Fears are growing over a rise in online fraud after Experian revealed that more than 12 million items of data were bought and sold by fraudsters in the first three months of this year alone.
According to the company, 20% of consumers sign up to at least six new websites every month but only one in five close down their accounts when they have finished with them, leaving sensitive personal data open to theft. The vast majority (90%) of illegally traded data is password and log-in combinations.
The first four months of 2012 have already outstripped the entire of 2010, when 9.5 million pieces of personal information were illegally traded. And it claims that changing your password is not enough to prevent ID fraud, as most people use the same password for multiple sites.
Peter Turner, managing director at Experian consumer services in the UK and Ireland, said: “The reason password and log-in combinations make up nine out of 10 illegally traded pieces of data is because they give access to a huge amount of other valuable information, such as address books and related accounts.”
Just last week the password details of 450,000 Yahoo users were exposed by hackers, while last month 6.5 million passwords for business networking site LinkedIn were also compromised.
Chris Papa, managing director at Qubic, said: “The means through which hackers are circumventing the defences of even the largest firms signifies that security has to continue to become much more sophisticated.”
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