Some data worth more to ID thieves

Do you know what your personal information is worth to an identity thief?

Here, from the least to the most valuable, are what some pieces of your data are worth:

Your name. A name without any other information doesn't provide anything useful to an identity thief, said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy for the Privacy Rights Clearing House in San Diego.

But when paired with other information about you, it's the first level of being able to perpetrate a crime, said Chip Muir, assistant attorney general in the Virginia Attorney General's Office's computer crimes unit.

Your address. It may be useful if a crook is targeting a specific individual, said Gerry Egan, director, California-based Symantec Corp.'s security response unit.

Or it may be useful if a thief makes a purchase in your name online and the salesperson asks for an address as verification, Muir said.

But, by itself, an address isn't very useful, either.

Your phone number. It's useful for con artists who call and try to trick you into divulging personal information, Muir said.

Your date of birth. By itself, it would be of little value. But a date of birth is critical on any application for credit, Muir said. So it's valuable to a thief.

Your mother's maiden name. A date of birth plus your mother's maiden name together pose a much stronger risk for ID theft, Stephens said. "Not for opening a new account, but for breaching existing accounts."

Your Social Security number. "With a Social Security number, you've opened the floodgate to somebody basically doing anything they want -- opening new accounts in your name and accessing existing accounts," Stephens said.

In the cyber black market -- Web sites where criminals buy and sell stolen information -- Social Security numbers sell for 90 cents to $25 each, said Egan, referencing Symantec's "Underground Economy Report."

Your e-mail address. An identity thief can learn a ton about you by peering into your inbox, Egan said.

Black-market e-mail addresses, the fourth most popular item in the underground cyber economy, sell for $30 to $40 per megabyte, he said. Passwords sell for $4 and up each.

Your credit-card number, expiration date and security code. With these and your name, thieves can run up some serious debt online.

In the cyber black market, credit-card numbers are the second-hottest seller behind bank-account numbers, Egan said.

The going rate for credit-card numbers range from 10 cents to $25 each, he said. Add $3.50 to $12 each for the cards' threeor four-digit security code. Those codes are the third biggest seller.

Multiply all these prices by thousands, if not millions, of credit-card numbers netted in a data breach and a skillful crook could get rich.

Your bank-account numbers. That's the hottest seller in the cyber underground, Egan said. It accounts for 18 percent of the fraudulent transactions. The price: $10 to $1,000 each, depending on how much is in the accounts.

Contact Iris Taylor at (804) 649-6349 or .