How Much Is Your Online Identity Worth? 199
itwbennett writes "Answer a few questions about your personal Internet use, and a new tool from Symantec will calculate your net worth on the black market. You'll get three results: how much your online assets are worth, how much your online identity would sell for on the black market, and your risk of becoming a victim of identity theft. The tool is intended to raise consumer awareness about cybercrime, said Marian Merritt, Internet security advocate for Symantec. It's unlikely the average consumer would read an Internet Security Threat Report, she added, but a simply illustrated example might get the same point across. 'It's shocking how little value criminals place on your credit card,' she said."
Is it $0.43 or $100? (Score:4, Informative)
...you guessed that a cybercriminal could buy you for $1.00. In the underground economy, you're really worth about $100.00. And that's on a good day. Your entire digital life could go on the auction block for as little as $0.43...
So is my information worth $100.00 or is it worth $0.43? It doesn't seem like they have a clue, but then this is Symantec we are talking about, so I guess we already knew that.
Re:This tool is intended... (Score:5, Informative)
Your BS meter appears to be functioning correctly.
Over eleven years ago (1998), the UN reported that "illegal trade in narcotics has a captive market of about 190 million addicts and users worldwide, and is estimated to be worth more than 400 billion dollars a year". (source [hartford-hwp.com])
"No way" by one or two orders of magnitude, I'd say.
Re:This tool is intended... (Score:5, Informative)
This idiocy seems to trace back to a woman who once worked for the Treasury Department and made this claim to a Reuters correspondent at a conference in Riyadh in 2005.
http://threatchaos.com/2009/03/evolution-of-the-cyber-crime-exceeds-drug-trade-meme/ [threatchaos.com]
http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=480 [zdnet.com]
In its PR release [marketwire.com], Symantec justifies this claim with a footnote to "Source: US Department of Treasury."
Re:For some reason I do not trust.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What's it doing during the download? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This tool is intended... (Score:4, Informative)
I have two different opinions on this. Yeah, it would be great if Symantec would sell it's top-tier security products to the public at affordable prices. I've only heard good things about it's enterprise software. The far less effective "solutions" that they sell to John Q. Public helps to ensure that malware writers can find a way to bypass security.
BUT - the real question should be, "When is Microsoft going to REPAIR THEIR BROKEN SECURITY MODEL?"
Yes, security is getting better with MS products. But, everything comes back to the fact that MS is designed more for convenience than for security.
Why am I even bothering, though? If people take security seriously, they generally move to a unix-like system. If they don't take security as seriously as they take marketability and convenience, they stay with Windows. And, the world suffers losses to criminals all day, every day.
Phhht. The fact is, few people really care if their identity is stolen. Their actions prove it.
Re:This tool is intended... (Score:1, Informative)
... but that quote reeks of FUD.
It's not even FUD, it's "shit someone made up".