I felt the need to ask for clarification since I was interested in finding one of my friends stolen payment accounts

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Usually those kinds of things are traded in bulk in some (hidden) forums. As stolen credit cards, payment accounts etc are used to commit fraud and steal money, they also want quite some money for the datasets. And you won’t get all of the stolen accounts, just some random chunk with an amount of stolen accounts you can afford. So I don’t think it’ll help you in your situation.

    And beware if engaging with such people. They already commit fraud and they might as well rip you off, too. Not deliver anything or whatever. Since you’re doing something illegal, too, you can’t do anything about that and some people are bound to exploit that. And don’t pay them money regardless, or you’ll support their business.

    And sometimes lists of stolen passwords, accounts also get leaked to the public and they’re available via torrent or something. But that’s rare, the datasets are old, or one group hacked another and it was an one-off thing to damage their business… Also not what’s going to help in your case. If it’s still of value, it usually costs money.

          • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            Yeah. Just make sure you’re also smarter than them or they’ll outsmart you.

            And don’t keep it to the hackers. Be careful with the police, too. Once you download such things, you’re in posession of the data. And you did it deliberately. So if your contry has a hacking law: You’re liable. And you’re in for fraud, too.

      • CaptainBasculin@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        You can’t really expect to find your account’s stealer unless you have some legal authority. There are all sorts of middlemen from all around the world in acquiring the accounts and selling them on forums. Finding the person who stole your friends" account is like finding the same thief that stole from you in a holiday trip in another country, selling their stolen goods.

        Speaking of; you could research where some database leaks are dumped to find out where these deals are happening. Can’t link any bc of instance rules.

  • Moonrise2473@feddit.itEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Yes one of your “friends” account 😉

    For the record, if you find some free credentials, they won’t work, and if you buy some stolen credentials, they’ll block them immediately - it takes a lot of effort and accomplices to take out money from stolen PayPal’s, at that point you can take that energy and place it on some legal work.

    This is not like “stealing” a movie. This is stealing, it’s a real crime