NESTA Crime Online - University of Brighton Repository

limitations. Estimating cybercrime still remains an inexact science and all statistics in
this field should be treated with caution.
1.3 Credit card fraud trends
High frequency of credit card transactions and the wider range of available
methods of payment are rapidly increasing the incidence of credit card fraud.
Credit card fraud includes the illicit use of stolen credit cards, credit card numbers, CVV2
numbers (the security code on the back) and credit card ‘dumps’. 31 This information can
be obtained by means such as card skimming, phishing schemes, or stealing information
in personal computers or database systems (using Trojans or hacking).
According to the latest Symantec Security Threat report (2008), 32 credit card
information was the most advertised category on underground economy servers,
ranking the highest in terms of supplied and demanded information for 2007-08. The
reasons for their high popularity are:
The frequency of credit card transactions: Consumers have almost completely switched
from traditional types of payment such as cash and cheques to debit and credit cards.
APACS recently reported 1.9 billion plastic card purchases made in the UK in the third
quarter of 2008 totalling £93.7 billion. The number of purchases was 8.6 per cent higher
than in the third quarter of 2007, and spending was 7.3 per cent higher. 33 The ‘credit
crunch’ may slow this growth but the overall trends indicate a clear move away from
paper to electronic payments.
A growing preference for online transaction: The number of adults shopping online has
trebled from 2001 to the present in the UK (from 11 million to over 30 million), and
these figures are consistently rising. The growth in e-commerce increases the
the company observed in underground markets. This figure can be easily questioned, since it does not account
for the number of cards that were cancelled or inoperative, or the high variation of the amounts stolen from
credit cards. Estimated by Symantec (2008), “Symantec Report on the Underground Economy”.
31 ‘Dump’ is a slang word for stolen credit card information and usually contains among other things: name and
address of cardholder, account number, expiration date, verification/CVV2 code.
32 Symantec (2008), “Symantec Report on the Underground Economy”, July 07–June 08.
33 This increase is mostly materialised on debit cards, which accounted for 73.8 per cent of all plastic card
purchases compared with 72.0 per cent in the third quarter of 2007.
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