Identity thieves slash prices

According to Symantec, cash-strapped, recession-struck identity thieves are blowing out personal information at deep discounts -- it seems the price of access to your bank account has cratered, sinking to a mere $10:

Cyber crims are even having to resort to legitimate business strategies, like offering volume discounts, in order to keep revenues at an acceptable level, according to a Symantec Internet security report. The latest twice-yearly report, released this week, says that access to bank accounts was now going for as little as $10 in the second half of 2007, and that thieves were increasingly selling stolen credit card numbers in batches of 500 for a total of $200, or 40 cents each [More than mine's worth - Ed]. This is less than half of what they were going for in the first half of 2007.

Buying a person’s whole identity, which includes a credit card number, Social Security number or ID and a person's name, address and date of birth, would only now set you back $100 for 50, so $2 per stolen identity.

Apparently though, some identities are worth more than others. Europeans will be happy (?) to know that their identities are much more coveted and, therefore more expensive (by about 50 per cent) than those of Americans, for instance. Some Euro identities even sell for as much as $30 a piece.

Link

[#1 posted by jordan , April 10, 2008 1:44 PM]

Finding out that you're for sale sucks... finding out that you're on sale sucks even harder.

[#2 posted by techdeviant , April 10, 2008 3:05 PM]

Unfortunately it seems that personal data leaks are so frequent that the stolen credit card market is saturated. Sucks that our bank information is so common now that thieves can't even give it away...

[#3 posted by Caledonian Jim , April 10, 2008 4:36 PM]

In the UK it's not just bank information that goes astray - big government departments have recently lost the records of millions of taxpayers, including details of home addresses and bank accounts .

It seems that fraud or theft are insignificant when compared to official incompetence .

[#4 posted by Axx , April 10, 2008 4:36 PM]

Prices slashed? Well, that does it. Experts say: "BUY"

[#5 posted by Takuan , April 10, 2008 5:07 PM]

Ha! Anyone who buys my identity is in for a surprise

[#6 posted by ericdfields , April 11, 2008 10:38 AM]

Does anybody know what the original price of a bank account or credit card was before the prices were so low they're 'practically GIVING them away'?

I'm thinking they couldn't have been that much more expensive. Say its at a 90% discount. A single bank account should really cost $100. That's still a bargain, because how much time/effort/money does it take to then make successful use of an account without getting caught?

I wonder if this five-alarm sale will actually make the practice more common or less; I'm sure a lot of effort is involved in getting a hold of these numbers, and for $10 bucks is it worth it to the retailer to obtain them in the first place? It'd be interesting to see what a sudden drop in ID theft does to all the people that try to sell (IMHO, worthless) protection against it...