CYBER CRIME Facebook groups where members buy and sell the credit card numbers of fraud victims and share other online crime tips have been uncovered by a report.

A total of 74 groups have been found so far and they contain around 385,000 members.

Security researchers from Cisco's Talos Intelligence Group uncovered the groups which were buying, selling and trading stolen credit card information and identity information like photographic ID.

The group members were also providing each other with information about email phishing and other illegal activities.

Apparently the groups were quite easy to find so the researchers started referring to them as an "online criminal flea market".

They had names like 'Spam Professional' and 'Facebook hack (Phishing)' and could appear to any user if they searched those terms or words like 'CVV' or 'carding'.

One of the groups featured a user who was claiming to be selling a spam kit that delivered fake Apple invoices to Hotmail and Yahoo email users and once users clicked on the link in the email they'd be taken to a malicious website.

All of the 74 malicious groups have now been taken down.

The Talos researchers think some of the groups could have been on Facebook for up to eight years although a lot of them were created in 2018.

Facebook identified the accounts behind the cyber crime groups and blocked their ability to create any additional groups.

A spokesperson for the social media giant said: "These Groups violated our policies against spam and financial fraud and we removed them. We know we need to be more vigilant and we're investing heavily to fight this type of activity."