What is your stolen data worth?

"You think your personal information is priceless. But everything has a price, even your stolen bank account information.

McAfee Avert Labs has discovered a price list that criminals use to buy and sell credit card numbers, bank account log-ins, and other consumer data that have been filched from unsuspecting Web surfers.

"Last Friday morning in France, my investigations lead me to visit a site proposing top-quality data for a higher price than usual," writes Francois Paget of McAfee. "But when we look at this data we understand that as everywhere, you have to pay for quality."

For example, a Washington Mutual Bank account in the U.S. with an available balance of $14,400 is priced at 600 euros ($924), while a Citibank UK account with an available balance of 10,044 pounds is priced at 850 euros ($1,310).

There's even a guarantee that if the buyer is unable to log into the account within 24 hours, maybe because the owner of the data canceled the account, the buyer can get a replacement stolen account to use.

Criminals can even buy skimmers, fake face-plates for ATM machines that steal credit card data when the card is swiped, and so-called "dump tracks" used to create fake credit cards, the McAfee blog entry says."

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