Ed Dickson
Having worked around financial crimes for a number of years, I noticed they seemed to be on the rise. One reason for this is technology, which grows more rapidly than laws designed to protect us from it. This is a resource to educate people on identity theft, it also strives to educate the common person on the increasing problem of crimes enabled by technology and the Internet.
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Articles by Ed Dickson
July 01, 2009
If you are bothered you too much spam in your inbox -- here is one of the big enabling factors and hopeful news that someone is finally doing something about it!
June 17, 2009
How much of a threat are hackers and cybercriminals in the 21st century? According to the Obama administrations, they are an up and coming threat!
June 06, 2009
When you get solicited to give money to a charity -- make sure you are giving your hard earned money to a legitimate one. According to the FTC and others, the scammers are out in droves!
May 31, 2009
Social Networks are being targeted by hackers, probably because of the sheer amount of personal information put up on them by users.
May 22, 2009
Millions of potentially sensitive records from the Clinton administration have gone missing. They were stored on a hard-drive that had no protection and left in an unsecured area!
May 20, 2009
Craigs has shut down it's erotic services section, but will it do any good?
April 28, 2009
Scammers have figured out how to exploit the MoneyGram money order verification line and are sending fraudulent money orders to unsuspecting people in too good to be true schemes. Cashing one of them will lead to a personal financial loss and or (possibly) criminal charges.
April 19, 2009
Two reports are pointing to the fact that your personal and financial information is becoming less safe.
April 05, 2009
Counterfeit documents can be used to commit a lot of dangerous crimes and the amount of them on the streets presents a danger to all of us.
March 19, 2009
The FTC is warning all of us that the guitar dudes at freecreditreport.com is not free and that you can get a free credit report at annualfreecreditreport.com. This is the only site for free credit reports authorized by the U.S. government.
March 17, 2009
A new dangerous form of malicious software disables computer security systems so information can be stolen from them.
March 16, 2009
A lot of people looking for a bail out are running into too good to be true scams and end up in more financial trouble than they were in the first place.
March 02, 2009
March 1st through 7th is Consumner Awareness Week. The FTC and friends are providing user friendly e-tools to teach a person how to mark informed buying decisions and avoid becoming the victim of a scam.
March 01, 2009
In an era of businesses going bankrupt and people losing their jobs -- controlling losses is more important than ever before.
October 10, 2008
Buying super cheap software can lead to personal consequences that should give the average person pause.
August 28, 2008
The dangers of Internet shopping can take all the pleasure out of it. Here is a free way (paid for by merchants) to protect yourself and guarantee that your purchase is safe from fraud, phishing and financial misdeeds.
July 30, 2008
Finally some help for the average person in the mortgage debacle, or is is really help (again) for the mortgage lenders?
July 27, 2008
If you haven't checked out to see if you internet service provider is patched, or patched your own system, the time to do it is now.
June 26, 2008
The candidates all are talking about making the health care system available to everyone. I wonder if any of them have considered that a lot of tax dollars are already being handed over to crooks scamming the current system providing free healthcare to the general public? Some estimate that this cos...
June 25, 2008
Tom Fragala announced on his blog that "Truston received a 2008 Product Innovation Award from Network Products Guide for our myTruston Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform."
Tom is a well known blogger on the subject of identity theft, was really a victim himself and has spent a lot of time advo...
June 22, 2008
Recently, I've written a couple of posts about energy speculation and why it's part of the reason for the current energy crisis. This occurs when speculators buy oil on paper with credit, the oil is never delivered and then we are told that supply and demand is driving the prices up.
Then all of ...
June 08, 2008
"The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)," according to their website.
In their own words it provides a "vehicle to receive, develop, and...
June 09, 2008
Stealing personal and financial information in large quantities isn't just a problem in North America and the Europe Union. As more IT functions are outsourced to a variety of countries, this information might be getting compromised from just about anywhere.
Recently, it was disclosed in the Indi...
June 10, 2008
With prices rising out-of-control and foreclosure signs being used to market real estate, one might think that scam artists and other less than ethical people would lay off for awhile. Think again, they are out in force and coming up with devious methods to make bad situations, worse.
I follow Sy...
June 06, 2008
Counterfeit MoneyGram Money Orders seem to be surfacing all over the place, again! Here is what I wrote about them the last time I posted on them:
Recently, MoneyGram removed the Travelers Express name from their money order product. The new version is branded simply as MoneyGram, printed in Span...
June 07, 2008
Could major companies outsourcing jobs be an enabling factor in oil prices skyrocketing out of control? After all, the oil companies claim that increased demand in Asia (especially China and India) are a major reason prices skyrocket, weekly.
I guess this means we have outsourced so many jobs and...
May 28, 2008
(Photo courtesy of IslamicReliefUSA at Flickr)
Last weekend, I lamented that the Western media wasn't reporting the expected fraud activity in the wake of the China earthquake and the Burma (Myanmar) cyclone.
Most of the scam activity, associated with the earthquake, was being reported out o...
June 01, 2008
Software Piracy is a multi-billion dollar issue. Whether it's hawked in a spam e-mail, a flea market or on a auction site -- it might not work as well as advertised -- and could even lead to identity theft.
You never know what might be installed in pirated software. The person selling it to you m...
May 29, 2008
I saw an article on PCWorld, written by Robert McMillan (IDG News), that according to the research firm Gartner -- not all data breaches are being reported by retailers.
I thought to myself ... here we go again ... burying our heads in the sand that all personal and financial information is hacke...
May 26, 2008
About two weeks ago, I heard a story about a 13 year old stealing his Dad's credit card to buy XBoxes and Hookers on a morning radio show. After seeing the story surface on several mainstream media outlets, I even wrote the Police Chief of the town (Newark, Texas) where it allegedly happened because...
May 27, 2008
Todd Davis, Lifelock's flamboyant CEO, who flashes his social security in public to sell identity theft protection made Yahoo's top five stories of the week. When I checked Google News, there were no less than 339 articles covering the woes of Lifelock and it's CEO.
Lifelock has been mired in con...
May 25, 2008
I suppose it's big news when a phishing gang gets caught. Sadly, few of them ever seem to get nabbed, or prosecuted. Phishing is a crime that is committed across borders with the click of a mouse, or "bot," which makes investigating and prosecuting this type of crime, slightly challenging.
Saying...
May 24, 2008
I guess I'm one of the luckier people out there. When housing prices skyrocketed, I chose to remain happy with my humble digs and watch the frenzy. Now that the bottom has fallen out of the housing boom, at least I'm still semi-whole.
The reason I can only say that I'm semi-whole is that last mon...
May 18, 2008
Whenever a disaster occurs, there are always dishonest people trying to steal the proceeds of charitable contributions.
This is always sad because it takes away from the people, who are in need.
Heike over at the Dark Visitor is reporting that a Red Cross site has been hacked with the intent o...
May 14, 2008
(Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot)
Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, is teaching the business world not to mess with the personal information of Texans.
Using a series of laws that he wrote an essay on, AG Abbot has taken legal action against Radio Shack, CVS Pharmacy and CNG Financial C...
May 15, 2008
Despite all the publicity that Lifelock continues to do well, a third class action has been filed against them for misleading advertising in West Virginia.
From the PR Newswire release:
Marks & Klein, LLP today filed its third class action lawsuit against LifeLock, Inc., a provider of identity...
May 13, 2008
Symantec just released it's monthly spam report. I always find these reports a valuable tool to see exactly what trends the cybercriminal and less than ethical e-commerce communities have been up to in the past month.
Although most of us view spam as a major nuisance, the fact remains that spam i...
May 12, 2008
The FBI Cyber Investigations Division issued a press release that spammers are phishing for people's personal details using the tax stimulus program as bait.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation warns consumers of recently reported spam e-mail purportedly from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) wh...
May 07, 2008
It appears that Tom Fragala and the MyTruston team have raked in (yet) another award. This time from the Pacific Coast Business Times as one of the hot start-up companies coming from California's Central Coast.Tom Fragala, Truston's CEO wrote on his blog, "This recognition comes on the heels of bein...
May 04, 2008
I happened to notice, I was getting a lot of hits on some posts about the Certegy data breach and discovered that there is a proposed settlement in the class action law suit against them.
Tim Wilson at Dark Reading pointed out that this settlement amounts to Certegy paying less than $1 per victim...
May 02, 2008
Crimeware salesmen, like most e-commerce types, take a dim view when their creations are knocked-off (pirated). To protect themselves, they warn their customers (Internet criminal types) that if their products are counterfeited, they can and will be reported to the anti-virus companies.
Specifica...
April 27, 2008
I've often written about borderless crime being committed with a click of a mouse, as well as, the lines that law enforcement jurisdictions impose, which can make investigative and prosecution efforts, frustrating.
The Attorney General and the Justice Department are announcing a new strategy to g...
April 22, 2008
On his birthday, Uriel Maimon of RSA reflected about a lot of personal things (as most of us do), as well as, how spam and phishing are becoming more sophisticated and dangerous.
One major player in the spam and phishing game are known as the "Rock Phish." In his birthday post, Uriel gives us a l...
April 23, 2008
When it comes to information being compromised, a lot of it can be traced to simple human error a.k.a. "stupidity."
A glaring testament to this fact is being reported by the New York Post:
Hundreds of Ground Zero workers were exposed to potential identity theft when stacks of payroll sheets - ...
April 19, 2008
The mainstream media is reporting that the Phishermen attempted to spear a large number of corporate executive types this week.
This form of phishing is referred to as spear phishing, or whaling. The intent of phishing is to trick an unwary human being into giving up sensitive personal or financi...
April 16, 2008
After just being named a 2008 Hot Company, Tom Fragala and the Truston team have another award under their belt.
From the Marketwire press release:
Truston®, a provider of award-winning online services for identity theft protection, announced today that Info Security Products Guide, the world´...
April 14, 2008
I guess the moral of this story is that it's probably not a good idea to push matters after you've been arrested.
A Long Island man (Cyheam Forney) was arrested for driving on a suspended license, which is a misdemeanor. While attempting to make bail, he tried to pay with a counterfeit $50 bill.
...
April 13, 2008
Ran into an interesting communication from the FBI on the growing problem of senior citizens being targeted by scam artists. Of even greater interest -- largely because most senior citizens now use the Internet -- a lot of them are being targeted from foreign lands with the click of a mouse.
The ...
April 12, 2008
I've written a few things about scams and fencing stolen merchandise on auction sites. Recently, the GAO discovered that items stolen from the military are for sale on eBay and Craigslist.
Even more interesting were the results of narrowly focused hearings (my opinion) on this matter in Washingto...
April 11, 2008
According to a recently released report by the Inspector General for Tax Administration, the IRS is falling behind on a problem that has increased almost 600 percent in the past five years, controlling the use of stolen identities to file tax returns.
Most of the identity theft referred to in thi...
April 09, 2008
With the news that yet another class action law suit was being filed against Lifelock, it made me realize why identity theft and the subsequent loss of privacy seems to be a growing issue. As with most things in the world, money seems to come first and people take a distant second place.
After al...
April 06, 2008
This isn't the first time, I've written about Operation Ore, where a lot of British citizens were wrongfully accused of viewing child pornography.
Operation Ore was the result of an investigation conducted in the United States (Operation Avalanche), where a lot of credit card details being used t...
April 07, 2008
Recently, I ran into a fraud victim being duped into cashing a counterfeit check (cheque) and wiring the money to the scammer offering her a "too good to be true" photo shoot opportunity.
While duping people into cashing bad checks and wiring the money back to the scammer are nothing new -- the ...
April 05, 2008
On the Internet -- crime, espionage and some say, terrorism can cross a border with the click of a mouse. Because of this, it probably shouldn't be surprising that this is a hot topic at the NATO summit, as well as, a seperate conference conducted by the EU.
The AP is reporting:
At a two-day c...
April 01, 2008
Lifelock -- the identity theft service founded on an identity theft tale that was later deemed not to be very credible -- is now facing another law suit. This one, which is of the class action variety, alleges that their advertising is misleading and they don't necessarily protect a person from all ...
March 31, 2008
Looks like the folks at ICE have been busy in Texas going after illegal security providers, some of whom, apparently were armed.
Jason Trahan at the Dallas Morning News reports:
A task force led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided more than two dozen mostly Latino night clubs, r...
March 30, 2008
With all the recent problems with Bear Stearns, the news that Lehman Brothers is getting smacked with a $355 million fraud is hardly good news in a gloomy financial market.
The scam in question was allegedly perpetrated by two contract (?) employees of Marubeni Corporation, a Japanese trading hou...
March 28, 2008
About a week ago, I wrote a post about Britney having her privacy "jacked" by a bunch of "naughty" hospital employees. This occurred at one of the most respected medical and institutions of higher learning in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles.
Ironically, it's now been revealed...
March 21, 2008
Eastern European/Eurasian organized groups seem to have their hands in a wide variety of organized criminal activity. They are often mentioned when referring to anything from auction fraud to payment (credit/debit) card skimming and computer crimes.
eBay claims there are entire towns in Romania ...
March 18, 2008
The LA Times is reporting that UCLA Medical Center employees were caught "peeking at" Britney Spears' medical records when she was recently hospitalized in their psychiatric unit.
I wonder if a total lack of privacy might be one of the underlying reasons Britney was admitted to this particular un...
March 18, 2008
A few days ago, it was reported that one-billion RFID access devices could be compromised by hackers. These devices (using the MiFare RFID chip) are currently deployed as an access device used for mass transit systems, and of far greater concern, secure government facilities.
Please note, Compute...
March 16, 2008
The IRS has been in the news recently because it's name has been impersonated (spoofed) to phish personal and financial information from people tricked into believing the IRS was going to send them money.
Another recent phishing lure spoofing the IRS name was the upcoming economic stimulus packag...
March 12, 2008
On March 6th, Queens District Attorney, Richard Brown announced a series of indictments against a major counterfeiting ring. Although based in New York City, the group was operating nationwide. The ring was obtained skimmed card information from hackers in China. Subsequent news reports have stated ...
March 09, 2008
Even though scams don't all originate on the Internet, a great majority of them do. If you ever want to figure out what scams are making their rounds, taking a look at spam analysis is a pretty good way of doing it.
Spam is the vehicle that most cyber misfits seem to prefer when trying to pull a ...
March 09, 2008
If you are like me, you've already bought too many cookies from the Girl Scouts. Everywhere I go, there is a table selling them and it's hard for me to say no to them.
After all, supporting organizations like the Girl Scouts has long been considered an honorable endeavor.
It's sad to say that ...
March 08, 2008
What do fine wine and identity theft have in common? According to the FTC's top cities for identity theft, the answer is Napa, California.
Christopher Null blogged about this on Yahoo:
While you're sipping Chardonnay and enjoying the beauty of the wine country, crooks may be busy swiping your ...
February 28, 2008
Is the Corporate World under attack by hackers? A new report from Finjan suggests that top level domains have been compromised and access details are for sale on the black market.
It should be noted that government domains have been allegedly compromised, also.
From the Finjan press release:
...
February 26, 2008
Truston, who provides a privacy and user friendly means to protect a person from identity theft, has announced a partnership with Identity Force.
Truston allows a person to protect themselves without giving up any of the personal information that is normally used by identity thieves to commit a w...
February 25, 2008
Lifelock -- one of the companies that offers identity theft protection at a cost -- is being taken on by one of the big three credit bureaus. Last week, Experian issued a law suit seeking damages for their costs associated with placing and replacing credit alerts.
Before continuing on, it needs t...
February 24, 2008
Despite a lot of publicity that eBay is going after fraud, the bottom line is that the buyer better BEWARE when they purchase something on eBay, or for that matter, any digital auction site.
This morning, I read a story from Wales, where a person just got caught selling laptops that didn't exist....
February 23, 2008
The California Lottery announced that the Mega Millions lottery -- where $270 million was won last night -- is now being being used to trick people into cashing worthless checks.
The intent behind this is to get people to cash a bogus check and send the money back to them before your bank, or fi...
February 22, 2008
Data breaches aren't just a problem in North America and Western Europe. In fact, it's probably safe to say that that the problem has become International in nature.
In the era of the global economy and with outsourcing, saavy hackers can probably get their hands on North American and European in...
February 17, 2008
On Thursday, Kelly Conley reported a predicted spam lure (seen in the wild) using the 2008 elections on the Symantec blog:
It´s election year in the United States, everyone must be aware of that by now. We've just observed a Trojan being spammed out utilizing a candidate's name, Hillary Clinton, ...
February 18, 2008
Found this story on SANS Newsbites. Apparently, a former Best Buy customer is suing Best Buy after they lost her laptop and allegedly tried to cover up the matter.
After going to a link on Information Week, I discovered that the plaintiff in question, Raelyn Campbell started a blog to chronicle h...
February 17, 2008
Several years ago, one of the reasons plastic electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards were introduced was to reduce benefits (welfare) fraud.
Apparently, criminals preying on government entitlement systems have figured out how to keep right on scamming the system using this form of "plastic."
...
February 15, 2008
Using a badge of authority to lure victims is nothing new in social engineering circles. I've written about instances, where law enforcement agencies and the IRS have been used to hook victims for all kinds of sinister purposes.
Another badge of authority frequently used is security software. His...
February 11, 2008
The identity theft protection/prevention industry is enjoying double-digit growth in what many believe is a faltering economy. Everyone seems to be jumping into it, even the big three credit bureaus and a LOT of members of the financial services industry.
Critics of the identity theft protection in...
February 10, 2008
Consumers Union is launching a campaign for Valentine's Day to let Congress know that despite overwhelming evidence that credit card companies seem to be gouging a lot of people, very little has been done to correct the problem.From their website:Just before the start of this holiday season, the GAO...
February 05, 2008
Today, Kelley Conley (manager, Symantec Security Response) announced on their blog that the February State of Spam Report had been posted.
An interesting trend showing that the European Union was now the number one origin point for spam was noted:
The February State of Spam Report highlights a...
February 04, 2008
I try to stay on the subject of Fraud, Phishing and Financial Misdeeds, but every once in awhile I stray a little off subject.
Although, technically push polling is slightly off subject for this article, it is similar to what I normally write about. "In the broadest sense, a fraud is a deception ...
February 03, 2008
Over the years, I've heard stories of illegal immigrants having family members kidnapped, or held in safe (?) houses until they pay up. Sometimes the kidnapping occurs in Mexico -- where kidnappings are common -- and the illegal aliens are compelled to wire money for the release of their loved one(s...
January 27, 2008
It appears that the criminals exploiting our notoriously "not very secure" Southern border have a new tool in their arsenal.
Vehicles bearing fake logos of the Border Patrol, Fedex, DirecTV and everyone's favorite source of outsourced goods, "Walmart" are being used to smuggle illicit merchandise...
January 27, 2008
$7 billion rogue trader turns himself in. Guess is that he has plenty of money to mount an impressive legal defense!
January 26, 2008
There seems to be a growing controversy with Scientology recently. Not sure why, it didn't exactly appear on the scene yesterday. Besides that most of us are supposed to believe in "freedom of religion."
Well .... I guess the word "most" doesn't necessarily mean "all?"
A lot of people seem to be h...
January 25, 2008
Jerome Kerviel -- who may have cost his employer somewhere around $7 billion -- might prove that no security system is flawless, especially when the person compromising it has been given access to it.
Molly Moore of the Washington Post reports:
For five years, Jérôme Kerviel toiled in the back...
January 25, 2008
Ran into a interesting story alleging that large corporations -- in this instance Wal-Mart -- are hiring former government intelligence types to work in their corporate security departments.
The story that I found in RINF.com, which states that they monitor the "surveillance society," focused on ...
January 22, 2008
Here is a scary report -- electrical power grids shut off by hackers demanding money using the Internet.
Ted Bridis of the AP is reporting:
Hackers literally turned out the lights in multiple cities after breaking into electrical utilities and demanding extortion payments before disrupting the...
January 22, 2008
Information by it's very nature is hard to inventory. Let's face it, it isn't cash or precious gems and it can be copied in a LOT of different ways.
This fact also gives the entity losing it a lot of deniability. Most of the time, it's impossible to be 100 percent sure what happened to any inform...
January 22, 2008
Tom Fragala, CEO of Truston just dropped me a line about his "privacy friendly" identity theft protection and recovery service being mentioned in the most recent Javelin report.In Tom's own words:Truston was featured in a Javelin Strategy & Research research report entitled "Identity Fraud Prote...
January 22, 2008
We hear a lot about phishing, but we don't see a whole lot written about pharming. According to a blog post on Symantec's blog by Zulfikar Ramzan, we might start seeing pharming mentioned a lot more than it has been in the past.
According to Zuftikar, the first instances of drive by pharming are ...
January 22, 2008
If you ever want to know what criminals and other misfits are up to on the Internet, watching spam traffic can reveal a few clues.
After all, spam is the vehicle most cybercriminals use to pass along whatever scheme they are behind designed to part people with their hard-earned money.
Symantec...
January 11, 2008
Last year, a large amount of fraud cases were reported when people claimed refund anticipation loans using fraudulent information.
In many instances, these fraudulent returns were filed using the earned income tax credit. The earned income tax credit returns a portion, or all of the taxes paid t...
January 09, 2008
The Department of Justice has just announced the arrests of 11 spammers involved in a pump and dump stock spam scheme.
Pump and dump schemes victimize people -- lured by the expectation of too good to be true money -- who buy the stocks at artificially inflated prices. They normally lose money wh...
January 08, 2008
Many believe that the reason behind the identity theft crisis is the irresponsible data mining and selling of people's personal and financial information. This information then gets stored in places, where it is obtained (bought or stolen) by people, who have more than a "marketing" interest in it.
...
January 07, 2008
Norman Hsu, who became somewhat of a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party -- despite the fact he was a wanted fugitive has been sentenced to three years.
John Coté at SFGate reports:
Disgraced Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, who became a prolific political moneyman e...
January 06, 2008
Has anyone besides me noticed that when data breaches are reported, we see an official statement that the information hasn't been used by identity thieves?
After thinking on that one for awhile, it makes sense that criminals would stop using the information from a data breach after it has been re...
January 05, 2008
Ran into this story on the Truston blog. Tom Fragala, CEO of Truston writes:
The internet retailer you choose just might, without disclosure, install software on your computer to snoop on your web browsing. Brian Krebs at the Security Fix blog has this story. Would you believe it could be one of ...
January 03, 2008
My wife, who is a die hard Lou Dobbs fan brought to my attention that Hillary Clinton had recently called him "full of hot air."
In the response to this statement, Lou and crew ran this poll on their show yesterday.
The question they asked was:
Do you believe presidential candidates who sup...
January 02, 2008
The IT Policy Compliance Group issued a great year end analysis of the important events that took place in the world of IT security in 2007.
Lamont Wood wrote this interesting analysis and leads into it by saying:
Looking back, those who specialize in the history of corporate and cultural deba...
January 02, 2008
The Federal Trade Commission just released it's report on the current state of malicious spam and phishing in today's electronic world.
Interestingly enough, it points out that spammers are criminals.
While this isn't a new revelation, the report seems to want to drive that point home. Maybe ...
December 31, 2007
With new Social Security verification laws on the horizon, up to 20 million illegal aliens are probably will have to come up with a legitimate identity in order to remain employed.
Up until now, anyone has been able to make up a number and pass it off with false identification. DHS (Department of...
December 29, 2007
On Christmas Eve, Symantec announced a legal victory against Chinese pirates selling their cloned software at super cheap prices.
Please note, I stole the super cheap description from Symantec's video called, The 12 days of Christmas Spam." The super cheap tag can either refer to price, or the qu...
December 28, 2007
While this story is from a British perspective, it reveals how the trade in counterfeit (knock-off) merchandise is funding some pretty nasty characters beyond the borders of the British Isles.
Richard Elias recently revealed in Scotland on Sunday:
The sale of fake CDs, DVDs, clothing and perfu...
December 25, 2007
In case you feel lonely today -- or are looking at things that your wife or girlfriend might not approve of -- here is a warning from Dancho Danchev about a site that might leave your computer with a disease.
The site invites a person to watch a bunch of scantily clad divas in Santa attire for "...
December 24, 2007
The Software & Information Industry Association is willing to pay up to $500.00 to anyone, who inadvertantly buys pirated software off an auction site.
Software piracy is a huge problem. The International Anticounterfeiting Coalition estimates that counterfeiting is a $600 billion a year problem....
December 23, 2007
In the past several days, I've noticed a surge in counterfeit check alerts from the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation). From December 19th to the 21st, the FDIC issued 26 alerts from various financial institutions throughout the United States reporting counterfeit activity using their info...
December 21, 2007
Tom Fragala at MyTruston wrote an interesting post about the two most important things to do during the season to avoid having a grinch (identity thief) ruin it for you.
From the MyTruston blog:
There are a lot of lists about identity theft flying around this time of year. 12 tips of Christmas...
December 19, 2007
Counterfeit financial instruments are circulated in a variety of Internet scams. The ploy is always to get someone to cash them and then wire the money back to the person behind the scam.
In the past couple of weeks, readers and other sources have brought to my attention that counterfeit Visa Tra...
December 14, 2007
Kelly Conley announced the Christmas edition of Symantec's spam report on the company blog:
Here we are the end of another year. As 2007 rolls to a close the December State of Spam Report reviews this past month’s key trends and reflects on some of the year’s most notable spam events and trends.T...
December 14, 2007
If you think phishing is merely a financial crime, think again. Eleven employees at a nuclear research facility fell for a phishy e-mail, which appears to have been an attempt to steal information.
The New York Times reported:
A cyber attack reported last week by one of the federal government’...
December 12, 2007
The reason SIRAS' product registration and smart return service perked my interest is because it protects people's privacy and is an effective means of reducing losses.
SIRAS tracks an inanimate object (merchandise) instead of a customer's personal information.
Now they are now offering a "gu...
December 12, 2007
The FTC has released a training tool designed to help businesses protect sensitive information, which might be stolen to commit identity theft or fraud.
After taking a look at it, I found it to be simple, straight forward and effective way for a business to evaluate how well they are protecting i...
December 10, 2007
Here is a hacker, who ended up in a lot of trouble after using malware to blackmail underage girls into creating pornography of themselves. The problem is it was probably a little too easy for him to obtain the tools, he used to pull his "hack" off!
This leads me to be slightly cynical that putti...
December 10, 2007
This isn't the first time private investigators have been caught using social engineering techniques to steal personal information. The Hewlett Packard case raised caused quite a bit of uproar about this last September.
Here is another case involving private investigators using illegal techniques...
December 09, 2007
With the FBI's announcement of Operation Bot Roast II detailing the arrests of several bot-herders infecting computer systems on an International basis, it's become apparent that a lot of crime is going on with the click of a mouse.
One of the more amazing revelations to come forward from Operati...
December 07, 2007
FraudAid, a website dedicated to helping fraud victims has a saying, "Silence is fraud's best friend. Word of mouth is fraud's worst enemy. Pass the word!"
In a world, where fraud victims have a hard time getting anyone to even talk to them this saying makes a lot of sense.
FraudAid was concei...
December 05, 2007
Today, the IT Policy Compliance Group released an interesting report on the state of compliance and how it relates to the growing phenomenon of information theft and data breaches.
The IT compliance group is a non-profit organization supported by the Computer Security Institute, Institute of Inte...
December 05, 2007
With 1-2 million foreclosures on the horizon, we are probably going to see a lot of shady characters advertise on lamp posts, classified ads, pay-per-click advertising and spam e-mails with questionable promises to rescue people in a difficult situation.
Apparently, the mortgage crisis is now so ...
December 02, 2007
(DMV photo of Kim from the OC Register)
Not sure what's wrong with this picture, but it was recently discovered that a suspected gang member (Tae Kim) got himself a job as an auditor at the Veteran's Administration, despite the fact he had a criminal record, and stole 185,000 social security nu...
December 02, 2007
Official FBI photo for Bot Roast II (Globe in a laptop)
This morning I read about a teenager in New Zealand has been arrested for allegedly being the kingpin behind an international cyber-crime network.
Because he was a juvenile when the crimes were being committed, the authorities aren't re...
November 30, 2007
Recently, we've seen electronic greeting cards (ecards) loaded with malicious software sent out by the millions in spam e-mails. For the person, who accidentally opens one up, the end result is (probably) an unfortunate experience of one kind or another.
With the holidays upon us and spam levels ...
November 29, 2007
Certegy wasn't the largest data breach reported this year, it only compromised a mere 8.5 million people.
What was troublesome -- for the people compromised at least -- was the fact that their personal and financial information was sold to entities that still haven't been disclosed. The financial...
November 28, 2007
FaceBook, the much talked about social networking site, has received a lot of bad publicity recently.
Despite their immense popularity, personal information published on the site has been used to commit everything from identity theft to abusing children.
Hackers are also using the site to dro...
BBC article on UK data breach suggests why we are never sure if the information is used by criminals
November 27, 2007
Now that we KNOW the loss of computer discs containing the vital statistics of 25 million children in the UK wasn't caused by one person, everyone is probably going to start arguing (whether or not?) criminals are using the information.
Even worse, it's now been revealed that unencrypted discs wi...
November 27, 2007
Some might say that the global economy has ushered in an era of corporate irresponsibility. Daily, we discover that certain corporations are distributing goods that pose a clear and present danger to our safety.
Many of us are also wondering if certain politicans have let us down on this matter.
...
November 26, 2007
I just got finished writing about Symantec's prediction that spam would break new records this holiday season.
It appears that in one category of spam a.k.a. phishing, they were right on the money.
Another computer security company (Barracuda Networks) is reporting:
Barracuda Networks, Inc....
November 24, 2007
According to most statistics, the buying public spent approximately $100 billion on gift cards last year. Because of their popularity, gift cards are used to commit fraud fairly frequently, also.
Retail criminals use fraudulent credit cards, debit cards and checks to buy large amounts of gift car...
November 23, 2007
dejaking posted this picture of the 2005 Symantec Christmas Party on Flickr. I wonder if they will be singing the "12 days of Christmas Spam" at this year's party. The words for this song (written by some creative Symantec types) are at the bottom of this post!
With Black Friday upon us and Cyb...
November 23, 2007
While John Schiefer a.k.a. "acid and "acidstorm," is facing 60 years in prison and $1.75 million in fines for operating a botnet, the problem isn't likely to disappear anytime soon.
Schiefer was part of a hacker group known as Defonic, who gained a lot of notoriety for hacking Paris Hilton's cell...
November 20, 2007
Apparently, Websense deserves credit for discovering a Trojan downloader pretending to be a e-mail from the Department of Justice (DOJ). Clicking on this attachment is likely to turn your computer into a zombie (part of a botnet) used to send more spam, or even worse used to steal information stored...
November 19, 2007
Reports of the Chinese hacking into government systems are nothing new. Along with the constant reports of substandard products being put on our shelves, there is little doubt that the Chinese pose a threat to our safety in a LOT of different ways.
The U.S. China Commission has just released a di...
November 18, 2007
There are very few identity theft protection services that I TRUST one-hundred percent. The reason for this is most of them require that a victim, or even someone who wants to protect themselves from identity theft, provide them with all their personal information.
Some of them even require that ...
November 18, 2007
It never ceases to amaze me how a lack of information security translates into official statements that no one is aware of any identity theft that has occurred.
With as many people, we know have been compromised, and accounting for episodes like the one below where we probably aren't sure, who re...
November 16, 2007
There is a lot of technology with questionable applications being sold on the Internet. Of course, this is merely my opinion, but I have my reasons for believing this.
Robert McMillan, IDG News Service wrote an INTERESTING article about spyware being sold on eBay that has questionable application...
November 14, 2007
The TJX data breach -- which in case you haven't heard just doubled it's estimate of records compromised from 45 to 90 millions -- has caused a lot of finger pointing between the financial and retail sectors.
Of course, this was revealed in court filings (like the revelation below) and I'll be su...
November 13, 2007
It appears that the Manhattan District Attorney and the United States Secret Service have dealt a significant blow to a Internet crime ring dealing in stolen credit card information, cybercrime and identity theft.
The New York/New Jersey Electronic Crimes Task Force and a host of other agencies a...
November 13, 2007
Until recently, botnet owners seemed to be able to trash people's systems without having to face very many consequences. And in a lot of instances, more than a system gets trashed when it is compromised by a botnet owner.
Friday, the Central California U.S. Attorney's office announced the prosecu...
November 09, 2007
Photo courtesy of slumberparty_uk at Flickr
According to Symantec's November report about 70.5 percent of the e-mail sent to your inbox is spam. This is pretty frustrating for a lot of us, who have to rely on spam filters that don't seem to work very well.
If you are like me, I get spam in my ...
November 09, 2007
I've written a few posts about Suad Leija, the young woman who has provided a lot of the evidence leading to the recent arrests of the main players (jefes) involved in the largest counterfeit documents cartel operating in the United States and Mexico.
These documents are sold to whoever has the m...
November 08, 2007
There are some of us wondering how many more politicians will be caught with their hands in the cookie jar. In the past few years, quite a few of them seem making a mockery of the oath they took when they went into public service.
One of the San Francisco's own is being prosecuted for a host of f...
November 08, 2007
About a week ago, I saw that the amount of compromised records in the TJX data breach had doubled.
Interestingly enough, the allegation that the amount of compromised records had risen from 45 to 90 million wasn't brought forward by the folks at TJX. This new revelation was reported by the bankin...
November 05, 2007
eBay and auction sites are found to have HOT merchandise being sold on them too frequently (my opinion). I ran across a story in the Register, written by Dan Goodin, where two eBay customers cracked a $412,000 fraud case being committed against QVC.
As reported by Dan Goodin:
A woman has plead...
November 04, 2007
In an apparent scam that packs a double whammy, the IRS is being impersonated in a spoofed e-mail requesting donations for the recent Southern California fires.
From the IRS press release:
The Internal Revenue Service today warned taxpayers to be on the lookout for a new e-mail scam that appea...
November 04, 2007
Just about when you think you've seen everything on the Internet, someone comes up with something so outlandish that a reasonable person has to question it's legality.
Jessica K. Brown (AP) is reporting on a website that allows anyone to counterfeit (my term) excuses to provide to an employer.
...
November 01, 2007
Some would argue that sex is one of the oldest social engineering ploys to deceive someone into doing something they normally wouldn't do. As far as I know, it's been being used since biblical times.
Roderick Ordoñez at the Trend Labs Malware Blog (Trend Micro) is reporting that malware is being ...
October 31, 2007
Phishing attempts spoofing (impersonating) government agencies aren't anything new. Here again, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is being used as a badge of authority to trick people into downloading something that is likely to steal their personal and financial details.
From the FTC press rele...
October 30, 2007
More than one out of ten people fell victim to a fraud scheme last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Of even greater interest was the fact that weight-loss scams came out number one, over lottery and buyers-club scams.
From the FTC press release on this:
The Federal Trade Commis...
October 29, 2007
Recent picture of Suad Leija taken during an interview with La Raza. Although not mentioned in many of the articles about this arrest, Suad is responsible for providing a lot of the information used in this latest indictment. Her story has been covered in the mainstream media by Lou Dobbs, Paula Z...
October 28, 2007
A sad commentary on how some people react to a disaster are the amount of scams that surface as a result of them.
The Postal Inspectors are warning us that we are likely to see a lot of these scams appear as a result of the Southern California fires. If you are one of the good people out there, who...
October 27, 2007
Apparently, fraudsters are now able to clone some payment cards, assign a new PIN -- and it appears that the customer's old PIN was used when the bank reviews the transactions.
Card Guide (UK) is reporting:
The Chip and Pin technology that has been in use in the UK over recent years is suppose...
October 26, 2007
The United States Postal Inspectors have produced a pretty telling video showing how Internet criminals lure people into taking jobs that will cause them financial and legal trouble. The film entitled, Work@Home Scams: They Just Don't Pay shows what happens to people, who accept work-at-home jobs th...
October 26, 2007
Here is an interesting blurb about an Arby's employee, who stole $14,524 by using coupons to conceal the fact he was dipping into the till.
NBC10.com (Philadelphia) is reporting:
A fast-food restaurant employee was charged with theft after police said he was skimming the cash register by using...
October 24, 2007
Normally, when e-mail scams are brought up, we think of unfortunate individuals falling for something that's too good to be true. A surprising discovery, found in federal court filings, proves that this isn't always the case.
Yesterday, Rebecca Boone of the Associated Press (courtesy of the StarT...
October 22, 2007
p>Although there are legitimate uses for P2P (peer to peer) software, there is no doubt that there are a lot of dangers to using it, also.Officially, the concerns are how this exposes people to identity theft -- but this costs the entertainment industry (who probably have a few lobbyists dedicated t...
October 17, 2007
(Map of arrest locations courtesy of the ICE website)
Recently, I wrote about how counterfeit documents enable all kinds of undesirable people to blend into our communities. The point of the article was that these documents are used by more than hard working illegal immigrants seeking a better ...
October 16, 2007
Over the weekend, the press has been awash with a story that Iran is refusing to adhere with International money laundering standards.
It appears Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his motley crew of religious extremists don't want anyone looking at their money flow "too closely." My guess is that it might ...
October 15, 2007
It might be a good idea to be careful (or extremely anonymous), when reporting a data breach.
Jaikumar Vijayan at Computer World is reporting an interesting case -- where reporting a data breach brought about some personal grief for both the person, who reported it -- and the person they reported...
October 15, 2007
It appears the data breach bill, which went to Governor Schwarzenegger's desk for signature has been vetoed.
Cheryl Walker at the OC Register is reporting:
An ID theft protection bill that would have made businesses that take credit cards for purchases more accountable to consumers and card is...
October 13, 2007
There has been a lot in the news lately about dangerous Chinese products. At this point, there seems to be too many of them for the average person to keep up on.
I happened to be taking a look at Lou Dobbs' site and found some great resources that the average person can use to determine, whether ...
October 11, 2007
Here is an update to the ongoing saga of Vladuz versus eBay. Apparently, Vladuz, or someone claiming to be him, accessed eBay's servers and suspended some eBay accounts.
Ina Steiner reports on the AuctionBytes blog:
eBay confirmed that a known fraudster had limited access to a very small numbe...
October 11, 2007
...
October 09, 2007
With all the technology that California is famous for, you would think their government websites were state of the art, when it comes to security.
Apparently, this is NOT the case. The result has been a lot of misdirection to sites of a pornographic nature.
Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Soft...
October 08, 2007
You won't get a million dollar guarantee and Tom Fragala's social security number if you decide to use myTruston identity theft prevention/recovery services. You also aren't going to get the paid endorsements for his product by Fred Thompson, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Howard Stern.
Tom, who...
October 08, 2007
Here is a clear case, which shows that just about anyone can have their financial identity compromised. In this case, the victim is none other than the mayor of New York City, Michael R. Bloomberg.
This story is getting a lot of coverage, but no one is saying (if they know) how Mayor Bloomberg's ...
October 05, 2007
The data breach at TJX, which compromised approximately 45 million people has spawned a looming battle between retailers and the financial industry over who should be financially responsible when they occur.
Thus far, we've seen legislation introduced to hold retailers responsible and calls for P...
October 04, 2007
On September 7th, I did a post based off a story that circulated out of Nigeria about an International investigation that might lead to arrests, worldwide.
Apparently, it did and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is now giving more details, including some arrest statistics.
Please note that a...
October 04, 2007
(Counterfeit check picture courtesy of cknlomein at Flickr)
There are a record amount of counterfeit cashier's checks, official checks, money orders, travelers and gift cheques in circulation. This is an attempt to pass on information that the average person can use to tell, whether or not, the i...
October 01, 2007
(Banana Republic photo courtesy of Paul Rene at Flickr)
Gotta love the latest data breach at the Gap. First of all, it involves laptops stolen -- then it is disclosed that the information, which includes everything needed to complete a full identity assumption -- wasn't even encrypted.
Stole...
September 28, 2007
eBay is responding to the latest (alleged) attack on their site by Vladuz by confirming that the account information was valid, however the credit card numbers were not.
Here is what the Chatter (eBay's blog team) has to say regarding their investigation:
I've been in touch with our operations...
September 27, 2007
There is a lot of speculation that eBay was hacked once again, and that Vladuz might be behind the latest episode.
Vladuz, who takes his name from a famous Romanian prince, Vlad Tepes, has plagued eBay with a string of hacking attacks in the past. Vlad Tepes was the inspiration for the novel, Dra...
September 27, 2007
Ted Bridis and Eileen Sullivan of the AP are reporting about a video, which shows how a cyber attack might shut down our utilities.
From the AP article (courtesy of the Washington Post):
The video, produced for the Homeland Security Department and obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday, w...
September 25, 2007
Friday evening, MarketWatch announced that TJX -- who suffered a data breach compromising over 45 million of their customers --has agreed to settle the class action lawsuits that were filed against them after the data breach was disclosed.
The class action lawsuits referred to were filed in both ...
September 25, 2007
Quite often, fraud victims don't want to go public with what happened to them. In my limited experience -- this can be especially true, when dealing with victims -- who hold prestigious credentials.
Fortunately, not all of them remain silent, and by speaking out, they protect others from becoming...
September 24, 2007
Eastern European organized crime, particularly that of the Russian variety, has become a huge problem, worldwide.
On September 18th, six people of Russian origin got caught in what appears to be a pretty large check scam. The press and Fresno PD can only speculate, whether or not, the people arre...
September 21, 2007
Do it yourself (DIY) crimeware kits being sold on the Internet make it easy for non-technical criminals to commit fairly sophisticated (technical) crimes.
DIY crimeware kits have been credited with fueling the information (identity) theft crisis.
Ran into this interesting post on Cappnonymous ...
September 18, 2007
Scam (too good to be true) lure courtesy of miriyaparino at Flickr.
Counterfeit checks like all the ones recently discovered by an International law enforcement team being sent from Nigeria aren't the only bogus financial instruments being sent all over the world.
In this recent effort again...
September 18, 2007
It never seems to amaze me, who gets caught committing fraud. Here is a story that confirms that fact. A former priest has been convicted of stealing a lot of money from his flock and the Church.
A former priest pleaded guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his church by settin...
September 17, 2007
According to the AP, Ameritrade is reporting that someone hacked into their systems and made off with 6.3 million people's information:
Online brokerage TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. said Friday one of its databases was hacked and contact information for its more than 6.3 million customers was stolen...
September 13, 2007
Criminals, who steal goods, whether with bogus financial instruments, or by more physical means might be in for a little surprise if the merchandise is protected by SIRAS PI.
Last week, SIRAS made this announcement in a press release:
SIRAS.com, the pioneer in Point-Of-Sale Electronic Product ...
September 12, 2007
I happened to be checking out the Artists Against 419 site (one of my favorites) and discovered that the site is under a pretty nasty DDOS attack.
But apparently, it doesn't stop there. I found this on SlashDot written by capnkr and posted by CowboyNeal:
"It looks like the efforts of the anti-...
International investigation in Nigeria regarding counterfeit checks could lead to arrests, worldwide
September 08, 2007
A joint operation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, United States Postal Inspection Service and the United Kingdom Serious Organized Crimes Agency has substantiated that a lot of counterfeit checks are being shipped via mail out of Nigeria.
From This Day courtesy of AllAfrica.c...
September 06, 2007
With the high cost of an education these days, dishonest people are using the lure of a scholarship to cheat students and their parents of their hard earned money.
The FTC has a informative page on this trend:
According to the Federal Trade Commission, unscrupulous companies guarantee or promi...
September 05, 2007
Since Blogger has been kind enough to host this blog for about two years now, I thought I should do a post about the recent reports concerning malware and Blogger.Blogger itself, wasn't compromised, but a lot of bloggers individual blogs were. Most people are compromised by malware after clicking on...
September 04, 2007
Photo courtesy of speedwaystar at Flickr
Lottery and sweepstakes scams are on the rise and there seems to be little help for the victims, who fall for them. There also seems to be not very many consequences for the criminals, who are stealing people blind.
Paul Wenske of the Kansas City Star...
September 03, 2007
Photo courtesy of elegantmob at Flickr
The bomb hoaxes occurring nationwide are creating a lot of fear and speculation.
When reading a Slashdot entry, I came across one of the more interesting speculations about these bomb threats. The speculation is that hackers are taking control of the ca...
September 01, 2007
The Chinese, who were recently accused of poisoning pets and selling toxic toothpaste are now being accused of hacking into government computers in Germany.
Roger Boyes of the TIMESONLINE reports:
Der Spiegel, quoting senior officials from the German equivalent of Special Branch, said that the...
September 01, 2007
If you get an e-mail from the Better Business Bureau stating that a complaint has been made against you - it might be a good idea to just delete it.
Websense is reporting:
Websense® Security Labs™ has received reports of a new email spam variant similar to an attack launched early this year. T...
August 30, 2007
Photo courtesy of Jenguin at Flickr
This story shows why it might be important to be careful when checking your lottery ticket at your local 7-Eleven.
Art Campos at the Sacramento Bee is reporting:
A man who went to a 7-Eleven in Roseville to check on his lottery tickets had picked the ri...
August 30, 2007
If anyone thinks our personal information is safe, think again. Panda Labs, an International security software company, recently discovered a tool, which appears to be stealing personal and financial details on a global basis.
From Panda's press release:
A version of Apophis, a tool used by cy...
August 29, 2007
Two more food processing companies have been raided by ICE (Immmigration and Customs Enforcement) in the past week. At least some of the illegal immigrants detained were found to be using stolen identities.
In North Carolina, 25 of the illegal immigrants were using the identities of U.S. citizens...
August 28, 2007
Photo courtesy of shane_allen at Flickr
If you posted your information for a job on Monster.com, you might be getting a letter notifying you that your personal details have been compromised:
Joseph Menn, Los Angeles Times is reporting:
Monster.com said Thursday that 1.3 million users had ...
August 26, 2007
The recent reports about 1.3 million Monster users having their information stolen from the job site has become somewhat of a major news story. While this seems shocking, the truth is that job sites have been targeted by Internet criminals for information for several years now.
Jim Finkle at Retu...
August 26, 2007
It shouldn't surprise anyone that data breaches are becoming more prevalent than ever, or that identity theft is up fifty percent since 2003.
Robert L. Scheier (courtesy of InfoWorld) wrote an article about this that is getting a lot of play in the press:
Today's electronic world is a risky pl...
August 21, 2007
Fake ID picture courtesy of caural at Flickr
I've done a couple of posts about how new employment verification laws are likely cause more illegal immigrants to use real identities. In the not too distant future, Social Security numbers are probably going to have to be able to be tied into a rea...
August 20, 2007
Photo courtesy of CarbonNYC at Flickr
An interesting story hit the news this week about some Russian identity thieves targeting the rich and famous.
The ringleader was talked into meeting Federal Agents in the Dominican Republic, then entered the country (he believed illegally) and was arres...
August 19, 2007
We seem to be facing a looming financial crisis because of irresponsible lending practices that enabled a lot of people to buy property that was beyond their means.
Many will blame the people, who took out the mortgages, but are there other factors bear consideration when looking into the cause?
...
August 18, 2007
Data breaches are likely to become costly to organizations who fail to protect their information. The TJX data breach (45 million people and counting compromised) has inspired several legal actions in both the United States and Canada.
Now a similar action is being brought against Certegy, a chec...
August 17, 2007
I first started reading David Lazarus at the San Francisco Chronicle early in 2006, when he wrote about a huge data breach that was later tied to Office Max. Please note that Office Max never quite admitted to being the point of compromise.
That data breach was tied to payment card fraud that spr...
August 14, 2007
Not all the illegal immigrants slipping across our Southern border were born in Mexico. For years, a substantial amount of them hail from Central America and now there is evidence that Islamic drug traffickers are using the route, also.
Although many of the people making this crossing are looking...
August 13, 2007
Photo courtesy of Leff at Flickr
New scams are invented daily. Here is one, where self-service stamp machines (the kind that accept payment cards) are being targeted at Post Offices.
David Bowermaster at the Seattle Times is reporting:
In mid-July, three men left their homes near Los Ange...
August 12, 2007
Photo courtesy of Big Dubya at Flickr
We keep getting warned that it's dangerous to give out too much personal information on the Internet. In this instance -- semi-legitimate financial companies, supported by annoying pop-up ads and Internet advertising -- have been caught deducting a $159.95 ...
August 08, 2007
(Courtesy of Flickr) Only the photographer knows who is behind the mask.
No one's identity is safe these days. It's just been reported that a lot of celebrity types, including Paris Hilton have had their identities jacked (stolen).
Tampa Bay's 10.com reports:
Investigators busted a massiv...
August 08, 2007
Employers will soon have to take action against employees, who have a Social Security number that doesn't exist, or doesn't match the name associated with it. In the past, they were able to ignore the fact that these types of discrepancies existed.
With statistics showing that employee fraud and ...
August 07, 2007
Another tale of a skimming device being found at a gas station has surfaced in the local Northern California news. In this instance, a savvy customer figured out what was going on and notified the Police.
Koula Gianulias CBS 13, Sacramento reports:
Skimming at the pump. Hundreds of dollars hav...
August 04, 2007
(Courtesy of Flickr)
A new report issued by the Treasury Department's inspector general reveals that too many IRS employees compromised their user ID and password to an unknown person, who was actually a government auditor posing as a help desk employee.
Sixty percent of the IRS employees fe...
August 04, 2007
Ran into a pretty sad story, where it was reported that two Baltimore correctional officers were caught stealing credit cards from inmates they were processing into jail.
John-John Williams IV of the Baltimore Sun reports:
Two corrections officers from the Central Booking and Intake Center wer...
August 03, 2007
Cybersquatting is where people, who may have less than honorable intentions, set up a website with a domain name that appears to be a trusted brand, or organization.
Often, these domains are then used to commit financial crimes on the Internet.
In most of the recent disasters, most notably the...
August 03, 2007
There is no doubt that the iPhone, Apples new entry in the smart phone market, has received a lot of attention. I just had the opportunity to use one and they are truly an amazing toy, especially when compared to what else is out there.
Whenever something is popular, Internet outlaws normally try...
August 02, 2007
I'm predicting the upcoming elections will be pretty interesting. Confidence in our political leaders seems to be at an all time low.
One particularly bothersome phenomenon are stories of elected officials being investigated for lining their own pockets. They seem to be surfacing with alarming f...
August 01, 2007
If you get pulled over in Orange County in Southern California, the information for their traffic court system is likely to be processed in Mexico.
Gordon Dillow of the OC Register did an interesting editorial about this phenomenon and the subsequent fear and outrage this has caused among Orange ...
July 31, 2007
No one can dispute that Lifelock, the identity theft protection company offering a million dollar guarantee, is pretty aggressive in their marketing tactics. They pay everyone from bloggers to the likes of Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh and Fred Thompson to promote their products.
It now appears tha...
July 30, 2007
Earlier this month, I blogged about the Certegy data breach, where a not very HONEST employee got caught selling information to an unidentified data-broker. Certegy was quick to assure the public that none of this information would be used to commit fraud because it was being used by "legitimate mar...
July 29, 2007
I’ve written a lot about how the buying and selling of personal information enables a lot of identity theft to occur. This multi-billion dollar industry assures our most personal information is available to ANYONE, who wants to buy it, and stored in a lot of places that might, or might not be very s...
July 25, 2007
In the world of data breaches, nothing is sacred, not even Disney. It has come to light that a subcontractor (Alta Resources, Inc.) had an employee, who sold credit card information to federal agents.
Jaikumar Vijayan, Computerworld reports:
A subcontractor working for a company that processes...
July 23, 2007
There is nothing that disgusts me more than crimes against children, or crimes against the elderly. The anonymous nature of the Internet has made it easier for criminals to distribute child pornography, as well as, for child predators to have access to our young.
I happened to see a Department of...
July 23, 2007
I've read a lot about street gangs, who used finance themselves by selling drugs, moving into the financial crimes arena. Some say financial crimes are a lot more profitable, and the punishment for getting caught seems to be a lot less severe.
Looks like some of them have gone West (Hawaii) to en...
July 20, 2007
The TJX data breach (45 million records and counting) is rapidly turning out to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Everyone seems to be worried about, who is going to bear the financial burden that data breaches are causing.
Cleve Doty at PrivacySpot.com writes:
Retailers will be forc...
July 20, 2007
Photo courtesy of Ruffit at Flickr
It never ceases to amaze me that we keep seeing additional allegations of abuse, fraud and waste come to light as a result of the Katrina hurricane, and it's aftermath.
Brian Beutler of the Media Consortium (courtesy of AlterNet) wrote a pretty telling artic...
July 20, 2007
Wired News (Kevin Poulsen) reported another instance, where an ATM was easily reprogrammed to think it was dispensing $1 bill instead of 20's.
The same thing happened in Virginia Beach last September.
Wired News reports:
Police in Derry, Pennsylvania are baffled by a June ATM robbery in whi...
July 18, 2007
Will a crackdown on illegal immigration mean that 13 - 20 million people will need to use legitimate social security numbers to work? In response to increasing concerns about illegal immigration, the Department of Homeland Security provides what is known as the Basic Pilot Program (web based), which...
July 16, 2007
If you get an unsolicited call from an "alleged" Social Security employee, it might be wise to verify (independently), who is calling you. Of course -- you should do this by using a number obtained from a legitimate source, and not one pointed to by the person calling -- who might be trying to steal...
July 15, 2007
I've written a lot about ATM skimming -- where electronic devices are used to record payment card information, clone the information on a new card -- and steal money.
A new and much more dangerous (potentially deadly) means of stealing money from ATMs is occurring. Although most of this is happen...
July 14, 2007
Here is an example, where some of the people enabling illegal immigration are being held accountable for their actions.
Last December, ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) made a series of raids at Swift plants. At the time, they seemed to receive a lot of negative attention for doing thi...
July 12, 2007
I came across a thoughtful post about the recent GAO report on identity theft and data breaches written by Dissent, who blogs at the Chronicles of Dissent. This is a well-written analysis, and after reading it, I was inspired to think a few things through.
In Dissents own words:
The June...
July 08, 2007
If your car was recently stolen, it might be a good idea to check out the listings on eBay, according to Dariusz Grabowski, a.k.a (also known as) as the "eBay king of stolen cars."
Rick Hepp at the Star-Ledger reports:
Grabowski and his crew would buy junked or damaged vehicles at auctions ...
July 07, 2007
Large data breaches are becoming a VERY frequent news event! This time only 2.3 million records were stolen, a mere fraction of the amount (45 million plus) TJX lost. In this instance, we are told we have nothing to fear because the information was sold to a data broker.
Ron Word of the AP (court...
July 05, 2007
There is already a lot of "buzz" that mobile phones, especially those of the smarter variety, will be targeted for their "information value."
A product called "FlexiSPY" is being legally sold, which allows anyone (with the money to buy it) to invade the privacy of someone, who uses a smart ...
July 04, 2007
DOJ logo. The press release mentions that the e-mail contain their official logo. Copying graphics is extremely easy to do. Internet criminals do this to make their spam e-mails look more official, or even to create totally spoofed (impersonated) websites.
Recently, Internet Phishermen have s...
July 04, 2007
Japanese police car picture courtesy of Flickr
We spend a lot of MONEY protecting computer systems and the information in them. Despite this, information is stolen or compromised from computers, pretty frequently.
One reason for this is it only takes one person, with access to compromise a sy...
July 03, 2007
In the past couple of months, we've seen some alarming stories about dangerous products coming from China.
Dirk Lammers of the Associated Press wrote:
Poisoned pet food. Seafood laced with potentially dangerous antibiotics. Toothpaste tainted with an ingredient in antifreeze. Tires missing a k...
Collection agency and security company try to scam African government by stealing a corporate identi
June 30, 2007
Collection agencies don't make money by being nice people. Here is a story about how one of them wasn't very honest, either.
I found this interesting story from a press release, courtesy of the FBI website:
Late last month, we helped wrap up a case that took identity theft to a whole new level...
June 30, 2007
Dark Reading wrote about a pretty scary flaw in RFID technology this week. Apparently, it's now possible for corporate spies and even organized retail criminal types to "sniff" RFID chips in a cargo container and use the information to commit a dastardly deed.
Apparently, truckers will be partic...
June 26, 2007
Identity theft victims often get pretty frustrated after being accused of being deadbeats by collection agencies, or even being charged with a crime they didn't commit.
Trying to seek justice seems to do little good, either. Law enforcement rarely has the resources to investigate individual cases...
June 26, 2007
The practice of sending computer back-up tapes containing a lot of personal/financial information home with interns went on for 2-3 years at a government office in Ohio, according to an article in the Columbus Dispatch.
The Columbus Dispatch is reporting:
In fact, it appears that the former te...
June 23, 2007
Spammers love to impersonate official agencies to hook phish. Recently, the attacks have become more specific targeting people by name, and or title. Here is a warning from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC):
Consumers, including corporate and banking executives, appear to be targets of a bogus e...
June 23, 2007
Ever get the idea that the credit bureaus enable a lot of problems, we now face with data-breaches, identity theft and the ever increasing loss of our personal privacy?
One of the main ways they make money is by selling your personal and financial information.
Read a good one on Pogo was Right...
June 18, 2007
Counterfeit Visa Travelers Cheques -- so far seen in $500.00 denominations -- are starting to appear in different parts of the United States.
In the past few years, counterfeit U.S. Postal Money Orders, MoneyGram Money Orders, and American Express Gift Cheques have all been circulated by Internet f...
June 18, 2007
I discovered a long time ago, it would be pretty hard to keep up with all the data-breaches. After all, they seem to happen with alarming frequency.
The most recent blunder, enabled by a State of Ohio security procedure, illustrates how not very secure our personal information is.
Stephen Majo...
June 15, 2007
Kim Zetter from Wired News announced this today:
LifeLock co-founder Robert Maynard, Jr. has resigned from his position with the identity theft protection company following a story published in the Phoenix New Times about his past, which I wrote about last week. CEO Todd Davis left me a voicemail...
June 15, 2007
When the FDA first reported toxic substances in off-brand toothpaste coming from China, it was bad enough. Now counterfeit Colgate toothpaste with the same toxic substance (DEG) is being imported from South Africa.
Some of this counterfeit Colgate toxic toothpaste has been found in "dollar type" ...
June 14, 2007
This isn't the first time that malicious software is being sent disguised as an e-card, but when something works, scammers often use it, time and time, again.
Mary Landesman of About.com is warning all of us:
The latest greeting card scam is once again targeting Hallmark. The bogus email claim...
June 14, 2007
Devices to skim payment card information have become a big problem, whether they are portable devices used by dishonest employees at restaurants, PIN pads replaced at merchants, or devices mounted on ATM machines.
Many of the devices used recently -- use wireless technology -- and the card detail...
June 12, 2007
Julie Amero, a substitute teacher previously convicted of showing porn to students, is getting a new trial.
Given the evidence brought forward after the trial, I'm pretty shocked they didn't just drop the whole matter.
Stephanie Reitz of the AP is reporting (courtesy of the Washington Post):
...
June 12, 2007
*Cartoon courtesy of the Virginia Watchdog site.
BJ (Betty) Ostergren a.k.a. “the Virginia Watchdog” is ONE woman making a difference on a daily basis. The way she makes a difference is by stopping our personal information from being plastered all over the Internet by local governments.
Most ...
June 11, 2007
Phishing has become a huge problem. Criminals (phishermen) spoof (impersonate) a brand or organization that people trust to trick people into giving up their personal, or financial information. The information is then used to steal money.
In the more sophisticated attempts, malware (crimeware) is...
June 08, 2007
Shamus McGillicuddy of CIO News highlights an interesting fact, which is you never know, who is going to fall for a phishing scam.
The phishermen normally send out a lot of bait (spam) in the hopes of hooking a few phish.
Shamus writes:
Over the last week and a half, spam messages purported...
June 08, 2007
Not very long ago, credit and debit (payment) card fraud was considered a cost of doing business. With carder forums and data breaches, the cost of payment card fraud has reached billions of dollars, and merchants, especially smaller ones, are being impacted in a negative manner.
There seems to b...
June 06, 2007
You would think that we would have learned by now that products from China can be DANGEROUS for a variety of reasons.
Most recently -- our pets were poisoned and millions of dollars of products were pulled off shelves -- after it was discovered that pet food imported from China contained poison...
June 05, 2007
Ray Stern, of the New Phoenix Times, published a scary story about an identity theft protection service, called “LifeLock.”
The article suggested that LifeLock was founded on stories that are questionable, and run by a Robert Maynard Jr., who seems to have a few skeletons hiding in his closet.
...
June 04, 2007
Identity thieves have no honor. They don't care if they steal from our grandparents, or the families of those, who protect all of us by putting themselves in harm's way.
Here is a particularly ghoulish scheme reported on the Red Cross site:
The American Red Cross has learned about a new iden...
June 03, 2007
Skimming credit and debit cards has become too easy with the irresponsible sale of technology. All the necessary techie devices to commit what many consider a "high tech crime" are being sold on the Internet - even on auction sites - such as eBay.
Yesterday, I read about an arrest of one of the I...
June 03, 2007
Gas prices have gone over $3.00 a gallon for most of us, and seem to rise whenever there is an anticipated emergency, whether it actually happens or not. I've long been an advocate of the "does it make sense theory” and prices being raised for emergencies that never actually happened, DOES NOT, at l...
June 02, 2007
Ever wonder why our social services are going bankrupt? Here is a story, from a FBI press release, showing how $101 million was paid out in fraudulent health care claims.
Reading the release also made me wonder, where all the names to claim services, came from?
From the FBI release:
On May ...
June 02, 2007
There is another effort to curb fraud, phishing and financial misdeeds in the blogosphere. This week, Google launched a blog called the "Google Online Security Blog," which is designed to protect their users from the sometimes dangerous (murky) waters on the Internet.
In their own words (from the...
May 30, 2007
A Florida scam artist has been caught after ripping off thousands of people in what is known as an advance fee credit scheme. The scam -- which targets a market segment known as the under banked -- offers credit to people, who wouldn't qualify for it, otherwise.
Although variations of advance fee...
May 30, 2007
Not so long ago, I did a post about how the federal government was phishing their own employees.
It didn’t surprise me that many of the phish took the bait, pretty easily. It would just mean that the federal employees, who were phished are no different from the general population on the Internet....
May 28, 2007
The Secret (Mystery) Shopper scam is running full steam and victimizing people, daily. The last time, I addressed this problem was in a post, where I noticed I was getting a lot of hits from Google on this subject. Recently, a lot of people have been reading my previous posts about this scam.
Her...
May 20, 2007
Not all the financial information being stolen comes from data breaches at large corporations. Quite often, it is inadvertantly given away by the victim, when they are tricked into doing so.
If you see a website selling goods for prices that are too good to be true, it might be a ploy to steal yo...
May 20, 2007
These days, identity theft is being used for more than to commit financial crimes. A woman in Georgia (Tonia Leach) discovered her identity was stolen after an inquiry showed up on her credit report from a temp agency and Equifax. The still not identified impostor used the woman’s identity to obtain...
May 17, 2007
Well placed government sources claim that the government loses $300 billion a year in healthcare fraud - with about half of this figure being stolen from immigrant gangs - many of whom hail from the former Soviet Union.
Troy Anderson of the LA Daily News reports on one small part of the overall p...
May 16, 2007
Information (identity) theft sometimes leads to innocent people being charged with a crime. Recently, I've been reading about how British citizens were accused of viewing child pornography, when they were actually victims of credit card fraud.
The Guardian did an excellent article about this, exp...
May 11, 2007
Dark Reading had a story that caught my eye (courtesy of Bank Systems & Technology) stating that a 150 million people in the United States are scared of online banking.
For fear of becoming the next victim of identity theft, 150 million U.S. consumers don't bank online, according to experts. But ...
May 09, 2007
Will stricter return policies drive Target's customers, elsewhere? Some are saying their new return policy (which will require a receipt for cash returns of $20 or more), isn't very customer friendly, and will do just that. Some are also questioning, whether another policy (how they verify plastic t...
May 07, 2007
A lot of payment (credit/debit) card fraud is caused by dishonest employees, who skim the information from cards, or might simply forget to return them to you. And when they "forget" to return them to you, it might be intentional!
The New York City District Attorney's Office announced:
Manhatt...
May 07, 2007
Yesterday, I wrote about how the FBI is warning us that personal details can be stolen (i-jacked) when using public computers. This occurs using crimeware, previously installed on a public computer, logs the keys you are stroking and sends the information (electronically) to criminals.
It can be ...
May 05, 2007
It could be pretty expensive to check your online banking assets at Internet cafes, or at the public computer in a hotel's business center.
Here is an interesting article by Robert Schmidt at Bloomberg.com, quoting FBI sources, where he says:
Tens of millions of dollars have been looted from o...
May 04, 2007
For the first time, I can remember a data-breach is being reported the day after it was discovered by an agency entrusted to protect and serve the public at large. Here is part of the press release from the Transportation Security Agency (TSA):
Yesterday the Transportation Security Administrati...
May 04, 2007
The hurricane disasters, and their commentary on social issues, continue to amaze me. To me, the rest of the world can learn a lot by studying the ongoing problems related to the disaster.
The amount of money wasted, or lost to fraud (over a billion and growing) is a sad commentary, when a lot of...
May 02, 2007
Most of get a lot of phishy e-mails requesting personal and financial information from criminals pretending to be a trusted brand. Now they are adding a devious twist designed to beat fraud detection software, which is used by a lot of companies as a means to detect fraudulent transactions, early on...
May 02, 2007
To anyone familiar with crime on the Internet, allegations of criminals laundering money using E Gold are nothing new. Because they only require an e-mail address to open an account, the transactions are pretty anonymous, which is something that criminals find desirable.
Apparently a task force f...
May 01, 2007
The Identity Theft Task Force has issued the formal recommendations they've been putting together since May, 2006. The recommendations include feedback solicited from the general public.
The final report is comprehensive -- identifying all the issues that have made identity theft and the financ...
May 01, 2007
Here is a great example of why there is so much identity theft. In Ontario, a man and his wife went right back committing identity theft, while on bail for running a payment card (debit/credit card) skimming operation. As you will see, they were by no means, small operators.
From newsregiondurham...
April 30, 2007
For the second time in the recent past, a former IRS employee (this time a deputy director) is guilty of committing fraud. Specifically, he helped a dishonest tax preparation service convince tax payers to claim illegal deductions, by claiming they were legal.
From the DOJ press release:
A for...
April 30, 2007
We seem to be seeing a record amount of credit/debit (payment) card fraud recently. The latest is a $3 million scheme -- where restaurant servers were recruited to steal their customer's financial information -- using portable skimming devices, which seem to be easily purchased over the Internet.
...
November 30, 1999
Krackin is one place you don't want to try to download music, or videos. The result will be your computer becoming what is known as a zombie, which will be used to spew out spam e-mails, which facilitate Internet fraud.
If you have clicked on this, I highly recommend reading the link in Websense'...