Experts: Chat rooms a haven for hackers
"Once the hacker or someone in the underworld has personal information, credit card numbers, social security numbers, address, whatever it may be," says Harrington, once the hacker "has that information and wants to sell it, often they'll go to a hacker chat room, a place on the Web using an Internet Relay Chat which provides them some anonymity and allows them to mention that they have this personal information and they want to trade."
The ability for hackers to go onto the Internet and chat up fellow hackers is as old as the Net itself. But with identity theft becoming a more popular form of fraud, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), more attention is being paid to chat rooms that serve as flea markets for hackers.