By Andrea Hargraves 
A new NordVPN survey analyzed four million payment cards found for sale on the dark web, owned by citizens of 140 countries, and concluded that more than three thousand were Portuguese.
According to the study, of all the payment cards found hacked, 3,281 were owned by Portuguese people, almost a third (1002) were Visa, followed by Mastercard (367) and Maestro (9).
Analyzing the European scenario, Spain was the fourth most affected country by this situation on the continent, according to the survey, with France, the United Kingdom and Italy being the countries with the highest number of cards hacked.
Worldwide, the United States was the worst affected country, with 1,561,739 of the 4,481,379 payment cards found for sale belonging to Americans. Australia was the second hardest-hit country, with 419,806 cards found for sale on the dark web.
The study also revealed that the average price of all the cards found was $10 and 50 cents (about €9.25). The average price for a Portuguese card was $12,26 cents (about €10.80).
Since 2014, we’ve seen a steady growth in payment card fraud around the world. “We decided to look at the cost of a payment card on the dark web and why there is a thriving underground black market for it,” Marijus Bredes, chief technology officer of NordVPN, said in a statement.
“The answer (from the study) is that hackers can easily make a lot of money. Even if a card costs only $10 on average, a hacker can make $40 million selling a single database like the one we analyzed.”
Although the largest number of cards on sale are from the US and Australia, this does not mean that they are the most vulnerable. According to the research, vulnerability depends on factors such as the percentage of non-refundable cards, the country’s population, and the number of cards in circulation.
“For example, because there are a large number of cards with refunds available, US cards may be more reliable. But there are still a large number of them that have been found hacked on the Internet due to the greater number of credit card users in this country in general,” Marijus Predis explains.
NordVPN researchers compared card data across countries with United Nations population statistics and the number of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express cards in circulation to calculate a risk index and measure the likelihood of people’s cards being available on the dark web by country.
The Portuguese Risk Index was estimated at 0.4. Hong Kong was found to be the most vulnerable country in the world, with a maximum possible risk score of 1. The second most vulnerable country was Australia (0.85), followed by New Zealand with a score of 0.8. The least weak result is 0, and it was awarded to only one country – the Netherlands.