Hacking and farming financial information is very profitable to those who know how. However your stolen credit card number can be sold for cheap on the black market.

The black market is a busy place where the data that’s acquired by hackers via security breaches is traded daily. Kapersky Labs reports that the credit card numbers traded at these sites are sold at very attractive prices. Credit cards are priced by origin, for example stolen credit cards from Germany would sell for $6, while US credit cards for around $2.

There are only a handful of these sites around and they’re obviously not easily found, it’s a very tight circle, these sites aren’t at all marketed, those who know how to find them are repeat customers. They even have customer support in both English and German.

How does your stolen credit card number end up at these sites? Well it all happens online, for the consumer it may start with viruses and spyware that end up on a user’s PC. These infections are designed to spy on the user’s activities while online, they capture user name and password information for credit card and banking sites.

Security Breaches occur when hackers successfully penetrate security layers from companies that have large databases of consumers information that store information such as social security information and credit card numbers. These breaches occur hundreds of times a year exposing critical information and costing consumers and companies billions of dollars every year.

If you suspect your information has been exposed by a breach, or a virus or spyware on your system, report stolen credit cards and keep a close eye on your balances, and get your fraud alerts activated as soon as possible. A stolen credit card is not always easily recognized, people who actually use your credit card number may be cautious about how they spend your money, so studying your statements carefully is absolutely necessary.

If you want to properly prevent identity theft and the consequences of it, credit monitoring is a good way to get started, this protects your credit cards, debit and share check, and banking accounts from fraud.

Other more advanced identity theft systems like Trusted ID and LifeLock offer a more broad range of features to monitor different aspects of your identity. Identity theft is complicated and its prevention even more involved, so the services of such companies are the best way to automate the process.