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Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

Also: if you're smart enough to steal 75 million credit card numbers, and you've just stolen 75 million credit card numbers, I assume you're going to think of some clever way to start defrauding 'em. Unless I'm missing some part of this story (have the numbers been published somewhere already?), going out and buying gas is the dumbest thing you could possibly do -- parking your own car in front of a security camera and making a transaction which even Capital One knows to flag as potentially fraudulent.

Come to think of it, though, what is the sensible way to use some vast number of credit card numbers to enrich yourself? I assume small-time credit card thieves can get away with it because they're sufficiently small-time to escape an in-depth investigation, but is there any way to untraceably pay yourself?

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If you're smart enough to steal 75 million credit card numbers, then you already know about the forums where that information gets bought and sold. You start selling the individual cards, not the whole data dump, and it's the buyers that are starting to use those numbers to make purchases.

> what is the sensible way to use some vast number of credit card numbers to enrich yourself?

Selling them. At 5$ a piece they will make 375 million dollars. People who buy them are then most likely to use them for this kind of purchase, where it might be hard to get caught.

Actually, buying gas is one of the few ways that you can immediately use a credit card without interacting with a preson and without having to give any info except possibly the zip code on the account.

I'd bet that it's not the person who stole the 75e6 credit cards that is buying gas, someone bought that number for $5 on some shady site.

Actually, I'd imagine it's one of most common ways people siphon money out of credit cards. Any self-service kiosk is probably one of the only ways to immediately turn a printed credit card into something tangible.

Why not steal the credit card numbers and sell them to various people instead of using them yourself? Or sell them in bulk to a group who then distributes them to anyone who's willing to pay?

going out and buying gas is the dumbest thing you could possibly do -- parking your own car in front of a security camera and making a transaction

You're assuming that the police care enough to actually investigate the crime. From my experience in web-based sales, the authorities don't seem terribly interested in pursuing cases of credit card fraud.

(If this weren't HN, I'd add something sarcastic about them being too busy hunting down speeders and feeling up travelers)

The people that stole the data likely won't be using the information first hand. They'll sell it off to the highest bidders. Credit card numbers aren't very expensive to buy online. Wasting it on a gas purchase in Connecticut isn't unreasonable.

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