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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)."
...but the vast majority of people who work for a living have to have the cash on hand Ever look at discarded bank slips from ATM's? I have on occasion, and if it is any indication, most people rarely have more than $1000 dollars in their bank accounts. Or are you assuming the average person is a (relatively) high paid professional that doesn't have a mortgage, car, kids, etc? And people who do have any amount of money probably don't keep it in a bank account but in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, treasury bills, etc.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.
"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).
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Utilities
"The Norton Utilities releases were collections of software utilities. Peter Norton published the first version for DOS, The Norton Utilities, Release 1, ca 1981. Release 2 came out several years later, subsequent to the first hard drives for the IBM PC line. Peter Norton's company was sold to Symantec in 1990. However his name remains as a "brand" for Symantec's range of utility and security software for home users."
You set up a sweep account, or manually perform the same action. Basically you take the funds that you want to keep available (for bills, etc.) and invest them in something that is easy to quickly buy/sell without penalty (e.g. money market). Whenever you need cash in your checking account, you transfer it from that investment account. Whenever you have a surplus in your checking, you move it into the investment account immediately, so that it can get a higher interest rate than it would in you checking account.
You can have sweep accounts set up to automatically move money back-and-forth to maintain a reasonable balance in your checking, so that you always have enough to pay bills. Of course a money market (or similar) will get a better return than a bank account, but won't perform as well as longer-term investments (e.g. GIC), so funds not needed on a short-term basis should still be invested elsewhere.
As the grandparent post said, however, keeping substantial sums in a standard bank account amounts to wasting money.