They are available, and they are used to scam people, mostly the elderly because the con men have figured out profitable and easy ways of handling them.
More to the point, though, is the availability of credit card info, identities, and e-mail addresses.
If you know who to deal with, you can buy a credit card info for about $2 each, with substantial discounts for volume buying. A full identity, which includes name, credit card info, the code on the back of the card, mother's maiden name and a variety of other bits of info that are commonly used in password and access related things for about $10. You can buy a million e-mail addresses for about $8, with additional charges for value-added information related to demographics. There are criminals who hijack computers to collect information and to perform background tasks. So, for example, the computer you are using now might also be sending spam e-mails as programmed by a criminal hacker. This is not as rare as you would think. There are at least 23 million computers sending spam daily, and most of them are doing it without the knowledge of their owners. Some of the criminals specialize in renting the hijacked computers to other criminals.
It used to be that we were concerned with viruses on computers. That is not the case anymore. Today there is a broader class of criminal software collectively known as malware (as in malicious software). Can your anti-virus program keep up with it? Here's an interesting fact: Every second three distinct, new, and previously unseen malware programs are introduced to the internet.
Historically, before about year 2000, hackers made viruses mostly as personal feats of technical interest, but since then criminals have figured out how to make money from it, and the dynamics have changed.
From a police perspective, this is nothing more than a new variation on the con game. The technology has changed, but the methods are otherwise the same. Looking back to, say, the 1890s, con men had started using telegraph wire services to con people. Then it was the telephone. Now computers.
Feel any different now about putting stuff on Facebook?
