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According to security experts, internet forums are filling up with teenagers as young as 11 and 12 trading credit card numbers, personal information, and hacking tips. Other popular pastimes on the forums involve finding exploits to run against people on social networking sites such as Facebook.

According to security firms, many teenagers are being lured onto the forums while looking for ways to crack videogame copy protection, but from there they're progressing onto even more dubious pastimes.

However, according to experts very few of them are actually any good at it.

"They do not even know enough to get a simple phishing or attack tool right," Kevin Hogan, a senior manager Symantec Security Response, tells the BBC "We have seen phishing sites that have broken images because the link, rather than reference the original webpage, is referencing a file on the C: drive that is not there."

Among other mistakes, Hogan claims to have seen young hackers routinely crippling their own machines, and becoming so hung up on achieving recognition that they post videos of their hacking exploits on YouTube.