An article posted on MSNBC Red Tape Chronicles explored the dark world of credit card fraud trading, and the man who is tracking them down. Dan Clements is the leader of a team of online researchers who go undercover pretending to be fraudsters looking for hot credit card numbers. These researchers lurk in chat rooms that only deal in trading stolen credit card numbers and other kinds of stolen identities, such as social security numbers and PIN numbers.

In their office in Southern California, the CardCops (a division of Affinion), take up all the information through automated programs and enter the numbers in a ever-growing database. The CardCops also have “deputized” thousands of hackers in a so-called “amnesty program,” and these hackers send in databases of stolen information. This information in turn is turned over to the federal authorities and financial institutions. The information is also sold to other security firms.

For nearly ten years, CardCops have been tracking and catching identity criminals. Clements has an interesting philosophy with regards to these criminals, many of whom are very young. “Our job is not putting handcuffs on script kiddies (young hackers), but rather to learn from them,” Clements said. “So we engage them….it isn’t too smart to threaten them. So let’s treat them with respect and see how far we get. That’s when we really turned it around.”

Rather than alerting authorities every time credit card fraud is committed, Clements decided to ask hackers how they do the things they do. In return, he gave them “bragging rights,” correctly guessing that many hackers are vain and looking for online glory. It wasn’t long before CardCops learned about the most secret credit card fraud chat rooms.

Affinion eventually set up ID Protect, a direct-to-consumer offering called where clients can see if their identity information has been compromised. This information is then resold through several partner firms.

Thanks to the hard work of Dan Clements and his CardCops, an enormous body of information about identity theft has been gathered. It’s nice to know that there are people in the murky world of identity fraud who are on our side.

Article Source: A portal on credit card crime

More information on CardCops and Affinion Security Services:

• CardCops reports that stolen credit card details are getting cheaper
• Affinion acquires CardCops in expansion of security services
• Affinion Security Center offers a wide range of security services, from credit card fraud protection to data breach prevention services.
• Accertify and Affinion Security Center Partner to Deliver Enhanced Fraud Protection for Online Merchants