DATA FROM MORE THAN 3,200 PORTUGUESE BANK CARDS SOLD ON THE “DARK WEB”

According to the cybersecurity solutions company, Portuguese bank card data has been sold at an average price of 10.8 euros per card.

The cybersecurity solutions company NordVPN went to listen to the traffic of bank cards on the dark web and found some numbers revealing the potential embezzlement underway around the world – and also in Portugal. According to experts, data from more than four million bank cards from 140 countries have been transacted by cybercriminals on the dark side of the Internet. This batch of data includes 3,281 Portuguese payment cards.

Among the cards issued in Portugal, 1,002 were issued by Visa, 367 by Mastercard and nine by Maestro.

According to NordVPN, bank cards have been sold with average prices per unit of 10.5 dollars (9.26 euros) – and this is the average calculated when the calculation focuses on the cards found. NordVPN also reveals that, for Portuguese bank cards, each unit has been transacted with a higher average cost: 12.26 dollars (10.80 euros) for each card.

“The answer is that hackers can easily make a lot of money. Even if a card costs just $10 on average, a hacker can earn $40 million selling a single database like the one we analysed.”

NordVPN reports that credit card fraud has been on the rise since 2014. The US leads the way among the most affected countries, with more than 1.5 million bank cards identified in NordVPN’s analysis. The experts of the cybersecurity brand classify the USA as one of the countries with the most reliable bank card systems, but they also recall that it is one of the countries with the highest rate of adhesion and use of credit and payment cards, and this factor may have contributed to the fact that about a third of the cards analysed are American.