Relief Pitcher

Booming market in stolen details; SKIMMING FALLOUT

0 Comments | Dominion Post; Wellington, New Zealand, Apr 17, 2009 | by WATT Emily

CREDIT CARD theft is now so commonplace that stolen card information is being sold on the black market for as little as 10 cents, an international report says.

Thieves were also peddling stolen bank account details, email accounts, and even full identities, the report, by computer security company Symantec, found.

Credit cards were the most widely advertised for sale because they were easy to steal and “cash up”. Crooks could buy the card information in bulk lots of 5000.

Experts say thousands of New Zealanders have their card details stolen each year, either by thieves hacking into online shopping websites, when they travel overseas, or as victims of skimming, where electronic card readers are installed on ATM machines.

Terry Mortensen, Westpac Bank head of fraud and security services, said fraud was becoming more complicated and banks worked fulltime to keep up with the scams.

Where once stolen cards used to be used fairly quickly – making it easy to detect and cancel the card – overseas fraudsters now bought the card details in bulk and stockpiled them for later use, making it difficult to detect where or when the information was stolen.

“To say it’s organised is probably the understatement of the year,” he said.

The information often ended up back in the country, transferred on to blank cards with a magnetic strip, or even a phone card, which could be used in ATM machines.

Some New Zealand banks, including Westpac, were so concerned about the card skimming overseas they had begun cancelling and replacing cards when travellers returned, to prevent fraud.

Mr Mortensen said banks were shouldering the costs of the fraud and it was very difficult to persuade international police to do something about it.

“It’s costing banks tens of millions of dollars in Australia and New Zealand alone.”

The Symantec report, compiled by monitoring nearly 250,000 online sensors and setting up more than 2.5 million decoy email accounts, said credit cards for sale on the black market included credit card numbers and expiry dates. More detailed information, including the name of a card holder, billing address, phone number and pin could sell for NZ$52.

Thieves were also selling bank account details, popular because they do not have the credit limit of credit cards. Researchers found one $400,000 bank account advertised for sale for $600. Email addresses and log-ons were also increasingly offered for sale
bulk email marketing