Cyber-crooks are stealing your personal secrets

Robert Powell looks at how technological advances are fuelling a black-market of hi-tech criminals.

It’s undeniable that the internet has made many people’s lives a lot easier – not least of all, the lives of thieves.

Yes, we can now be cyber-mugged at anytime, by anyone, from any location. And it’s not just our credit card numbers and bank account records that these online-crooks are after; our personal details are now just as valuable.

Experts claim that a multi-million pound black market in personal details has emerged and is leaving consumers exposed to spammers, bogus marketers and fraudsters.

Let’s take a closer look...

Record market

As I reported in How your phone spies on you, the market for personal information is a big one. After all, if you know what a person wants to buy then the selling part becomes a whole lot easier.

But there’s a fine line between efficient marketing and fraudulent spying – and the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) believes a number of companies have crossed it. These companies – known as ‘lead generation firms’ – will illegally trick you into handing over your personal details before selling them off to the highest bidder.

The Holy Grail for these fraudulent companies is any personal information showing that you’re in debt. This information can be worth up to £1,000 and is sold off to debt-management firms who will then contact you offering their services.

Many companies are so eager to get their hands on this information they will phone and text numbers at random and state that they are calling from the government or another financial firm in the hope of getting through to someone in debt.

Other companies will use online phishing scams similar to the practices we reported on in This scam secretly steals your bank details or even set up fake comparison websites in order to steal your details.

The old ‘unsubscribe’ trick is another way that spammers can figure out if an e-mail address or phone number is active as well as identifying that they’ve reached a particularly gullible person. Just last week I received a text from a mysterious insurance firm offering me reduced cover. The text advised me to reply with UNSUBSCRIBE if I wanted to stop receiving messages like these.

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Now, I have to admit I’d reached the first B of UNSUBSCRIBE when alarm bells began to ring and I realised that this text was probably from a spammer. Instead, I deleted the text and haven’t heard from the ‘insurance company’ since!

Cyber-crime industry

Just as personal information has turned into a lucrative money-making opportunity for lead-generating firms, general cyber-fraud is now big business for the 21st century criminal. In fact, the demand for digital crow bars and online swag bags has grown so fast that a whole underground, illegal industry made up of hackers selling services and products to cyber-criminals has emerged.

The American virus researchers PandaLabs recently published a report detailing how the cyber-crime black market has diversified its business model in recent years. The results point to a large online industry that exists in the underground chat rooms and secretive forums of the internet selling everything from credit card details to fake ATM machines.

By posing as cyber-criminals PandaLabs were able to put a price on various cyber-fraud products and services, here are a few of them:

Source: PandaLabs

As you can see, cyber-thieves can now order fake credit cards and ATMs and even have illegally paid for goods shipped to a dummy address, so as to evade the authorities. Bogus web-developers are now also offering to design websites for fraudsters to use in phishing and tab napping scams as well as renting out software for sending spam to millions of e-mail addresses at a time.

The nature of the internet means that these hackers can anonymously sell from, and to any location across the globe. They effectively make the internet their office and use forums and chatrooms as their global shop windows.

How to avoid online fraud

Avoiding many cyber-scams usually just involves applying a bit of common sense. Don’t input personal data into unknown websites or sites linked from e-mails, make sure you have a fully up-to-date virus checker installed, delete any suspicious e-mails and never open attachments sent from an unknown source.

To avoid tab napping always make sure you check the website URL is secure and correct before inputting any login details and avoid leaving any internet tabs open which require you to input login details, use new internet windows instead.

For some further tips on avoiding cyber-fraud read Eight ways to spot a phishing scam and New online threat that will wreck your Christmas. There are also some great tips and advice that lovemoney.com readers have left in the comments sections of these articles. I particularly like Vern54’s advice to keep a piece of paper in your wallet with several fake PIN numbers written on it so that if your wallet is stolen and the thief tries the codes in an ATM all the cards will be retained.

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