Cost of Stolen Data Drops as Supply Grows – Burglary Now Passé
Credit card numbers were selling for as little as 40 cents each and access to bank accounts was going for $10 in the second half of 2007, according to the latest twice-yearly Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec, which you may download here.
As highlighted in our earlier article, Big Business Big Brother, data breaches now take place on a nearly daily basis. Last month, my grocery store leaked my credit card information; this month my ISP allowed access to another site’s domain record. While I’d rather be funny than alarmist, the falling price for stolen data suggests that access to your personal information is so easy, it’s becoming a commodity. That’s not funny.
However, also today, The New York Times reports that, nationally, burglary is down by 50% from 1980 figures. Isn’t breaking and entering simply the 20th-century analogue to identity theft? It seems criminals are opting for a less physically risky version of the same crime. What do you think?
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