This is how much money scammers make from your bank card


What do scammers do with stolen Girocard or credit card data? The first thing most people probably think of is that the crooks use the cards to withdraw money or go shopping at the expense of the cardholder. However, according to a study by cybersecurity expert NordVPN, there are other ways to make money from stolen card data. NordVPN has analyzed more than four million map data “provided by independent experts”. However, NordVPN emphasizes that this data is not based on “exact numbers of payment card details sold on the dark web.”

Bank cards from Germany are worth more

One result of the analysis: fraudsters offer map data from Germany for an average of 15 euros and 79 cents. “German payment cards are quite expensive compared to the global average of €8.50. Due to the overall wealth in the country, German cards are a lucrative target for hackers,” said Marijus Briedis, CTO at NordVPN. However, the numbers of fraud with payment cards in Germany have been falling since 2016: At that time, the police were aware of around 47,000 cases. In 2020 there were only around 34,000. “If a lost or stolen payment card is used illegally, the bank is liable. That’s why many German banks have taken extra security measures to protect their customers,” said Briedis.

How do scammers get the data?

Cyber ​​criminals try to guess the card number and security number by developing software that tries an extremely large number of possibilities (brute force). The first six to eight digits are the card issuer’s ID number. Depending on the card, this leaves between seven and nine numbers for hackers to guess. “The sixteenth digit is purely a checksum and is only used to determine whether a mistake was made when entering the number,” explains Marijus Briedis.

Credit card fraud: How the data came together

For the study, NordVPN evaluated a database that contained information on a total of 4,478,908 card details: for example, details about the type of card (credit or debit card) and the issuing bank. NordVPN received the data from unspecified “third-party providers”. However, there was no information that could be used to identify the owner of the card – such as names, contact information or other personal information. 31,373 German payment cards were part of the data set. The prices of these payment cards ranged from 0.88 to 22.06 euros.

These cards were the most expensive

Incidentally, the most expensive tickets came from Japan (average price €47.66), while the cheapest tickets came from Honduras (average price under €0.88). The prices of the tickets mainly depend on the demand. This is all the greater the easier it is to steal money from a card and the size of the amounts that can be stolen. “That’s why the most expensive cards come from generally wealthier countries or those with poorer bank security measures,” says NordVPN’s Marijus Briedis.



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