Your Stolen Uber Account Is Worth More Than Your Stolen Credit Cards Harriet Taylor - CNBC
go to original January 25, 2016

Cybercriminals don't care that much about your credit card number anymore.

Uber, PayPal and even Netflix accounts have become much more valuable to criminals, as evidenced by the price these stolen identifiers now fetch on the so-called "deep Web," according to security company Trend Micro.

Stolen Uber account information on underground marketplaces sells for an average of $3.78 per account, while personally identifiable information (PII) was listed for $1 to $3.30 on average, oddly down from $4 per record in 2014, according to data compiled by Trend Micro for CNBC last week. (PII includes any information that can be used to commit identity fraud, like Social Security numbers or date of birth and varies in price depending on the specific information for sale.)

So how could a criminal use a stolen Uber account? Those credentials can either be used to build a fuller picture of a victim for identity theft, or they can be used to charge phantom rides, experts said. A phantom ride is when a criminal sets up a fake driver account, and charges nonexistent rides to stolen accounts.

They also found the following accounts for sale at these average prices per account; PayPal — with a guaranteed $500 balance — ($6.43), Facebook ($3.02), Google Voice (97 cents) and Netflix (76 cents). By contrast, U.S. issued credit card credentials, sold in bundles, were listed for no more than 22 cents each.

"It's an incredible underground ecosystem. There is a high level of competition for these criminal buyers and there are a lot of different types of forums. It's incredibly diverse, but incredibly mature," said Ed Cabrera, the company's vice president of cybersecurity strategy.

Read the rest at CNBC

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