Be it fake or real, payment card data does not survive untouched for long on the web, a recent experiment showed. The bad guys are testing everything they find on the internet, just to make sure they don't miss an opportunity to cash in.
From the moment it landed on several paste sites, it took two hours for data from a Visa card to be used for a micro-transaction, just to check it's validity.
The small purchase test
Carried out with a prepaid card, the purpose of the test was to observe how information travels on the internet and its underground sites.
Over the past two years, fraudsters tried four times to use David Greenwood's credit card. This sparked an interest in the researcher from ThreatPipes to learn how information is distributed over the internet and its dark corners. After getting an anonymous Visa prepaid card, the researcher tried to sell the data directly on the dark web only to find himself banging on a door that no one answers to.