Multiple Faces Detected
December 15th, 2021To the people who love you, you’re priceless. However, when it comes to identity theft everything has a price tag and – for scammers and hackers – your information is worth a specific amount on the dark web. Identity theft is when your personal, sensitive data is hacked, stolen, or compromised.
While you are living your happy life, scammers get a hold of that data and sell it to others. This can mess up your financial accounts, health records, account log-in, credit score, or even destroy your financial data and records, in ways that take months (or years!) to correct. Find out how much your hacked data and accounts are selling for on the dark web, in dollar signs!
What is the Dark Web
The dark web is not always used for crime. Although the dark web actually refers to a collection of content that is not sorted and categorized by search engines. The information may be reliant on software, special access, and other detailed configurations that require special access. While the dark web can contain a lot of education (or even erroneous) information, it is also full of hackers, stolen data, arms dealings, and organized crime.
The Price Tag for Your Accounts
Most people aren’t aware of how many day-to-day data breaches occur nationwide, but many people did learn about Equifax’s 2017 data breach and the 143 million people it impacted. The final price tag on your data depends on how recently the information was stolen and other factors. For instance, criminals usually buy ‘blocks’ of stolen credit card numbers at a time.
These are the average amounts your data is sold for:
- Driver’s License: $20.00
- Credit Card: $5.00 – $22.00
- Email Address (and Password): $0.70 – $2.50
- Medical Records
- Complete Individual Records: $1k (max)
- Records from a Large Breach: $1.50 – $10.00
- Spotify/ Hulu Accounts: $2.75
- Netflix: $1.00 – $3.00
- PayPal: $1.00 – $2.00
How do Criminals Make a Profit on the Dark Web?
A hacker may hack data and use the information themselves or collect the data and sell it. When they sell it, they are selling multiple hacked accounts at a time, to make a profit. The scammer who buys the data knows that many of the accounts will be useless, but they usually hope to get information that a victim (or company) doesn’t suspect was stolen. For instance, a credit card they can rack up thousands of dollars in stolen purchases with!
Have you checked your credit card statements lately? What about your financial statements with your bank, line for line? Use credit monitoring systems and check your credit score monthly. Scammers and hackers learn information about you through online searches for your name, address, phone number and more. Search Social Catfish and begin to take control of your private, personal data. Social Catfish puts you back in the driver’s seat and speeding away from hacker’s abilities to easily collect your personal information.
