$25 is a small investment for so much free stuff.
Everyone likes getting free things. Why pay for the stuff you find online instead of getting it for free? Fortunately, with a small investment, Facebook makes it easy! With Facebook, you can quickly find a group selling credit card information. Thanks to Facebook’s algorithms, after you find one group, it’ll be easy to find dozens more. Facebook looks at interests, without actually caring about those interests. Their algorithms don’t know the difference between illegal groups, hate groups, child bride selling, or groups for fans of a particular musician. As a result, Facebook will help you find whatever you’re interested in, even if it’s buying stolen credit cards.
If that’s what you’re in to, you’re in luck. Facebook is swarming with credit card sharing groups.
How Widespread are Credit Card Buying Groups?
There are groups full of sales like this.
You’d think the only place to buy credit card information would be on the “dark web,” that is, sites only accessible through a Tor browser or other such private networks. However, you’d be wrong. In plain sight, not even hidden, you can find plenty of places to buy credit cards on Facebook. Cisco Talos, a team dedicated to tracking security threats, found 74 such groups on Facebook with around 385,000 members.
That’s 385,000 people buying and selling information on Facebook and they’re likely a subset of the full scope of the problem.
So, Hypothetically, How Would I Find a Group?
According to Cisco Talos, groups with obvious names like “Spam Professional,” “Spammer & Hacker Professional,” or “Buy Cvv On THIS SHOP PAYMENT BY BTC 💰💵” are not only on Facebook, but have been for years. Cisco Talos found some groups that were over eight years old. Eight years! Hundreds of thousands of credit cards stolen and sold on Facebook over the course of eight years!
However, it gets worse. After you find one of those groups, Facebook will help you find more. Yes, not only is it as simple as searching for a blatantly obvious term, but Facebook will find other such groups for you to join. That’s because Facebook’s algorithms aren’t doing enough to protect users, privacy, or safety. Instead, they’re just trying to get people to stay on Facebook as long as possible.
In this case, that means allowing hackers and scammers to use Facebook to trade illegal goods.
Best of all, with just a small email phishing scheme, you can turn up at least one Facebook account to use to search for these items, rather than using your own. Credit card theft has never been easier.
What Should Facebook Do?
Who needs the dark web when we have Facebook?
This is, again, a simple problem with a simple solution. Just as Facebook shouldn’t help members of the far-right find Neo Nazi and Alt-Right groups to join, based on their hatred of minority groups, they also shouldn’t help people commit crimes through Facebook. This includes the selling of credit card information, sure, but also the planning of other violent crimes, or the selling of child brides. However, as long as Facebook’s suggestion algorithms are profitable, they’ll only change individual parts of it as problems arise.
Facebook will likely block these searches in the future, or at least track and report the groups to the authorities. That’s only because they got caught. However, this isn’t the first time someone has brought this issue forward, and, in the eight or more years some of these groups have existed, Facebook has certainly received at least a few reports on them. There’s no way someone at Facebook was not aware of these groups.
Facebook, like YouTube, Twitter, and others, has a lot of work to do to stem the tide of toxicity on their platforms. That includes putting an end to hate online, sure, but also crimes such as identity theft. When it comes to choosing between safety, privacy, decency, and profits, Facebook consistently chooses the latter.
Sources:
- AJ Dellinger, Engadget
- Jon Munshaw and Jaeson Schultz, Cisco Talos