Someone May Be Selling Your Credit Cards, on YouTube

Digital thieves are now selling their ill-gotten gains right on YouTube, according to a new investigation by the Digital Citizens Alliance.

The group found that crooks are using YouTube to sell stolen credit cards, bank logins, and social security numbers – perhaps even those of someone you know.

In a new report, entitled, “Breach of Trust: How the Online Market for Stolen and Bogus Credit Cards is Eroding Confidence in the Internet,” Digital Citizens chronicles how they searched online for stolen personal records, and found a whole lot of marketing going on, right in the open.

Digital Citizens said that some of the thieves were hawking credit cards for as little as $7 per card, and claiming they were “guaranteed to work.”

In the report, Digital Citizen listed which search criteria they used, and how many hits each one got:

“how to get credit card numbers that work 2014”

15,900 Results

“CC info with CVV”

8,820 Results

“Buy cc numbers”

4,850 Results

“CC number with CVV”

4,160 Results

“CC Fullz”

2,030 Results

“CC Fullz and bank login”

1,790 Results

“CC with CVV and SSN”

785 Results

In an ironic twist, Digital Citizens said they even found a YouTube video offering credit cards for sale accompanied by an ad for retailer Target. That would be the same Target that got hacked debit card data on millions of customers last year.

“The sad take away from the report is that YouTube continues to be used by rogue operators to conduct criminal acts, and not only does Google allow it to continue, but they profit from it by selling ads,” said Tom Galvin, Executive Director of Digital Citizens, in a statement. “We’d expect this on Silk Road or other dark corners of the Internet, but not by Google.”

Yes, indeed, this is both weird and appalling; it needs to stop. How can credit unions, banks, payment systems and retailers ever hope to stem the rising tide of card fraud if some of the biggest names on the Internet are participating in it? However unwittingly that may be happening, there’s no excuse for it.