SSNDOB Marketplace: this name may not mean anything to you, but it is one of the black markets specialized in the sale of the most important personal data in the world. The US Department of Justice announced on June 7, in a statement, the dismantling of this “marketplace”, made up of several websites that have operated for years with the aim of selling personal data.
An operation carried out jointly by Cyprus, Latvia and the United States
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), responsible for collecting taxes in the United States, the United States Department of Justice and the police of Cyprus and Latvia jointly carried out an operation to put an end to this black market which had been raging for several years. The authorities of the two European countries mentioned above allowed American agents to get their hands on four domains hosting the platform on June 7.
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From now on, if you try to access sites with domain names ssndob.ws, ssndob.vip, ssndob.club and blackjob.biz, you will immediately come across a warning message announcing that the domain has been entered as part of of coordinated police action.
In recent years, other major marketplaces have closed their poles thanks to the implementation of major police operations. In 2019, Europol announced the closure of Wall Street Market and Sikkitie, two platforms for the sale of illegal or contraband products.
This black market for the sale of personal data generated at least $19 million
Names, dates of birth, social security numbers, etc. The SSNDOB Marketplace has listed the personal data of nearly 24 million people in the United States. The sale of this information would have generated a turnover of 19 million dollars. As Darrell Waldon, an IRS special agent in charge of the operation, explains, identity theft can have a devastating impact on a victim’s long-term emotional and financial health “.
For its part, Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis company, reports that the marketplace has received $22 million in Bitcoin from more than 100,000 transactions since April 2015. Note that SSNDOB Marketplace has been active since 2013, which could potentially increase this number.
How did this black market specializing in the sale of personal data work?
In order to promote their services, the administrators of the marketplace allegedly posted advertisements on several dark web criminal forums. Internet users of this hidden web only had to click on the link to arrive on the sales platform. In order to protect their anonymity, the people running this marketplace reportedly used various nicknames online and operated servers in many countries (including Cyprus and Latvia).
Some users were buying personal information in bulk from this black market. According to Chainalysis, there is even a link between SSNDOB Marketplace and Joker’s Stash, a large dark web marketplace focused on stolen credit card information that shut down in January 2021.
The dark web is the place used by hackers and thieves of personal data to offer all the data they have been able to extract from a website. We were able to find data from Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok or YouTube accounts that had leaked there.