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Your Identity Is Worth Less Than $15
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Apr 09, 2008 07:12 AM
from the less-than-your-fillings dept.
from the less-than-your-fillings dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "One of the more interesting tidbits in Symantec's Global Internet Threat Report (PDF, 105 pages) is the price sheet, which suggests that someone's 'full identity' is worth in the range of $1-$15. Your email password goes for $4-$30 and your bank account might fetch $10-$1000. With those prices, I wonder how often they pay more for the bank account than is actually in it? There's also an executive summary (PDF, 36 pages)."
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Submission: Your Identity is Worth Less Than $15 by Anonymous Coward
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No way! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
These data are about what you saved in the past, and have in the present.
WRT entitlements at least, politicians are
If only the 10th Amendment still had any teeth.
Re:I want to sell mine (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
British ID card system (Score:5, Funny)
So when the British government introduce their fantastic, shiney, new, biometric, uhackable ID card system, can we get them to buy our ID off us?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And that got me thinking further, if they're needed for medical care, what happens to people who do cut their fingers?
Hmmm.
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http://www.fujitsu.com/global/casestudies/WWW2_casestudy_BTM.html [fujitsu.com]
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-- PS. Don't forget to check out the new season of the Sarah Connor Chronicles th
Who would trust Symantec (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who would trust Symantec (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Who would trust Symantec (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Re:Who would trust Symantec (Score:5, Informative)
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Utilities [wikipedia.org]
"The Norton Utilities releases were collections of software utilities. Peter Norton published the first version for DOS, The Norton Utilities, Release 1, ca 1981. Release 2 came out several years later, subsequent to the first hard drives for the IBM PC line. Peter Norton's company was sold to Symantec in 1990. However his name remains as a "brand" for Symantec's range of utility and security software for home users."
Parent
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Simple business model (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I encounter a computer with Symantec software installed, I uninstall it before doing anything else. My experience with Symantec is that the company's software is VERY buggy.
"Furthermore, there is a pretty obvious marketing angle to all of this."
Having insecurity is profitable for Microsoft, anti-malware software companies, and weapons investors like Cheney and Bush. It's a simple business model:
1) Do evil.
2) Profit!
Parent
You're kidding, right? (Score:5, Funny)
How much do you assume the average person has in their bank accounts? I realize that living at home with your parents and not having to pay for rent, utilities, food, and clothes may allow you to skate by with a very low monthly balance, but the vast majority of people who work for a living have to have the cash on hand (in their checking account, anyway) to pay for all these necessities.
But I don't suppose someone whose name is "I don't believe in imaginary property" would have a very solid grasp of the real world.
Re:You're kidding, right? (Score:4, Interesting)
But as someone else mentioned, they probably want them for laundering rather than emptying.
Parent
Re:You're kidding, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite a few people have bank balances that hover between the grand total of their most recent paycheck and $0. Or don't they count?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How much money do you have in your (checking+savings) bank accounts?
1. 12 paychecks
Re:You're kidding, right? (Score:5, Interesting)
How much money do you have in your (checking+savings) bank accounts?
1. Less than 1 paychecks
2. 1-2 paychecks
3. 3-5 paychecks
4. 6-12 paychecks
5. more than 12 paychecks
6. I'm an edge case, you insensitive clod.
Parent
Why would you? (Score:2)
Any emergency savings you have should be held in money market accounts or short / medium term GICs.
Smart people let their money work for them.
I have an OK job, few debits, and no kids - and I *NEVER* have more than $100 cash in my bank account at any time. I pay for everything with credit card to accumulate points and/or cash back, and pay it in full every month, and the surplus goes into retirement funds and money market a
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My extra money goes into a 4% savings account. I can get it any time with 24 hours notice. Yeah, yeah, I can get 10% on the stock market. Sounds great, until it crashes - again or you get caught in a bad trade.
I tend to keep about a thousand in my chequing account. (Which works out to
Re:Why would you? (Score:5, Informative)
You can have sweep accounts set up to automatically move money back-and-forth to maintain a reasonable balance in your checking, so that you always have enough to pay bills. Of course a money market (or similar) will get a better return than a bank account, but won't perform as well as longer-term investments (e.g. GIC), so funds not needed on a short-term basis should still be invested elsewhere.
As the grandparent post said, however, keeping substantial sums in a standard bank account amounts to wasting money.
Parent
Re:You're kidding, right? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:You're kidding, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Where did the data come from? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm curious as to where this data came from. Is it public record from court cases? Or does Symantec know more than the cops?
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what this really speaks for (Score:2)
The reality is probably placing greater value on the actual identity and the money that can be scammed from it, it's just that there are so many identity thieves out there and it's so easy to do, that the
Work from Home... (Score:4, Funny)
2. Sell them
3. Profit
(It'd be funnier if it didn't sound so plausible)
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Could be fraud against those wanting to steal from it... but IANAL.
honeypot identities (Score:5, Interesting)
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Empty, neglected bank accounts are worth a lot (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty accurate... (Score:5, Funny)
(checks bank balance...)
Yeah, that's about right...*sigh*...
IE vs. Firefox statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we have a clear winner here...
My identitiy is priceless (Score:3, Insightful)
My bank account, however, is another matter; nothing gained nothing lost
Some people's identities are worth more... (Score:3, Insightful)
Othello, 2008 (Score:5, Funny)
Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something,
nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to
thousands:
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of about 15 bucks.
I smell profit ! (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Sell account information.
3. Close bank account.
Repeat.
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cash a lot of dodgey cheques/ use for money laundering/ donate to republicans
withdraw money
profit
Bank Account? (Score:2)
What'd be the source for the price list? (Score:2)
Are those guys into this market?
Why buy bamk account information.... (Score:4, Informative)
Bank accounts provide bandwidth, not cash. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just the funds the fraudsters are after... They are after 3 things:
1) Once you have a bank account, you capacity in the laundering pipeline. With the $10,000 detection threshholds, and the other AML (anti-money laundering) requirements, it takes a lot more bank Xfers to multiple parallel accounts to move money between the point of fraud, to the point of safe harbor. ACH-IN.... ACH-OUT. These are often 'mule' accounts to allow a network of smaller transfers that allow a larger aggregate money movement. Since I have 30-90 days before you notice all these $1-9000 xfers going in and out of your account... I need to constantly get new bank accounts to keep my laundering pipeline at full 'bandwidth.' If I'm lucky, I can pull a change of (email) address on you, so I can completely control the account for a small period of time (NOTE: address change just got 'red flagged' by the US FACT act of 2003... so in addition to Patriot Act reviews at account opening... address changes will (mandatory by all financial institutions by Nov 2008) be audited by regulators to verify the organization did due diligence to check for fraudulent activity).
2) Having a Bank Account makes opening a PayPal, a credit card, a stock trading or another bank account all the easier. All of these are much more lucrative, and they can leverage funds (margin, credit) , and if I open them, there is much less chance of detection by you (since I completely control the contact information). This is classic identity theft ("Officer, I don't have a bank account in the Outer Antilles!")
3) if we get lucky, you got cash... which we'll use in a leverage scam (open a stock account, and seed a pumpNdump).
$1-$15 for a full identity? (Score:2)
At those prices maybe I can finally afford to upgrade mine!
This is great news, where do I sign up? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you know someone (hell, anyone) who pays this kinda ca$h, please let me know. With my own domain I can create email addresses indefintely, and at $30 each it's literally printing money.
Now, of course if the reality was that spammers pay a tiny fraction of a cent per address then it's less worth my while (but could still be worth knocking together a script for).
Which option strikes you as most likely? Yes, thought so.
In similar news, my password is worth money too? Really? My password is "chocolate" - that'll be another couple of $$ please (feel free to sell it on yourself, too).
Now, I'll just sit back and wait for all the SPAM^H^H^H^Hmoney to start rolling in. Hmmmm, I think I just burned out my irony circuits.