Analysis Reveals How Cheap Your Credit Card Info Might Be on the Dark Web

Having your credit card information stolen might seem like the worst thing to happen in the world because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up result in you losing significant amounts of your money. Several individuals might assume that the value of credit cards might make it so that this type of stolen data would sell for a premium on the dark net which is where most buyers would go to acquire information of this sort.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that your credit card information might just get sold for a lot cheaper than you might initially have been thinking. According to an analysis conducted by Nord VPN where they looked at almost 4.5 million cards from over 140 countries revealed that the average cost of a stolen credit card’s details were less than ten dollars, or $9.70 to be precise.

It also depends on the type of country that you are living in with all of that having been said and now out of the way. Hong Kong, with its significant concentration of high net worth individuals, had a higher average cost for credit card info on the dark web. Buying the details for a Hong Kong credit card might end up costing around $20, whereas the same kind of card in Mexico might be obtained for a little over 10% of the price at approximately $2.36.

Some countries are worse affected by credit card theft than others. For example, there are over 1.5 million US based credit cards that are currently for sale which represents about a third of the total credit cards that Nord VPN ended up analyzing. However, another thing to note is that US credit cards are actually a great deal cheaper than average. The average price for a US credit card on the dark web was just $5.81, making it one of the cheapest cards that anyone can buy which might be why these types of cards are so prevalent in the first place.

Nord VPN also ranked each country based on how at risk its citizens were for credit card theft. Hong Kong received a 1 which is the highest possible type of score. Australia, which had the second highest number for credit card theft at 419,806, and New Zealand both got scores of 0.8. The US, on the other hand, got a score of 0.5 which is a lot less than what Australia or New Zealand received but it was still higher than a number of other countries such as Canada and Germany.

Overall, this data shows that credit card info is relatively easy to come by, which indicates that it is now more important than ever for people to start looking into protecting this information as much as they possibly can. Doing their part to make the most of things in this regard might keep them safe from having their details posted in a forum which might result in their bank account being emptied out before they realize what has happened and can take steps to remedy it.
Read next: 58 percent of employees say having their work account hacked would be more troublesome than socials, study finds
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