3 ms·

Yup. This stuff is all so deeply compromised at this point it's almost surprising you can still sell it. I guess fraud is still rare enough that companies would

Yup. This stuff is all so deeply compromised at this point it's almost surprising you can still sell it. I guess fraud is still rare enough that companies would rather ask for SSN and say "hey we tried" than actually bother to look deeper.

yieldcrv 4y ago
FULLZ (a text file containing this information) sell for about $.99 per file/person on darknet markets, mostly to build up the seller's reputation. There are 20,000,000 from just this one source and sellers seemingly randomly chose them. Thats just a lot of people. The buyer can use the same social security number for a different purpose than the last buyer. Like, maybe the prior buyer wanted to try something easy like opening a credit card. The compromised person has a low but improving chance of noticing and locking their credit report, making their social security number useless(-ish) for credit card applications. The next buyer though may have never considered that and might just open a bank account with an online bank. You wouldn't know if a bank account has been opened in your name. And the account itself doesn't have to be used for anything flag worthy or that could frame you (I wanted to say "anything criminal" but obviously some laws are being violated even if the funds are clean). On darknet markets, many people chose to skip laundering money, and just open bank and brokerage accounts in any developed nation under anyone's name. They just trade stocks and accumulate dollars. Eventually, whenever they want, they will laundering to cash out completely. But people can fly under the radar for a very long time, staying liquid, and not really doing any kind of consumptive spending from those accounts. So the same social security numbers can be used many times, and there are also too many social security numbers for the level of interest in this, for now.
kube-system 4y ago
Places that ask for your SSN are usually not doing so for auth, it's mostly as a taxpayer ID, or a unique identifier because names aren't unique. (banks, employers, etc) For fraud prevention they typically do behavior analysis or use a composite of personal data. SSN + DOB + Name + last address you lived at + etc.

yieldcrv 4y ago

FULLZ (a text file containing this information) sell for about $.99 per file/person on darknet markets, mostly to build up the seller's reputation. There are 20,000,000 from just this one source and sellers seemingly randomly chose them. Thats just a lot of people. The buyer can use the same social security number for a different purpose than the last buyer. Like, maybe the prior buyer wanted to try something easy like opening a credit card. The compromised person has a low but improving chance of noticing and locking their credit report, making their social security number useless(-ish) for credit card applications. The next buyer though may have never considered that and might just open a bank account with an online bank. You wouldn't know if a bank account has been opened in your name. And the account itself doesn't have to be used for anything flag worthy or that could frame you (I wanted to say "anything criminal" but obviously some laws are being violated even if the funds are clean). On darknet markets, many people chose to skip laundering money, and just open bank and brokerage accounts in any developed nation under anyone's name. They just trade stocks and accumulate dollars. Eventually, whenever they want, they will laundering to cash out completely. But people can fly under the radar for a very long time, staying liquid, and not really doing any kind of consumptive spending from those accounts. So the same social security numbers can be used many times, and there are also too many social security numbers for the level of interest in this, for now.

kube-system 4y ago

Places that ask for your SSN are usually not doing so for auth, it's mostly as a taxpayer ID, or a unique identifier because names aren't unique. (banks, employers, etc) For fraud prevention they typically do behavior analysis or use a composite of personal data. SSN + DOB + Name + last address you lived at + etc.