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.
