According to one source, there are over 1,073,741,824 gigabytes of data stored in the cloud. A good chunk of that is the personal data of people who’ve signed up for subscriptions, loyalty programs, free offers, and so on. Naturally, most of that data is highly secured, but that doesn’t stop professional hackers from doing everything they can to get at it.

Even if secured information is never accessed, there’s plenty of data to be had. For example, most people don’t think about the personal information they post on social media. Names, birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, photos – any personal information can be scraped and used to try and create bogus accounts.

Applying for a loan used to require a huge amount of paperwork. And, it was almost all filled out by hand. Nowadays, applications can be submitted — and in some cases, even approved — online within seconds.

Lines of credit can be available to the applicant almost immediately. This is especially true of store-sponsored credit cards, where qualifications are less rigorous than those required by traditional lenders. One store card may not be worth much on its own, but it’s a good starting point to build credit for opening other new accounts.

A single incident will have limited ROI. That’s why scammers have found ways to scale their operations.

Most fraudulent account creation can be automated using easy-to-acquire bots. These can run thousands of potential ID combinations in a fraction of the time it would take a human to do so. Specifics from any viable identities can then be used to automatically apply for credit cards.

As with most other facets of AI-enabled technologies, microwork can fill the gaps when bots can’t conduct every facet of the process. Teams of human workers may be sitting in click farms in other countries or regions, getting paid a few cents for each application form they complete and submit on a scammer’s behalf.

The anonymity of the web means fraudsters can wreak havoc, then disappear without leaving a trail. There are a number of ways to hide or disguise identifying information, such as hidden proxy servers that conceal IP addresses. One of these can make the scammer appear to be in one location while committing fraud from a different country altogether. 

Plus, remember that the fraudsters will be hiding behind a false profile or pseudonym. That can make it almost impossible to find the criminal, let alone bring a case to trial. As long as computers and people are vulnerable to hacking (and they always will be), cybercriminals will be leveraging internet anonymity to ply their trade.