Tag: IDTHEFT

In 2007, a two-year identity theft investigation operated by the Secret Service and the Manhattan District Attorney's office culminated with the arrests of 17 people. The sting focused on Western Express International, a now exposed crime syndicate that operated two dummy Web sites. On Monday, the Big Apple D.A.'s office indicted five more men who, it believes, played integral roles in the ...

Here is some terrifying news for those of you who are paranoid about identity theft: Criminals may be able to guess your Social Security Number (SSN) with little more than your birth date and home town. Researchers at Carnegie-Mellon have found that using only publicly available data, such as that posted to a Facebook profile, they were able to guess the first five digits of a person's SSN on ...

Representing yet another example of how vulnerable your personal information is online, data (including credit card numbers, names, and addresses of approximately 22,000 people) showed up on Friday morning in a Google cache. The worldwide breach affects consumers predominately in the U.S. and the U.K., and gave away credit card numbers for multiple card companies. The majority of the data seems to ...

As our lives become increasingly digitized, the chances of someone's stealing our identity grows. Now, instead of digging through someone's trash for sensitive information, it's infinitely easier to, say, send a phishing e-mail and scam the info out of victims. Unfortunately, the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network report (PDF) shows that not only is identity theft rising, but it's also hitting one ...

USAJOBS, the government's Monster.com-powered job applicant database, has been broken into, and data stolen. According to a security report posted by the site, the data includes such information as user IDs and passwords, e-mail addresses, names, phone numbers, and "some basic demographic data." Thankfully, it's been confirmed that no Social Security numbers, financial data, or... resumes have ...

Of late, there have surfaced so many instances of impersonation on social networking sites that critics have given the practice a name: "space faking." According to a report by the Sydney Morning Herald, "Social networking sites are being overrun by space fakers, who swipe other users' photos and create entirely new identities for themselves." This ought not be news to social networking site ...

It's rare that a day goes by when you don't hear some story about somebody getting their identity stolen, and often it happens from plain old human behavior online. We've come up with a few tips on avoiding ID theft, and stuck them in the above, user-friendly video. Take a look, and, as always, let us know if you have any questions! Next: 'Have You Ever Checked Your Significant ...

When most people think about ID theft and fraud, their concern is over bank accounts and credit ratings. But have you thought about the security of your medical identity? It turns out medical ID theft is a major and growing concern among security pros, who say that once your medical ID is compromised it can take years to undo the damage. Most hospitals, they say, don't do much to confirm ...

Late last week, New York-based Western Express International was shut down for identity theft and money laundering. In addition, 17 of the company's employees were indicted in the investigation Following a two-year investigation by the Manhattan DA and the Secret Service, charges were filed on Wednesday against the front company that reportedly brought in over $35 million in illicit funds. Western ...

Phishing -- the practice of sending phony e-mails that lure users into providing their login info for their personal banking accounts -- is a huge problem. American computer users are swindled out of approximately $1 billion a year from phishing, while businesses lose twice that. Mikko Hypponen, executive offier for F-Secure, has come up with with a pretty elegant solution. He suggests that a ...