Most of the internet users are familiar that there is nothing private in the world of the digital world, once you are on internet everything is sold. The personal information is one of the most commonly sold data on the internet, the only question is where are these things sold and at what price? According to a recent research by Flashpoint, cybercrimes have different markets for various illegal stuff and to get illegal things from these platforms the users must be familiar with what they want. The prices on these platforms are adjusted according to the supply and demand system which means just like any other legal economy the higher the demand for specific information or product is; the more price is charged.
Most of the times, to buy personal information, dark web markets are considered the best stop. The buyer can get anything that can be monetized in any way possible. the main purpose of buying personal information is mainly to link information for financial gains and even for bank frauds. In most cases, the buyers ask for personal information including the payment card data, credentials of users, access to the compromised system, forged documents of any type that can help, personally-identifiable information and even compromised services that can help them with financial gains.
Most of the dark web forums and underground websites providing the data are dormant (or are not publicly available) because of law enforcement agencies crackdown against them. However, the study conducted can highlight how much your data is (still) worth to cyber criminals.
According to the data that was stolen and sold out later through these websites, the full stack of information that can help the person to steal the identity of a US citizen was sold for 4 dollars to 10 dollars. Within this full-stack information of a person, there is the name of the person, his/her social security number, date of birth and account details. This whole data package is known as ‘fullz’, on average the price is relatively low but it can go as high as 65 dollars if there are financial information and credit score added to the information stack. With the increase in the credit score the price of the ‘fullz’ also increase which means, if the person does not have too much of a bank balance his/her ‘fullz’ can be sold at a low price range. In case the person has a credit score of 700, his/her information package will be sold at 40$. Apart from the credit score, the price of the ‘fullz’ also depends on the citizenship of the individual because of the economic conditions of that country.
When ranked according to the type of personal information and documents, the study highlights that official documentation including the passport of the person is sold very expensively. These documents include the digital scans, the templates as well as the physical documents that the buyer can get with the relevant information. From all the three, the physical document, the actual passport is the most expensive and it also comes with a driving license document. According to the process in 2017, these documents were sold between 2,890 dollars to 5,000 dollars per piece. Apart from the physical documents, templates are also sold individually, the experts say that these PSD format based templates are sold at different prices according to the citizenship of the person. For intense, the templates of someone based in the Netherlands are prices at 50 dollars whereas, for someone from European country i.e. France, Germany or Spain are sold at 45 dollars per template. The lowest price is set for the Swedish templates at 5 dollars whereas, American templates fall at 18 dollars just close of Australian and Canadian.
Apart from the official documents, there are also bank logs including direct access to the bank account of the victim and they can easily be found on the underground marketplaces. The price of these bank logs depends on the balance of the account. The report explains that the German bank logs worth $175 will contain a balance of 7000 EUR whereas, the bank log for US worth just 62 dollars might have 5 to 10 thousand dollars in the balance.
Apart from this, payment card data is also sold that can be later cloned for making online purchases, this data is stolen from PoS terminal as well as online transactions.
Most of the times, to buy personal information, dark web markets are considered the best stop. The buyer can get anything that can be monetized in any way possible. the main purpose of buying personal information is mainly to link information for financial gains and even for bank frauds. In most cases, the buyers ask for personal information including the payment card data, credentials of users, access to the compromised system, forged documents of any type that can help, personally-identifiable information and even compromised services that can help them with financial gains.
Most of the dark web forums and underground websites providing the data are dormant (or are not publicly available) because of law enforcement agencies crackdown against them. However, the study conducted can highlight how much your data is (still) worth to cyber criminals.
According to the data that was stolen and sold out later through these websites, the full stack of information that can help the person to steal the identity of a US citizen was sold for 4 dollars to 10 dollars. Within this full-stack information of a person, there is the name of the person, his/her social security number, date of birth and account details. This whole data package is known as ‘fullz’, on average the price is relatively low but it can go as high as 65 dollars if there are financial information and credit score added to the information stack. With the increase in the credit score the price of the ‘fullz’ also increase which means, if the person does not have too much of a bank balance his/her ‘fullz’ can be sold at a low price range. In case the person has a credit score of 700, his/her information package will be sold at 40$. Apart from the credit score, the price of the ‘fullz’ also depends on the citizenship of the individual because of the economic conditions of that country.
When ranked according to the type of personal information and documents, the study highlights that official documentation including the passport of the person is sold very expensively. These documents include the digital scans, the templates as well as the physical documents that the buyer can get with the relevant information. From all the three, the physical document, the actual passport is the most expensive and it also comes with a driving license document. According to the process in 2017, these documents were sold between 2,890 dollars to 5,000 dollars per piece. Apart from the physical documents, templates are also sold individually, the experts say that these PSD format based templates are sold at different prices according to the citizenship of the person. For intense, the templates of someone based in the Netherlands are prices at 50 dollars whereas, for someone from European country i.e. France, Germany or Spain are sold at 45 dollars per template. The lowest price is set for the Swedish templates at 5 dollars whereas, American templates fall at 18 dollars just close of Australian and Canadian.
Apart from the official documents, there are also bank logs including direct access to the bank account of the victim and they can easily be found on the underground marketplaces. The price of these bank logs depends on the balance of the account. The report explains that the German bank logs worth $175 will contain a balance of 7000 EUR whereas, the bank log for US worth just 62 dollars might have 5 to 10 thousand dollars in the balance.
Apart from this, payment card data is also sold that can be later cloned for making online purchases, this data is stolen from PoS terminal as well as online transactions.
"Cybercrime communities continue to thrive and offer products and services that are in demand to threat actors globally. While the development of new and innovative attacks continues among more technically sophisticated threat actors on disparate sources including forums and encrypted communication channels, the pricing of some commodity products and services has remained relatively the same during the past two years.", explained Flashpoint report.Read next: How Much is Your Social Media Data Worth? (infographic)
