Tag: IDENTITYTHEFT

BP is now involved in a spill of a different kind -- a massive leak of personal data. The company confirmed to the AP that an employee lost a laptop containing information on some 13,000 claimants filing for compensation from the Gulf oil spill. It does not appear the data has been used for any malicious purposes yet. Hopefully, BP's laptops are just as prone to exploding as its drilling platforms ...

Security firm Sophos has proven once again that, despite most of the attention and scorn being focused on companies like Facebook and Google, you are your own worst enemy when it comes to online security. The company ran an experiment in which it sent an invite to 200 randomly selected accounts to befriend one Freddi Staur -- an anagram for "ID fraudster." Of those 200 people 82 accepted the ...

Symptoms: Imagine the pit in your stomach: finding charges on your credit cards or bank statements for items you didn't buy; applying for credit or a mortgage and being denied due to delinquencies on accounts you didn't open. The amounts for the previous year's reported income on your annual Social Security statement is incorrect, and for more than you earned. Or you get a letter or call ...

Update: Facebook has temporarily suspended contact information sharing with developers. Share On Friday, Facebook quietly announced that app developers will now be able to access users' home addresses and mobile numbers, in a move that has already raised concerns among privacy advocates and security experts alike. Developers who take advantage of this new feature will still have to request ...

ATM skimmers are a growing problem, thanks to the ease and low cost of producing the card readers. Brian Krebs writes that the European ATM Security Team has found crooks using audio technology to read the magnetic strips on cards, almost as if they were audio cassettes. A software package is then used to convert the audio data into usable ATM card numbers. (PINs are harvested via a separate ...

Italy's L'Espresso is reporting today that Facebook has signed a secret agreement with Italian police, giving them unfettered and potentially illegal access to user profiles. According to what the paper calls "reliable" sources, the agreement allowed 400 police officers to gather information on Italian Facebook members suspected of identity theft, phishing scams and possession of child ...

As the head of the world's most important cross-border police force, INTERPOL security general Ronald K. Noble clearly knows a thing or two about security -- except, apparently, when it comes to Facebook. At the inaugural INTERPOL Information Security Conference held in Hong Kong last week, Noble revealed that his personal identity was stolen through Facebook. According to the Daily Mail, ...

High-tech criminals have apparently adopted a decidedly low-tech methodology in the latest banking scam. Hackers are forging and cashing checks in order to slip past their victims' defenses. Rather than snagging passwords and initiating electronic transfers, these scammers are hacking into sites that store images of checks for banks, check cashing outlets and other businesses. From these images, ...

As mobile banking becomes more popular, security threats will grow -- unless banking institutions keep a close watch on their customers' personal information. According to The Wall Street Journal, users of Citibank's iPhone application were recently exposed to a security threat because a previous version of the app had stored personal information -- including account numbers, bill payments and ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... When free services like Twitter and Google crash, users may caterwaul and whine, but the sites don't immediately suffer from significant revenue loss. Outages certainly penalize online retailers, though. Amazon endured a rare three-hour crash yesterday, leading to a 7.8-percent drop in shares by the market's Tuesday close. Based on ...

Of all the people to be threatened via e-mail, high-ranking politicians should be at the bottom of your list -- unless, of course, you have delusions of grandeur. Such delusions are likely what spurred Minnesota native Barry Vincent Ardolf to hack into his neighbor's Wi-Fi network -- unless Ardolf was just aiming for the coveted title of "Weirdest Neighbor Ever." According to Information Week, ...

Users of an ATM outside a cigarette shop in Beijing were surprised to find that, shortly after dipping their bank cards into the kiosk, their accounts were emptied out. The ATM wasn't hacked, but rather completely fake. The full-sized device bore all the familiar trappings of an ATM, such as credit card logos and a cash slot, and was set up in an otherwise empty glass room in the corner of the ...

Several public and private entities have teamed up to battle online fraud by creating a streamlined method to report it. According to Ars Technica, Internet Fraud Alert is a service that makes it easier for security researchers to report the stolen consumer data they find online. For example, if a researcher finds a stash of stolen credit card numbers posted on the Net, he or she reports the find ...

The iPad has only been in circulation for a couple of months, but the device has already fallen prey to a major cyber attack, thanks to a gap in AT&T's security system. According to Gawker, a group of hackers recently succeeded in exploiting a security hole in AT&T's website, and walked away with the e-mails and ID numbers of over 114,000 iPad users. The list of those targeted by the ...

Share You knows that it's not a good idea to publicly display your Social Security number. Believe it or not, LifeLock CEO Todd Davis had to learn this seemingly obvious lesson the hard way. According to Wired, Davis' identity, plastered across the company's advertisements, has been stolen 13 times since June 2007, despite his claim that paying LifeLock $10-a-month makes identity theft ...