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Blog / August 2006
Top cities for identity theft and fraud
Aug 2, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Intersections, Inc. recently released results from a study of the top cities for “ijacking.” iJacking is their made up word to scare you into buying their credit monitoring services. I can only imagine how much this study cost them. I thought it would be...
Paychex direct deposit paystub is identity theft risk
Aug 3, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Do you get paid via direct deposit through Paychex? If so, take a look at your paystub/statement. I looked at one recently and noticed that it shows the full checking account number! That puts the account holder at significant risk....
Hospital loses laptop; 257,000 patients at risk
Aug 3, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A disaster planning exercise went awry and a laptop was stolen. Now a quarter million people are at risk of identity theft. GuardMyCreditFile reports this story. A disaster planning exercise turned into a real disaster for one New York Hospital....
Toyota laptop stolen, sensitive data on 1500 applicants
Aug 3, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The numbers are uncertain. It’s either 100,000 or 1500 people at risk. WOAI has the story: A security breach at the Toyota plant in San Antonio was being investigated Thursday after a laptop computer containing personal information for more than a thousand...
Massive data breach of customer ATM info at Dollar Tree
Aug 3, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Update: 10 days after I first reported it, Bob SUllivan of MSNBC is reporting this ATM-Debit data breach and fraud on his blog Red Tape. Bob does understand how seroius this fraud is. Finally, someone in the mainstream media gets...
Intersections Q2 results: corporate governance dips
Aug 4, 2006 by Tom Fragala
According to Yahoo! Finance, Intersections, Inc. (INTX) saw its Q2 net income decrease 13% compared to last year, while revenue increased nicely by 11%. I don’t know what impact their acquistion of CMSI had on this quarter’s results. They also...
Special identity theft training in Michigan
Aug 5, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Nice to see a cross-agency law enforcement training program in identity theft. More from GovTech. Including local police, sheriff, and federal officers. During the four-hour course, officers were trained in the latest investigative techniques, including the areas of victim assistance, identity...
TransUnion is acquiring Qsent
Aug 5, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Qsent is a company that keeps an up to date database of people’s most current contact information. They also are supposed to be working on what some call a do-not-call registry especially for cell phones. Actually, the deal is that...
Two kids arrested for stealing VA laptop
Aug 6, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A couple of teenagers were arrested as the thieves that turned the country upside down. Apparently, they didn’t realize they had stolen a laptop with sensitive data on 26.5 million people. The Veterans Administration is breathing another sigh of relief....
No locks are safe any more: bumpkeys are here
Aug 6, 2006 by Tom Fragala
One of the more common ways to have your identity stolen is the theft of personal materials from your home. Often by someone you know—a family member or worker. But did you know that virtually every mechanical lock, like those on your...
Ohio University fires two IT execs because of data breach
Aug 6, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Ohio University recently suffered multiple data breaches. Now, after the CIO resigned, two IT managers are being fired. And, of course, they are saying none of it is their fault. ComputerWorld has the story. Our earlier reports here....
AOL data breach of user search data
Aug 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Update: AOL apologizes (via CNet). You won’t believe this blunder. AOL purposely released data on 20 million web searches done by 650,000 users over a 3 month period. That’s right they meant to do it. They did replace user names...
Nigeria cracking down on 419/advance fee scams?
Aug 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Fraudwar has a post that gives me hope that Nigeria is going to crack down on the massive market for fraud there. Nigeria has been a nexus for fraud against people and businesses in the U.S. for decades. Scams like...
How companies can implement security and privacy
Aug 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld has two articles on how enterprises are implementing policies to protect privacy and secure data. See here and here....
Bank computers taken in broad daylight
Aug 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
More stolen laptops. The data, however, is said to be encrypted. Denver Business Journal has the story. Matrix Bancorp Inc. disclosed late Friday that it was investigating the theft of two personal computers from the bank's downtown branch on Friday, July...
Another Veterans Affairs data breach: 38,000 effected
Aug 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Update: Official VA press release on the incident. Another computer lost, another 38,000 identities in the wild. This after a lost laptop and hard drive potentially exposed 26.5 million. WSJ.com has the story. As many as 38,000 veterans may be at risk...
SEC nails insurance firm that defrauded 57,000 in military
Aug 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
ConsumerAffairs.com has the full details. The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed suit against a Waco, Texas, insurance company and its affiliates for targeting American military personnel with a deceptive sales program that misleadingly suggested that investing in the company's...
Lottery scams show no let up
Aug 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Lottery scams, especially international lottery schemes, have been around a long time. The Internet makes it easier for the fraudsters to reach the public. A Canadian lottery outfit is warning Americans to watch out for a lottery letter scam. Typically these dirtbags will...
Data breaches are not a threat
Aug 8, 2006 by Tom Fragala
That is what Albert Gidari wants you to believe. He is a partner in the privacy and security group at big law firm Perkins Coie. Here’s his quote from a recent article in the National Law Journal. …Albert Gidari, a...
Cal Poly SLO not using SSNs to ID students
Aug 8, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Well, this is good news, but file under “it’s about time.” Starting this fall, Cal Poly San.Luis Obispo will no longer use SSNs as student ID numbers. Now, every other university that still uses the social security nunmber as an ID needs...
Identity theft has hit 10% of people in UK
Aug 9, 2006 by Tom Fragala
According to a survey by NPower, a UK power company, almost one out of 10 people in the United Kingdon have been a victim of identity theft. Does that sound high? Well, did they ask if a person has been a victim at...
Three new identity theft schemes using the phone
Aug 9, 2006 by Tom Fragala
ConsumerAffairs.com has an article on 3 new ways scammers can steal your sensitive data. But it’s not really new overall, it’s just a different twist on pretexting. Someone calls you posing as someone else in order to get confidential data,...
US Department of Transportation data breach
Aug 10, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A laptop with sensitive data on 133,000 Florida residents was stolen. More from MiamiHerald.com. A laptop computer containing personal information of more than 133,000 Floridians was stolen in late July from a government SUV parked in front of a popular...
Scam preying on emotions for deployed soldiers
Aug 10, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has issued an alert. Watch out for scams (primarily emails) that prey on our desire to help out military members deployed in Iraq and elsewhere....
A foreign check cashing scam: InDigit
Aug 10, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Updates below… I probably receive two dozen emails a week from people asking about check cashing and work at home scams. There are hundreds or even thousands of these running simultaneously and they aggressively target people in the U.S. Often,...
Trivia: Which U.S. law protects you from check fraud?
Aug 11, 2006 by Tom Fragala
What is the name of the U.S. federal law that protects consumers from check fraud and limits your liability (for non-electronic transactions)? Submit your guess via email (see left sidebar) and wait for the answer next week. (I will update this article)....
Watch Out for Fraudulent FDIC Emails
Aug 16, 2006 by Tom Fragala
I rarely post about phishing attacks here because there are so many of them. I tried to post summaries of weekly phishing attacks back in 2004 on my scamsafe.com blog and it quickly became pointless—there are hundreds or thousands of...
How Experian thumbs its nose at the FTC every day
Aug 16, 2006 by Tom Fragala
In 2005, Experian (doing business as consumerinfo.com) was fined $1 million by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive and fraudulent marketing of credit reports (see the FTC report here). Basically they marketed “FREE” credit reports and then charged people for...
Consumers fight back and win in two cases vs. credit bureaus
Aug 17, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GuardMyCreditFile has a post on two recent court rulings that went in favor of consumers. Until now, the CRAs have fought back using the excuse that it is not their responsibility to insure that the data reported by creditors is...
Auction fraud is huge
Aug 18, 2006 by Tom Fragala
It’s not news that Internet auctions is a huge business. So is auction fraud. In 2005, it was the second more reported fraud complaint, after identity theft, according to the FTC. There are lots of ways you can get burned...
Qchex: a scary online check company
Aug 18, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Ted Richardson has a post on Qchex. I blogged about them in May 2005 over on scamsafe.com. They make it criminally easy to commit check fraud, or even worse, demand draft fraud. I was even contacted by NBC television about...
Identity theft can really mess up a family
Aug 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
NJ.com has a Q&A pulled from Liz Pulliam Weston about how one can easily steal the identities of family members and the strife it can cause. For example, in order to deal with ID theft in many cases you need...
Florida DOT update: stolen laptops, insecure data
Aug 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
More on the Florida DOT laptop theft I reported a couple weeks ago. Through a blog posts by Brian at About.com, it appears that the laptop data was not encrypted after they originally said it was, and, two laptops have been stolen...
Hospital giant HCA has ten computers stolen
Aug 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld reports on this. HCA Inc., a Nashville-based firm that owns and operates approximately 182 hospitals and 94 surgery centers in 22 states, England and Switzerland, said 10 computers were stolen during a break-in at an undisclosed HCA regional office....
81% of U.S. firms lost laptops with sensitive data
Aug 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
This via Computerworld: Loss of confidential data -- including intellectual property, business documents, customer data and employee records -- is a pervasive problem among U.S. companies, according to a survey released yesterday by Ponemon Institute LLC and Vontu Inc., a...
Did HSBC leave 3.1 million bank customers exposed for two years?
Aug 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
CNET News.com has more. Banking giant HSBC has been accused of leaving its online accounts exposed for more than two years due to a security flaw, according to reports. According to a story in The Guardian on Thursday, the bank...
Looks Too Good To be True...and It Is
Aug 21, 2006 by Tom Fragala
This was announced last year, but I thought those who missed it might like a reminder. There is a FBI consumer scam site called www.lookstoogoodtobetrue.com. where you can find some information about scams and how to prevent them. They also...
Data brokers commit fraud to steal telephone data says AT&T
Aug 23, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The AP via Cnet.com reports that AT&T filed suit against 25 data brokers that fraudulently gets access to private phone records. Hey, this is nothing new. All a data broker, or private investigator, has to do is pre-texting: pretend to be...
PortTix credit card data hacked
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Portland Press Herald says “Credit card information for about 2,000 people who ordered tickets online through PortTix, Merrill Auditorium's ticketing agency, was stolen this week when someone hacked into the PortTix Web site.”...
Laptops stolen, police say data is safe. Huh?
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
TimesDispatch.com has this small story. A spokesman for Dominion Resources has confirmed that two laptop computers containing employee information have been stolen. Company security and local law enforcement are investigating the theft, which apparently occurred earlier this month. Law officers...
Data breach of personal data by US Dept. of Education
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Homeland Stupidity has the story of a U.S. Department of Education web site that leaked the data of 21,000 students. As many as 21,000 students who applied for federal student financial aid may have had their personal data compromised after...
Data breach via laptop theft: breaches in August
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Here is a sampling of some recent data breach incidents caused by laptop theft or loss. The dates shown are the announcement date of the breaches usually. These are just the incidents that we know of thus far in August 2006. August...
University of South Carolina data breach effects 6,000 students
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
USC reports that they just discovered a hacker data breach—that happened in September 2005. One year later?! This off the AP Wire via TheState.com: The University of South Carolina is warning 6,000 current and former students that some of their personal...
Sovereign Bank has 3 laptops stolen--customer data lost
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
AP via Boston Globe has this one. Sovereign Bank is warning thousands of customers that their personal data may have been stolen along with three managers' laptops taken earlier this month in Massachusetts."There's no information any of the accounts have...
IRS is unleashing collection agencies on taxpayers
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Prepare for an ungodly beast to be unleashed on U.S. taxpayers. Unfortunately this is a fait accompli. The IRS is going to use collection agencies to collect back taxes. Look, getting tax revenues that are left on the table is great. But...
Employment verifications and your social security number
Aug 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Have you ever seen an employment verification from Choicepoint? This is something that a prospective employer might use to confirm that your employment background is as you told them. I have one in my hands right now. It has the...
Identity Theft Law Signed by Governor Schwarzenegger
Aug 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala
This bill SB1390 was introduced by Sen. Chuck Poochigian (R- Fresno). It passed the Senate in May and the Assembly in August and was signed into state law today. The entire bill is 33 words long! It requires the CA Department...
How to Avoid a Laptop Theft Scam at Airport Security
Aug 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala
If you ever take a laptop with you while traveling by air, watch out for this scam. The Federal Aviation Authority has warned about a common scam to steal laptops at airport security. Basically, what happens is that a team...
Data Breaches are Unavoidable says New Survey
Aug 29, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A new survey of technology professionals reports that 63 percent of respondents don't believe they can prevent such breaches. The survey can be found here. More from PC World: "This group came out much, much more negative than I ever expected," said...
AT&T customer data hacked and company steps up
Aug 30, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Hackers broke into an AT&T online store web site and accessed personal data including credit card information from “few than 19,000 customers”. AT&T said it alerted the major credit card companies and would provide credit monitoring. AT&T has been getting a...
Experian IPO coming in October
Aug 30, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Experian is going public on or about October 11. Manchester (UK) Evening News has a detailed story and background. According to this report, Experian might have a market cap of US$9 billion....
Laptop with Social Security numbers stolen from Belhaven College
Aug 30, 2006 by Tom Fragala
SunHerald reports that a college employee was mugged and the thief took his notebook computer. A laptop computer that contained the Social Security numbers of roughly 300 Belhaven College employees was stolen during a robbery on campus, officials say.Belhaven College...
New web browser called Browzar designed for privacy
Aug 31, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Update: Watch out, this browser looks like it might be bad news. Read more here. Update 2: Yep, stay away from Browzar. At best, it doesn’t really do much and is an annoyance. It’s not even a new browser, it’s...
Wells Fargo Employee Data Stolen
Aug 31, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A Wells Fargo contractor had a disk stolen from their car, containing sensitive personal data on employees, including social security numbers and prescription drugs. No news on the number of people effected. numbrX Security Beat blog has this story—and a photo...
MySpace Vulnerability Made Private Information Vieweable
Aug 31, 2006 by Tom Fragala
ConsumerAffairs.com reports on this one. A security breach on MySpace that enabled users to view other users' private pictures and postings went unattended for several months, according to news reports....