If you have ever had your credit card stolen, your credit card number stolen, your credit card number hacked, or any other types of credit card fraud happen to you then you no doubt think it’s always great when credit card hackers like Albert Gonzalez do serious jail time or when you find out that your credit card fraud protection has limited your liability.
However, have you ever wondered how exactly credit card hackers planned to profit from your stolen credit card number?
Yes, they could attempt to run up a bunch of online charges onto your credit card before you catch on but many hackers steal credit card numbers not to use them directly but rather with the intention of selling credit card numbers to other criminals who then hatch a scheme of some kind to get away with as much money as possible.
Black Market Stolen Credit Card Rates
Symantec recently published the Symantec Global Internet Security Threat Report that details some of the going rates on the black market for stolen credit cards, stolen bank account numbers, stolen email passwords, etc. Here is a listing:
- Stolen Credit Card Numbers: $0.40 to $20
- Stolen Online Bank Account Log In Information (User Name, Password, etc.): $10 to $1,000 depending on the amount of funds in the account
- Stolen Online Auction Site Log In Information (i.e. eBay): $1 to $8
- Stolen Email Passwords (i.e. Sarah Palin): $4 to $30
Protecting Yourself from Credit Card Fraud
So, how can you protect yourself from credit card fraud? Well, one of the great things about using a credit card as opposed to a debit card is that pretty much all credit cards have built in fraud protection that limits your liability while debit cards may or may not.
Granted, you could have all of the charges from your stolen credit card refunded but still end up getting some errors on your credit report and dinging your credit score. One way to protect yourself is to sign up for a credit report monitoring service like CreditReport.com that alerts you if there are key changes to your credit report.
What other things do YOU do to safeguard yourself against stolen credit cards and other forms of credit card fraud?
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Wow. I’m kind of surprised that email accounts sell for more than credit card numbers, but it makes sense when you think about it. An email account could contain all sorts of valuable information and may actually contain passwords to multiple credit cards and accounts. Another reason to be careful and on guard.
Yup, always smart to be on guard. I use a password storage service (passpack.com) and I also use a credit report monitoring service that alerts me to any changes to my credit report (http://www.creditcardchaser.com/free-credit-report/)