Businesses should understand that identity theft impacts both their customers and the business

Every single one of us is for sale on the dark web. We know that—or at least, we should be aware of that risk. But what we may not know is the asking price for our identities. For all the havoc a stolen identity causes, some of that information is almost insultingly cheap.

According to research from VPNOverview, your social media account sells for about $13. Your intimately personal information, including name, address and credit history, goes for a little bit more, in the $40-$200 range—about the same amount as your banking information goes for. (An individual’s most valuable piece of information appears to be the passport, with a UK passport worth $750.)

The information compromised in well-known data breaches is also being sold—again, at surprisingly low costs when you consider the amount of damage that stolen data causes to the victims. For example, the MyHeritage data breach earned $3,552 for 65.7 million accounts, while the MyFitnessPal breach garnered $4,218 for 50 million accounts.

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Cybersecurity