Net threats: Why going online remains risky.(Internet fraud prevention)

How cyber

Fake Web sites like these deceive millions of users into sharing personal information, which is then used to defraud them. Victims lost an average of $200 each over the past two years, according to our 2007 State of the Net survey.

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The lone-wolf geek you imagine hunched over a computer in his basement isn't the only one out to steal your identity on the Internet.

Cybercriminals increasingly operate in an elaborate networked underworld of Web sites and chat rooms, where they sell one another stolen account numbers, tools for making credit cards, scanners to pick up card numbers and PINs from ATMs, and viruses and other malicious software.

Such thieves pay $14 to $18 per stolen identity, according to security firm Symantec. They surely get their money's worth: In 2006 alone, identity theft cost consumers and businesses $49.3 billion, according to Javelin Strategy & Research, based in Pleasanton, Calif.

Our reporter viewed images from a Web site that until recently had been frequented by "carders," thieves who traffic in stolen credit- and debit-card numbers. She was aided by staff from RSA Security, a security firm in Bedford, Mass., that works with law-enforcement agencies to monitor such activity.