Post-privacy: How the digital footprint has become the new body, and its theft a new form of carding

[Professor]

Prologue: We are what is written about us​

In a world where privacy has ceased to be an absolute value, but has become a conditional and temporary resource, a fundamental transformation has occurred. Our digital body — the sum total of all the traces we leave behind, from likes and search queries to sleep patterns and biometric data — has become more valuable than a bank account. The theft, manipulation, or substitution of this body — a new type of digital carding — is no longer just a financial crime. It is an attack on the very integrity of the individual in the information age. If a classic carder stole your card number, then a carder in the post-privacy era steals your digital soul to live its life.

Part 1: The Anatomy of the "Digital Body" – What Exactly Is Being Stolen​

The digital body is a multi-layered construct, each layer of which has its own value for the criminal market.

1. Biometric layer (Digital Flesh): Static and dynamic biometric data — fingerprints, facial scans, gait, voice, heart rate, vein pattern. These are "passwords" that cannot be changed. Their theft allows not only to bypass authentication systems but also to synthesize deep fakes indistinguishable from the original in real time.
2. Behavioral layer (Digital Gait): Unique behavior patterns: how and when you type, move your mouse, how you navigate the city, what time you're active, how you react to different types of content. This is the key to predicting your decisions, and therefore, manipulating you.
3. Social Reputation Layer (Digital Mask): Your social history: connections, correspondence, achievements, professional skills, digital diplomas, reviews. This is your legitimacy and trust capital in the eyes of systems and other people. Stealing this layer allows someone to rent your life.
4. The Intentional Layer (Digital Desire): The most valuable and hidden layer — data about your deepest desires, fears, and vulnerabilities, revealed through analysis of all the other layers. This is the raw material for hyper-personalized social engineering, capable of compelling you to take any action.

Part 2: The Mechanics of the New Carding: From Exfiltration to Substitution​

The theft of a digital body does not occur in one instant, but through complex, time-consuming processes.

1. Silent Exodus:
   • Instead of a high-profile hack, a slow, stealthy copying of traces from multiple sources is used: hacked fitness trackers, "free" psychological tests, vulnerable IoT devices in the home, leaked databases containing anonymized but unique behavioral analytics. The goal is not to steal "everything at once," but to continuously update the digital twin with fresh data to "revive" it.
2. Synthetic Resurrection:
   • Using stolen fragments (an old photo, a voice sample from a video, several social media posts), neural networks construct a complete digital body with a high degree of verisimilitude. Carders don't sell raw data, but ready-to-use "warm" digital clones with a history and recognizable features.
3. Partial substitution and “quantum superposition” of personality:
   • The most sophisticated tactic isn't outright theft, but the introduction of foreign elements into the victim's digital identity. For example, gradually changing the bank's data behavior pattern (so that the anti-fraud system "gets used" to new, fraudulent actions) or adding fictitious connections and certificates to the social layer to legitimize fraudulent transactions.

Part 3: Monetizing the Digital Body: The Economics of the Shadow Metaverse Market​

The stolen digital body is monetized in fundamentally new ways, creating a shadow “avatar economy.”

1. Legitimacy-as-a-Service:
   • Digital clones with impeccable histories (clean credit ratings, verified accounts with premium services, and a reputation as reliable freelancers) are rented out to conduct fraudulent operations. After use, the "body" is destroyed, leaving no traces that can be traced back to the real criminals.
2. Identity Ransomware:
   • Instead of encrypting files, carders block a person's access to their digital identity : accounts, biometric data in government services, and achievement history. Restoring access requires a ransom, otherwise the identity will be digitally destroyed or publicly compromised (for example, by posting compromising material generated in their name).
3. Theft and resale of social capital:
   • A stolen account of an influential blogger or expert with a long history and audience is sold as a ready-made business asset. The buyer receives not just a login and password, but a complete archive of behavioral patterns, communication templates, and unpublished content, allowing them to successfully impersonate the original and monetize their trust capital.
4. "Sharpening" Phishing Attacks (Hyper-Personalized Phishing Kits):
   • The stolen digital identity is used to create highly effective phishing campaigns against the victim's close circle. Knowing the subtleties of relationships, communication styles, and current topics, the attacker can use the victim's identity to extort money from their family, colleagues, or followers with incredible success.

Part 4: Aftermath: Existential Risks and the Disintegration of Reality​

The evolution of carding in the post-privacy era leads to systemic threats that extend beyond finance.

1. A crisis of trust in reality: When any voice on a phone, any video, or any message can be a flawless fake based on a stolen digital body, the basic confidence in the authenticity of communication disappears. This leads to social paranoia and the breakdown of trust as the glue that holds society together.
2. Legal Death and "Digital Orphanhood": A person whose digital body has been stolen and corrupted may face a situation where systems and people trust their digital clone more than they do themselves. They may be declared a fraud, stripped of rights, access, and social connections, becoming an outcast in the world they helped create with their data.
3. Fragmentation of the Self: The constant threat of theft and manipulation of the digital body forces people to fragment their identities, creating multiple, disconnected digital personas. This leads to an internal identity crisis, a feeling of inauthenticity, and existential fatigue from managing their own simulacra.

Epilogue: Protecting the Integrity of the Digital Body — A New Fundamental Right​

Combating this new carding requires a shift in the entire digital security paradigm.

1. The principle of digital sovereignty of the individual: Recognition at the legislative level that the digital body is inalienable property and an extension of the individual, and that its theft or substitution is a serious crime against the individual, not against property.
2. Digital Immunity and Continuous Authentication Technologies: Moving away from one-time checks to systems that continuously but unobtrusively verify the integrity of the digital body as it is used, identifying anomalies in behavioral patterns and biometric streams.
3. Decentralized identity management systems (SSI): Storing keys to the digital body not on corporate servers, but with the user themselves, with the ability to situationally, minimally, and revocably disclose individual attributes without the risk of leaking the entire identity.
4. A culture of "digital hygiene awareness": Teaching not fear of technology, but understanding the value of one's digital footprint and methods for protecting it as self-protection.

We are entering an era where the main battle will be not for our wallets, but for the right to be the sole and unique author of our own digital lives. Carding, having evolved, has shown us our possible future: a world where everything that makes you you can be stolen. Our shared task is to ensure that the digital body becomes not a vulnerability, but a new, protected, and sovereign form of human existence. Because in a post-privacy world, the only privacy that will remain is the inviolability of our digital soul.