This is how much your stolen credit card is worth on the Dark Web
Scammers are not picky about what they steal from you. Whether your social media logins or banking details, they can sell them on the Dark Web for a tidy profit.
But while social media details can be easy for thieves to scrape, it turns out that credit card information is relatively straightforward to come by. Moreover, credit card cloning and theft are so rampant that there are 1.6 million card numbers for sale on the Dark Web.
Keep reading for details on this growing problem and ways to protect your finances.
Here’s the backstory
How much do you think a stolen credit card sells for on the Dark Web? According to NordVPN, the average cost is only $10, and most come from U.S. citizens. Analyzing work from independent researchers, they released a report detailing the extent of the criminal activity.
The most popular cards for criminals are Visa debit cards, followed by Mastercard and American Express. Because credit cards have some form of purchase or fraud insurance from the bank, the theft of debit card details is more devastating to the victims.
The risk also increases if you have more than one card, which most Americans do. If you live in California, Florida or Texas, you must be extra cautious. According to the report, criminals stole almost 89,000 cards in California. Florida isn’t much better with 82,000 cases and Texas with 74,000 cases.
The state with the lowest amount of payment cards stolen is Rhode Island. That could be due to the low population. But how do criminals get ahold of the card details? Well, there are two methods: database breaches and brute-force hacking.
What you can do about it
Brute-force hacking is essentially a complex way of guessing the sequence of numbers on the card. Unfortunately, most people aren’t aware that the numbers follow an international pattern.
The first one or two numbers indicate the card type, like Visa or Mastercard. The following four numbers indicate the issuing authority. And the seventh to 15th number represents your account number, and the last digit is to verify the card’s authenticity.
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