The Federal Trade Commission said it has received reports from the public that they have gotten emails warning that their sensitive personal information is being sold.

The emails, the FTC said, claimed that the information was going on dark marketplaces. The information that was claimed to be stolen includes Social Security numbers, date of births, and driver’s license numbers.

The FTC issued the following tips:

Don’t click a link or use a phone number in the message. It could be a “phishing” email, designed to trick you into disclosing sensitive information to scammers. If you think the message is legit — for example, if you have a credit monitoring service or a credit card with a company that monitors the dark web — contact the company using a website or phone number that you know is real.

Change your passwords to secure your accounts. Start by changing the passwords on your email accounts. Email accounts often are the weak link in online security because password resets for other accounts go to your email. If your email account password has become known, then an identity thief can log into your account and intercept your password reset emails.

Check your credit reports. After securing your accounts, make sure nobody has opened new accounts using your information. Visit AnnualCreditReport.com to get an annual free credit report from each of the three nationwide credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Through December 2023, you can get a free credit report every week from each of them. If you find an account or transaction you don’t recognize, visit IdentityTheft.gov to report the identity theft and get a personal recovery plan.

Consider freezing your credit. A credit freeze, also known as a security freeze, is free to place and remove and is the best way to protect against an identity thief opening new accounts in your name. Alternatively, place a free fraud alert on your credit to make it more difficult for an identity thief to get new credit in your name.

The Better Business Bureau offers similar advice to those who receive these emails.

“Most of the information on the dark web is locked behind access-restricted doors. Monitoring services may have keys to some of those doors, but not all of them. There are layers within layers, with much of the illegal information exchanged privately. Also, the dark web is vast. The hundreds of thousands of pages those services scan is just the tip of the iceberg,” the BBB said.

U.S. federal authorities say they seized over $3.36 billion in Bitcoin during an investigation into fraud on the Silk Road dark web marketplace.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said about 50,676 in Bitcoin was seized last November, and was valued at the time at more than $3.36 billion.

It was, at the time, the largest cryptocurrency seizure in DOJ history.

As Axios reported, the move signals the federal government's growing interest in recovering cryptocurrency payments linked to cybercrimes.

The Silk Road was in operation between 2011 and 2013 and worked as a dark web marketplace, but collapsed after operator Ross Ulbricht was arrested.

Ulbricht, 31-years-old at the time, was given five sentences, including two for life, in 2015. They would be served concurrently with no chance of parole, the Guardian reported.

CHICAGO — While public health officials continue to wrestle with a global pandemic, crooks have been using the crisis as an opportunity to make a profit. Vendors are peddling fake vaccine cards on the dark web and consumers are ordering purported therapeutic drugs from dubious international sources.

Tens of millions of packages come through nine international mailing facilities around the United States annually. It’s a 24-hour operation.

Each year, Customs and Border Protection officers inspect and screen tens of million parcels to ensure they comply with state and federal law.

And since the beginning of the pandemic, they’ve been busy.

“We were seizing unapproved medications coming from China that were manufactured in clandestine labs,” said Christopher Macko, a supervisory officer with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

He says his officers have been intercepting everything from fake PPE and COVID-19 testing kits to drugs and phony vaccine cards.

“We were seeing hundreds and thousands of packages coming from unknown lands, basically to the consumer, in the United States,” he said.

Between January of last year and the end of July this year, the agency seized nearly 40 million counterfeit face masks, 187,000 FDA-prohibited COVID-19 test kits, and approximately 40,000 tablets of unapproved chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.

“This is an open market, an unregulated market, also an illegal market,” said Ryan Linder, an emerging threats expert with Check Point Research.

They’ve been monitoring activity associated with pandemic-related fraud, cyber threats, and illegal commerce—some of it on the dark web.

“We must increase vaccination among the unvaccinated with new vaccination requirements,” said President Biden on Sept. 9.

Linder says the day after President Biden announced an emergency vaccine mandate for American workers, online activity spiked.

“The cost of these of these illegal cards on these platforms doubled overnight,” said Linder. “But more disturbingly, the number of sellers increased by about ten times.”

Earlier this month, Customs and Border Patrol seized two consignments destined for Texas that contained counterfeit vaccination cards from China. They also found shipments from China and Mexico headed to Atlanta, St. Louis and Minnesota that contained the controversial drugs ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

Linder warns that purchasing these kinds of items not only poses a risk to public health but to your personal information.

“You have no idea where that personal information ends up, so you may get a fake vaccine card. Your data might be sold on the dark web at great profit to these bad actors,” he said.

As the public remains sharply divided over vaccine mandates and controversial therapeutics, Linder says as long as people are willing to buy, the illegal imports won’t disappear.

“They want to have what they want to enjoy their lives and make money and earn a living, but they don't want a vaccine,” he said. “That population, I think, will be fixed for a very long time and therefore there will be a demand that's increasing with each one of these mandates.”

The simple warning to contraband shoppers he says is buyer beware.