November 27, 2008
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News: CC Black Market Product Line.
Concerned credit card holders may want to be apprised of various risk levels for the valuable assets they want to protect. Some items are worth much more to thieves than others and, consequently, they will go to more trouble to steal them. In the first place, credit card information tends to be high in popularity to criminals because it's so easy to spoof people who can't see you. Online credit card purchases continue to be so attractive because merchants have difficulty separating legitimate purchases from fraudulent ones. All of the transactions are handled automatically and the products are shipped out the door before the merchant knows what's going on.
So, of all the inventory on the list, credit card vitals are promoted the heaviest. These account for about 31 percent of this black market's total economy. The package deals offered by the thieves range between $0.10 to $25 for each card, depending on the volume purchased and the value of the sensitive information provided. The charges on these stolen credit cards, when averaged out over the July 2007 to June of 2008 period came to about $350 per card. If all of the stolen cards had been maxed out, the total amount of charges to those stolen cards would reach $5.3 billion.
The most highly prized credit card information and, therefore the most important for card holders to protect, turns out to be the CVV2 number on the back of the cards -- to the right of the signature panel. Other names commonly used in the industry for these three to four-digit codes are ‘CVC2', ‘CID' and ‘PID'. While these only account for 16 percent of inventory they have the highest yield. They account for 16 percent of sales. The reason for the low 16 percent is because they're much harder to acquire and cost more. Guard them well! They make all the difference when it comes to making non-in-person purchases…when the buyer is not physically present at the time of purchase. They sell for seven times as much as cards with no CVV2 included.