By Krista on Jul 29, 2006 in Identity Theft, Privacy, Security | 0 Comments
This week, a federal grand jury charged 24 people in connection with 6 identity theft scams involving bank and mortgage fraud. Of those, two of the scams involved circles of 10 people.
In the first case, Charles White and Allen Smith allegedly headed up a 10 person group who defrauded banks to the tune of at least $1 million. By using the names, social security numbers, addresses, and dates of birth of potentially hundreds of customers of Commerce Bank, Wachovia Bank, PNC Bank, and M&T Bank, they were able to cash foreign and counterfeit checks as well as withdraw funds from current customers’ accounts. Read the rest
By Krista on Jul 10, 2006 in Computers, Security | 0 Comments
Just when you thought it might be safe to surf the web with the latest web browsers (or at least FireFox), hacker J.D. Moore has decided to publish one bug on his blog each day for the month of July - and no, FireFox and Safari aren’t safe either. Of the 9 bugs posted, 7 are in Internet Explorer, 1 in FireFox and 1 in Safari.
The expert reaction to the Month of Browser Bugs is mixed, with some people thinking that making the bugs public can only put pressure on companies to release security patches faster. Others think that going public with this info will only make it easier for hackers to exploit the bugs. Read the rest
By Krista on Jul 3, 2006 in Identity Theft, Security, Spam | 1 Comment
If you watch tv on any regular basis, you’ve probably seen one of the humorous Citibank commercials that portray various people talking with voices that are quite obviously not their own (like two older women talking with biker voices) describing all the various purchases they’ve just made with credit cards that aren’t their own.
Identity theft is becoming a huge concern. According to David McIntyre, CEO of TriWest, 53 million identities have been stolen to date and 19,000 more are stolen every day. Companies on average spend 1600 work hours per incident at a cost of $40,000 to $92,000 per victim. (Source: CIO Magazine, 5/15/06) Read the rest
By Krista on Jun 26, 2006 in Legal, Privacy, Security, Social Media | 0 Comments
It’s finally happened. A 14-year-old girl has filed a lawsuit against MySpace.
The lawsuit, filed last Monday in the District Court of Travis County, Texas, were aware that sexual predators troll MySpace looking for children. The suit seeks damages of no less than $30 million for fraud and negligence in misrepresenting their security measures to protect children and teens. The suit also charges 19-year-old Texas resident Pete Solis with sexual assault and emotional distress. Read the rest
By Krista on Jun 20, 2006 in Identity Theft, Legal, Privacy, Security | 0 Comments
It seems like every few weeks, there’s a new report that large amounts of personal data go missing when a laptop is stolen or there’s some other kind of security breach. It makes me wonder just how one lets their laptop be stolen - do they just walk away from it? Leave it in airports? Thieves do a bait and switch? Perhaps companies should get employees to pay for their laptops and maybe they’d take better care of them. But I digress… Read the rest
