What is Fullz?
Fullz is a term used by criminals who take up the personal data of victims. The term Fullz is referred to as a short key to the word ‘full information’ by criminals. It is a type of fraudster slang. The package of information taken up by the criminals includes personal details such as full name, home address/office address, ID number, bank account details, medical details, etc… Fullz acts as a third-party fraud.
The issue with Fullz is that even when the original person is not unlawful, their identity is taken by criminals for committing crimes. It makes the actual person to get into the wrong situation because their identity was sold. The criminals who commit financial robbery take up a new identity with Fullz. A complete set of information is sold out on the black market, where the criminals buy them for committing crimes.
The usual type of crimes done by such criminals includes credit card fraud, medical identity theft, crimes related to tax, etc… They even take up the impression of the victim to do the crime. While doing crimes, the fraudsters use the financial reputation of the victim. It indeed creates financial insecurities for the victim. Financial crimes also result in low credit scores for the victim.
For example, think about a situation where a fraud steals the identity of a person. He then takes up this identity and applies for a bank loan. The bank approves the loan since the victim has a good credit score. The fraud then applies to the credit card and uses up all the loan amount. It puts the victim in a bad situation where he/she will be unaware of the identity theft. Once they realize that they are being accused and cannot pay back the loan amount, it will be too late. The victims even cannot make a pause or cancel it because, in most situations, they are unaware of their identity being stolen.
How Fullz are sold? Preventive measures against identity theft
Usually, the criminals who take up Fullz sell them on the dark web. The minimum details that are sold include full name and credit card details. They even sell these details for around $100 or more in the market. The amount varies according to the buyer and the accuracy of the information. TOR is the system that is mainly used by these criminals for selling Fullz on the dark web. They use this system for stealing the identity because it is difficult to trace out the wed IDs with TOR. If a bulk amount of Fullz is bought by the customer, the dealers even offer a discount for them.
Fullz is sold to the customers either directly or indirectly. The fraudsters who sell sneak-out information for other fraudsters sell off the information on the dark web at a high rate. For example, if a hacker is well enough to get into a business database, he/she can have complete access to the information on the database. They can even provide the complete details of an identity that is having a high success rate for fraud activities. That is why the buyers are willing to pay a hefty amount to the sellers.
The fraudsters even use dead Fullz for doing crimes. Dead Fullz means it is the identity of a person whose credit cards are inactive for a long time. The criminals use this type of identity to do fraud refunds and other related crimes. Hacking and data leaks are the main techniques used by criminals for stealing identities and Fullz. Your Fullz will be available on the internet if you are a victim of any data breach. Identities are sold in complete and incomplete forms. Even the incomplete forms get sold off for a few dollars.
The bulk sale of Fullz is done on the dark market through TOR and I2P. cryptocurrencies are even used for this. It is done to protect the track record of the sellers and the buyers of Fullz. Even though there are laws to protect the victims who have gone through financial losses because of fraud, the is no law that can prevent the cause and future victims. The chances of becoming victims are also high for the consumers because they have to provide complete details regarding them, starting from the application for the credit card to even for the appointment with the doctor.
Consumers cannot control what is being done with the provided information. Being a consumer, what you can do is take preventive measures against such identity theft. You can even minimize the chance of getting robbed and your Fullz being sold on the internet. The one step that helps you from such theft is the destruction of the documents. Make sure that documents related to financing and other personal details are shredded properly before they are thrown out.
Another preventive measure that can be taken by the consumer is to use their own data while doing transactions. Do not do any kind of financial transactions over WIFI connections or any other insecure connections. Monitoring the bank details regularly also helps in preventing identity theft. If you find anything unusual within your bank account, inform the authorities immediately before it goes too far.
There are tools and services available for providing additional security to your account. You can even use these for monitoring purposes. These types of high security are usually taken up by institutions and big businesses. They purchase these security systems so that they can protect the identity of their customers. Strong web securities help institutions from data breaches that can create a toll on their reputation.
How does business gets affected by Fullz?
Most of the time, Fullz is obtained through data breaches of institutions and corporates. In most cases, finance companies, commercials, etc… fall into the hands of the hackers and become the victim. It can happen if an employee downloads malware unknowingly. There are also various other reasons such as the usage of poor quality security over the internet.
As a result of the carelessness made by these companies, the customers become the victims and have to go through financial losses. The field of business industry will be prone to loss of reputation if they are prone to hackers. They even have to face financial losses if their own data are not well protected. They even have to face the damages legally and take care of the loss financially for the customers.
