your local bank to get all the bank accounts you would ever need?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
That your identity can be used to open new accounts (e.g. credit cards) in your name.
"With those prices, I wonder how often they pay more for the bank account than is actually in it? "
It's not just the funds the fraudsters are after... They are after 3 things:
1) Once you have a bank account, you capacity in the laundering pipeline. With the $10,000 detection threshholds, and the other AML (anti-money laundering) requirements, it takes a lot more bank Xfers to multiple parallel accounts to move money between the point of fraud, to the point of safe harbor. ACH-IN.... ACH-OUT. These are often 'mule' accounts to allow a network of smaller transfers that allow a larger aggregate money movement. Since I have 30-90 days before you notice all these $1-9000 xfers going in and out of your account... I need to constantly get new bank accounts to keep my laundering pipeline at full 'bandwidth.' If I'm lucky, I can pull a change of (email) address on you, so I can completely control the account for a small period of time (NOTE: address change just got 'red flagged' by the US FACT act of 2003... so in addition to Patriot Act reviews at account opening... address changes will (mandatory by all financial institutions by Nov 2008) be audited by regulators to verify the organization did due diligence to check for fraudulent activity).
2) Having a Bank Account makes opening a PayPal, a credit card, a stock trading or another bank account all the easier. All of these are much more lucrative, and they can leverage funds (margin, credit) , and if I open them, there is much less chance of detection by you (since I completely control the contact information). This is classic identity theft ("Officer, I don't have a bank account in the Outer Antilles!")
3) if we get lucky, you got cash... which we'll use in a leverage scam (open a stock account, and seed a pumpNdump).
At those prices maybe I can finally afford to upgrade mine!
how do you find sellers? I want to sell my bank account info fro $1000.
I imagine the accounts very rarely have a higher balance than the cost of obtaining them. Their value as a mechanism for money laundering, however, far outweighs the loss due to the actual account balance.
If you know someone (hell, anyone) who pays this kinda ca$h, please let me know. With my own domain I can create email addresses indefintely, and at $30 each it's literally printing money.
Now, of course if the reality was that spammers pay a tiny fraction of a cent per address then it's less worth my while (but could still be worth knocking together a script for).
Which option strikes you as most likely? Yes, thought so.
In similar news, my password is worth money too? Really? My password is "chocolate" - that'll be another couple of $$ please (feel free to sell it on yourself, too).
Now, I'll just sit back and wait for all the SPAM^H^H^H^Hmoney to start rolling in. Hmmmm, I think I just burned out my irony circuits.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Although, you'll likely be able to catch the bottom feeding crooks this way, you know the ones we like to watch on "World's Dumbest Criminals". Which of course the rest of the criminal world will be very thankful to you for your suggestion, there should be some healthy profit in it: 1) no money stream, 2) less dumb criminals on the street - saving the real criminals from having to take them out and waste good money on a bullet.
Maybe, just maybe, identity theft isn't the huge problem it's cracked up to be?
I am trolling
(Sorry to be sensible.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I'm guessing that a single identity really is not that easy to profit from.
One issue is culling the identities that are potentially profitable from a large catch of identities of people with no money and low credit limits and high levels of paranoia.
Another is possibly using several identities to enhance the profitability of attacking one, think sock puppet.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Now that the US government as gone amok, it is not such a bad condition to be able to buy a new identity for $20. Say that you have signed a petition or participated in an anti-war action. You get arrested in a sweep and fined $100 for whatever the charge is that your local police use against demonstrators.
But it doesn't end there. Chances are that some flagwaving dickhead fascist in 'Homeland Security' puts your name on a terrorist-do-not-fly list. It will stay there forever along with a million other people who have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. You can't ever get your name off the list. And for the next fifty years, every traffic ticket, overdue library book, or downloaded song that might put you into the focus of the local dickhead squad pretending to be police will get you thrown into prison until your loyality to the corporate establishment can be reaffirmed. Which entails a $200 processing fee paid in cash to people who are doing the determination of the level of your threat to society. It gets old, and very expensive, very quickly.
So the ability to purchase a new 'clean' identity inexpensively becomes attractive since it allows you to get on with your daily life with the least amount of extortion from the authorities. Whether or not the new identity actually refers to a real person is irrelevant if you are not using this identity for financial fraudulent criminal activity.
Now as a Slashdot technogeek, you have come to believe that none of this applies to you. But since the people who are doing these shakedowns are primarily in it for the money, and, since, as technologists, YOU will be the ones in the future with the 'disposable income', then you will be finding that, yes, it does apply to you. Even though you didn't sign any petitions or go to any anti-war demonstrations in college.
This is the way that the world works once you venture outside your MUD. Perhaps you should incorporate some of these principles into your MUDs so that they won't come as such a shock when you exit them.
Thank you
How does Symantec know how much bank account information is worth, and how much identities are worth, unless they are actively buying/selling them, or at least know people who are?
And if they know people that are, why the HELL aren't they arresting these people?!
Symantec: We estimate your bank account is worth $50.
You: How do you know this?
Symantec: Uhhh...a guy we know told us.
You: And have you arrested this guy?
Symantec: Uhhh...
"Know but never fear the consequences of your actions."
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
All the more reason to put a freeze on all of 3B reporting agencies. Since Nov 1 2007, everyone is entitled to it.
It cost $10 for each credit reporting agency and well worth it. Unlike LifeLock which only puts a fraud alert on your credit reports every 90 days (you could do this yourself for free), a freeze is exactly that. No accounts can be opened without a pin number given to you by the one of the 3 Bs. Each agency is different, some require 3 days to thaw your report, while others allow you to specify which creditors you want to allow and for how long.
One benefit is when car shopping you don't have the pressure from the sales people, it is very easy to walk out the dealership once they try to look up your credit score. They know they will not be selling you a car tonight, that you will have to come back later with a pin.
-- Apu Nahassapeemapetilan, "Much Apu About Nothing"
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Who cares? It is all imaginary property anyway. Even the article's submitter does not believe in it...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on the crux of your argument. Yes, a lot of people are living pay cheque to pay cheque, but that's because in most cases they're attempting to live beyond their means and they're ignorant of the state of their own financial affairs.
I've spoken with hundreds of people in financial crisis and the number of people who understand how to save and/or understand how their credit score is calculated and how their actions affect it is appallingly low.
For what it's worth, my means include automatic savings vessels that come off of each and every pay cheque before I even get a chance to touch it. The money I have to pay my bills and for entertainment comes after. No exceptions. I never use my credit cards for luxury purchases unless I have the money on hand in a liquid form to pay for them immediately. I only do it this way to collect reward points and use my credit card company's money interest free for a couple weeks. My credit cards are short term, daily expense tools only and are paid in full every two weeks on pay day. Period, again, no exceptions.
I don't use credit cards or lines of credit for solutions to short term problems, preferring instead to use my savings and/or investments when the need arises. Also, I've never in the past, nor will I ever in the future use one of those short term credit / cheque cashing establishments. I will not pay a penalty on my hard-earned money just for the privilege of holding it my hands. For the sake of this discussion, we'll just call that "Stupid Tax".
Why do you think all these scammy payday-loan sharks keep multiplying like tribbles ? Do you really think people enjoy getting screwed with 60% interest ?People don't know any better and use these sources because they don't understand that there are better ways. How many people are living in homes they can't afford? Why? Why can't they rent an apartment or even a room? My grandparents raised my father and uncle in a one room (bachelor) apartment for years. They paid off their home in 5. They've bought every single car they've ever owned with cash. Why do people need 2-3 bedroom houses for themselves nowadays? Why do people need brand-new cars? High-end consumer electronics? How many people do you know living hand to mouth who have PlayStation 3's connected to flat panel televisions and surround sound systems? How many of these people have a savings plan in place? RRSPs/IRAs? I have quite a few friends and family members in these situations and I can find several ways they could easily reduce their spending and start saving but they're too proud or stubborn to do so. "I have equity in my home! Why would I give it up?" My standard answer to that is "So you have the pride of selling it before the bank takes it away from you."
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
When I read about this, particularly the $200 for a bank account, I thought about how they pay and realized they probably stole the money for the payment too. It becomes a self-sustaining criminal enterprise. If you're paying a criminal that specializes in ID fraud do you write them a personal cheque or have then charge your credit card?
Just out of curiosity, what counts as a full identity, cause with the right details a potential fraudster could use an onlin line bank(paperless billing bank) and the details to take out a loan or something, then just launder that money away.
also questions to anyone with actual knowledge of the way the market:-
where do they buy and sell them (sites) to check the prices for ourselves
how do they transfer money between each other
and how do they launder they money the take from accounts
finally, would it be possible to launder money with SL, basiclly, cause i hear that when you buy or sell money it shows up as a transfer with linden labs. it wouldnt be hard to make an account linked to a RL bank, then buy L$, transfer ingame and sell for real $.
Checks account balance... Sounds a bit pricey for what's in my accounts :).
This suggests that banks could make some money on the side by creating thousands of dummy accounts and selling them to phishers. Whenever someone tries to access one of the accounts, trace 'em.
-deane
Go ahead, Steal my identity. After numerous ex-wives and girlfriends latch on to you for alimony and child support, you'll pay me to take it back.
Have gnu, will travel.
And if that money transfer automation messes up just one, even if it's no fault of your own, the fees that you will be charged by the bank will wipe out a lot of your investment gains.
I beleive that bills that are returned for NSF (non-sufficient funds) are charged about $34 for each. Let's see
No thanks, I'll pass on the sweep account. I'll just over-fund my checking account and give up some investment income.
> I realize that living at home with your parents and not having to pay for rent, utilities, food, and clothes may allow you to skate by with a very low monthly balance, but the vast majority of people who work for a living have to have the cash on hand (in their checking account, anyway) to pay for all these necessities.
:)
Actually, much of my money does, in fact, go to paying for such things. While my balance isn't particularly low, either, that's because I have a job. A good job that I'm good at, giving me tons of free time to post to Slashdot from work. It's not a good thing when a systems administrator has too much work, after all.
There are more than a few who live off their paycheck. It just happens that I'm not one of them.
> But I don't suppose someone whose name is "I don't believe in imaginary property" would have a very solid grasp of the real world.
Perhaps, but doubtless more than someone named BadAnalogyGuy
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property