A lot of the information in the database has been obtained by the highly skilled operators behind Lucid, who seek out and engage cyber criminals and beat them at their own game. These operators, who come from all walks of life, are volunteers and most (if not all of them) have put a few scammers behind bars.
There is little doubt that the amount of information in this database is going to grow and, whenever possible, Lucid records exactly where they discovered the information.
The information you input to do the searches is not maintained by Lucid until you request the detailed summary. There are reasons for this, which I will explain below. The site also doesn't use any cookies that are designed to track activity on a computer. From what I can see, everything associated with the site is designed to protect individual privacy and takes the necessary precautions to stop someone with malicious intent from exploiting the Lucid database itself.
If the search reveals your information has been compromised, they provide you with a limited summary. For an administrative fee – and only after your identity has been completely verified – they will provide you with all a detailed summary. The administrative fee of £10 (approximately $16.56) to get the detailed summary covers the costs of pulling the information. Included in the detailed summary is an individual risk analysis based on the information discovered.
In most cases, the limited summary, combined with the protection information, will be sufficient for most people.
In the past four years, Lucid has turned over the details of every credit card they've discovered to the “Dedicated Cheque and Credit Card Unit” in London and APACS. In turn, this information is turned over to the credit card issuer. Lucid has already provided the details of several hundred thousand compromised credit cards and it is estimated they have saved more than £200,000,000 (approximately $331,250,263) from being stolen. When considering this statistic, we need to remember that the actual card details came from all over the world.
It should be noted that payment (credit/debit) cards aren't the only type of information available for sale on the Internet. Lucid attempts to report all the information they discover if there is a place to report it to.
There are good reasons that Lucid doesn't turn these credit card details over to the card issuers directly. Replacing credit cards is costly and sometimes card issuers choose to merely monitor known compromised information and then issue a new card if there is suspected fraudulent activity. By reporting it to the authorities and APACS, Lucid ensures a record is maintained should someone run into complications with an issuer after they have been victimized. Despite all the zero liability ads out there, the sad truth is that not all victims come out of these schemes without losing money (sometimes a lot).
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