Why do cybercrime exists?

Loh, W. L. (2007, October 7). The price of your b@nk account: Just $440; Personal information pilfered by hackers can be sold and used for crimes like fraud and identity theft. The Straits Times. Retrieved on March 5, 2008, from Lexis-Nexis database.

Money is a temptation to many people. Like most people, the ultimate motive of cyber thefts is to gain lots of money. However, instead of using legitimized means to earn money, they chose underhand methods. How much do these cyber thefts actually earn then?

In the black market, the details of an online banking account with at least thousands of dollars cost around $300 US. The information about a person’s life, including birth dates, credit card, and identification numbers cost up to $18 US. As for credit card information it is for $1US to $6 US. Moreover, a list of 29,000 e-mail addresses, the amount is $5US. It sounds really pathetic for the effort to steal these data. Hence, cyber thefts have to constantly look for large number of preys to hack into their computer systems for higher returns.

On the other hand, people who know how to utilize such information are able to embezzle funds from other people’s bank accounts. One example provided in the artile is the case on “New Yorker Shiva Brent Sharma, who at the age of 20, amassed a cyber loot of $150US,000 before he was nabbed in 2005 for identity theft.He bought stolen credit card accounts online and managed to transfer large amounts of money to himself. He once stole $20,000 US in less than 36 hours.”

Cybercrime is certainly a lucrative illegal business.