Sword
02-20-2003, 07:45 AM
I was doing some analysis of the 8 million credit card hack to see what impact it could POTENTIALLY have on the online adult industry if all 8 million card numbers were cancelled. It doesn't look like hardly any of the cards are going to be cancelled but it is an interesting scenario to consider none the less.
The figure keeps being tossed around that the 8 million cards is only 1% of active US credit cards, so it would be no big impact, but is that an accurate assessment?
What if, since the hack was done through the internet, all of the compromised cards were cards that had been used ON the internet. Does that substantially increase the percentage of cards in adult recurring databases that would be cancelled if all 8 million were cancelled? I believe it does.
According to the news articles, there are 574 million credit card accounts in the USA. Now, according to the Computer Industry Almanac, there are 160 Million internet users in the USA. There are 281 million people in the USA. That means that 56% of the US population is online.
How to correlate that # with the total credit card numbers is debatable, but lets just apply it directly. 56% of the US population is online, and 56% of the 574 million credit cards equals 321 million credit cards. So, if we are only looking at cards that have the POTENTIAL to have been used online, it is 321 million cards.
Now, according to various websites (and this number did vary some) roughly one third of internet users in the US shop online. So we take the 321 million potential online credit cards, and reduce it to 106 million that have been used online in the USA.
Now, to get back to my original point. If all 8 million cards compromised in the hack were used online (possible since the hack occurred online). Then 8 million cards is 7.5% of the 106 million cards we came up with above.
So, I spent all this time to come to a theoretical conclusion that a hack of the size in question, could potentially cause 7.5 percent of all internet used credit cards to be compromised. So if a hack like that did cause all the cards in question to be invalidated, we would be looking at possibly 7.5% of our recurring databases disappearing overnight.
Still not the end of the world, but a much more meaningful impact than the 1% we have been hearing.
The figure keeps being tossed around that the 8 million cards is only 1% of active US credit cards, so it would be no big impact, but is that an accurate assessment?
What if, since the hack was done through the internet, all of the compromised cards were cards that had been used ON the internet. Does that substantially increase the percentage of cards in adult recurring databases that would be cancelled if all 8 million were cancelled? I believe it does.
According to the news articles, there are 574 million credit card accounts in the USA. Now, according to the Computer Industry Almanac, there are 160 Million internet users in the USA. There are 281 million people in the USA. That means that 56% of the US population is online.
How to correlate that # with the total credit card numbers is debatable, but lets just apply it directly. 56% of the US population is online, and 56% of the 574 million credit cards equals 321 million credit cards. So, if we are only looking at cards that have the POTENTIAL to have been used online, it is 321 million cards.
Now, according to various websites (and this number did vary some) roughly one third of internet users in the US shop online. So we take the 321 million potential online credit cards, and reduce it to 106 million that have been used online in the USA.
Now, to get back to my original point. If all 8 million cards compromised in the hack were used online (possible since the hack occurred online). Then 8 million cards is 7.5% of the 106 million cards we came up with above.
So, I spent all this time to come to a theoretical conclusion that a hack of the size in question, could potentially cause 7.5 percent of all internet used credit cards to be compromised. So if a hack like that did cause all the cards in question to be invalidated, we would be looking at possibly 7.5% of our recurring databases disappearing overnight.
Still not the end of the world, but a much more meaningful impact than the 1% we have been hearing.