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Your Stolen Identity Goes For $20 On the Internet Black Market
HughPickens.com writes: Keith Collins writes at Quartz that the going rate for a stolen identity is about twenty bucks on the internet black market. Collins analyzed hundreds of listings for a full set of someone's personal information—identification number, address, birthdate, etc., known as "fullz" that were put up for sale over the past year, using data collected by Grams, a search engine for the dark web. The listings ranged in price from less than $1 to about $450, converted from bitcoin. The median price for someone's identity was $21.35. The most expensive fullz came from a vendor called "OsamaBinFraudin," and listed a premium identity with a high credit score for $454.05. Listings on the lower end were typically less glamorous and included only the basics, like the victim's name, address, social security number, perhaps a mother's maiden name. Marketplaces on the dark web, not unlike eBay, have feedback systems for vendors ("cheap and good A+"), refund policies (usually stating that refunds are not allowed), and even well-labeled sections. "There is no shortage of hackers willing to do about anything, computer related, for money," writes Elizabeth Clarke. "and they are continually finding ways to monetize personal and business data."
Sadly, I married and took the last name Coward.
My current identity sucks ass.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It makes you wonder how many of these "hackers" are just LifeLock employees or other people in trusted positions who just took the data home with them?
(I remember my first job in healthcare. At 19 - pre-HIPAA - I used to browse the medical records of friends, family and famous people on the hospital network when I was bored and alone at work, and it occurred to me once how easy it would be to just save the "best" ones to a floppy each night.)
>> Are there lists of compromised identities? I'd like to see if I'm on it.
Sure, just post your name, social security number, credit card number and PIN here and we'll look it up.
Maybe you could buy slashdot.
Who ordered that?
Yours must be one of the accounts that goes for $1.40.
Your zeal is misplaced. ID theft wouldn't be an issue if LENDERS WERE NOT LAZY ASSHOLES.
Why should YOU be on the hook for clearing yourself if some LENDER lends "you" money, without actually bothering to really find out it is YOU, and then goes after YOU when it was "you" who actually got the money.
Seems like the lender didn't do due diligence to me! Same thing with credit bureaus, they accept gossip about YOU and repeat it when it was "you", not YOU who actually did the actions.
And somehow YOU are the victim?
Legislation needs to be issued forthwith forbidding ANY lender from putting ANYTHING derogatory in your credit report unless they can PROVE whatever they have a problem with was done by you and no one else. Also, lenders should NOT be able to attempt to collect from a person unless they can prove that self-same person is the person they gave their money to.
ID theft would largely be a thing of the past.
--PM