So I printed out an article to read just before Christmas, and am only getting to it now. It is written by Michael Riley of Bloomberg Businessweek, and it's called "Stolen Credit Cards Go for $3.50 at Amazon-like Online Bazaar."

Ok, I know all about these online bazaars, I know you can look up a credit card's information before you buy it... although I just found out you can test it first to make sure the bank didn't cancel it... you can shop by credit limit, billing location, and other relevant pieces of information.

If you live in Massachusetts you would probably want to have a card from Massachusetts; chances are if your stolen card is from California, someone's going to pick up on that whole distance problem and shut the card down on the first try...

For what I do, this is fairly straightforward stuff.

BUT wait just a minute and read this:

Cyberthieves stolen data worth $114 Billion / Year (source: Symantec)

All US bank robberies together worth $43 Million (source: FBI)

Global cocaine market worth $85 Billion (source United Nations)

Ok, Symantec IS a cybersecurity firm, so it behooves them to inflate the numbers, but they've been around a long time and should know better than to try to boondoggle their bread and butter market.

Bank Robberies.... MMMMMmillions.... Cocaine...BBBBBbillions. Sure, that makes sense.

But cyber crime...  really? The scale caught me by surprise. Unbelievable.

Anyway, just spend the 10 minutes to read this article and you'll get a pretty good overview of the current state of cyber crime.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-28/stolen-credit-cards-go-for-3-50-at-amazon-like-online-bazaar.html