Value of stolen identities?

I found this article about the "internet value" of stolen personal data. This is not the potential loss aspect as this obviously varies enormously from individual to individual.

It is about the "street value" at which criminals trade this information:

http://www.snpx.com/cgi-bin/news55.c...6842874?-11434

And TJMAXX lost 46 million records................?:eek:

I thought that this might be of interest and a possible help in persuading users to be more careful. I get a lot who would say "my data isn't worth anything", well my point is that it has an intrinsic street value.

The data thieves don't know you are not that interesting, and don't care, as they are getting paid on quantity not quality, and they wouldn't know until they had stolen it anyway?

Very true. And, what you think of as having value is much different to those that would buy this information. Many of us think that we don't have much of value in these banks but the things that can be purchased in our names and the credit that can be attained is more than most would think.

Actually, you would be suprised how much these things sell for. I am not one myself but I have been in some carder forums recently and have seen people selling COBs - full stolen identity for as little as 10$ each, and some selling credit card details ( with cvv number, which puts price up slightly) for as low as 1-2$.However, you are right in how much money they can extract from the cc's, one boasted on the forum that he could extract $500 from 1 european card in 20 hours...