Each year the holiday season finds millions of shoppers cramming the malls and filling the online airwaves with the sounds of commerce. They are also filling both the stores and the fiber optic cables with checking account and credit card numbers. Paula Fleming, a spokesperson from the Better Business Bureau, a consumer advocacy organization, said, “[It is] critical that we all take specific steps to fight both low and high tech ID thieves.” This is especially true right now.
Low Tech Identity Thieves Low tech thieves have used approximately the same techniques for at least the past several decades to commit identity theft. Their methods include wallet snatching, shoulder skimming, and the ever popular trash digging.
Wallet snatching is, of course, when a person grabs your wallet or purse, with or without your noticing. It’s not the smartest course of action to fight a thief to get the item back, especially if he or she is bigger than you.
Two former University of Central Missouri students have been charged with stealing the identities of thousands of their classmates and faculty.
According to court documents, Joseph Camp, 26, and Daniel Fowler, 21, worked together in a computer hacking scheme while they were students during the fall semester of 2009. The two made a computer virus to infect University of Central Missouri computers, including the university president’s computer.
Once the virus was installed, the two were able to record a user’s keystrokes and download the user’s files. They obtained the username and password of a residence hall director, which they allegedly used to switch money from university accounts to their own.
They also obtained the username and password for a university administrator, allowing them to turn on the computer’s webcam to watch the administrator work and to download his e-mails, the indictment said.
Whenever you go on vacation, it’s likely people tell you to make a copy of your travel materials, your ID and your credit cards before you leave town. This can help you considerably if your purse or wallet is stolen by an identity thief – or just a run of the mill pickpocket. What people don’t tell you is that you could be providing an identity thief with your personal information just by using the copier, if that copier saves the copied data on its hard drive. While this type of theft isn’t common right now, it certainly could be in the future as people upgrade to more sophisticated office machines.
This threat was famously put to light during a report put together by CBS. Correspondent Armen Kateyian pointed out that a lot of people neglect to empty the hard drives on their copiers, which means that they have a record of each document ever copied on them.
When a virus recruits an infected PC into a botnet, a criminal hacker is able to remotely access all the data on that computer.
Robot networks, or botnets, have a varied history. A bot, which doesn’t necessarily have to be malicious or harmful, is essentially a program designed to connect to a server and execute a command or series of commands.
As reported by a McAfee study, networks of bots, otherwise known as drones or zombies, are often used to commit cybercrime. This can include “stealing trade secrets, inserting malware into source code files, disrupting access or service, compromising data integrity, and stealing employee identity information. The results to a business can be disastrous and lead to the loss of revenue, regulatory compliance, customer confidence, reputation, and even of the business itself. For government organizations, the concerns are even more far reaching.”
In the second quarter of 2010, more than two million PCs were recruited into botnets in the United States alone.
According to a new study hospitals are struggling to protect patient information and data breaches cost the health care industry $6 billion annually.
The survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute included 65 health care organizations. Of the 65 surveyed, an alarming 60 percent of respondents said they have suffered more than two breaches in the past two years.
The top three causes of breaches were unintentional employee action, lost or stolen computing devices and third-party accidents. The average number of lost or stolen records per breach was 1,769.
The survey found that breaches have cost the U.S. health care system $12 billion over the past two years.
Q: I have two laptops, a desktop at my lady friend’s, and a desktop at my son’s. Can one 50GB account back up each of them? Can any user on one computer get all files or just his own user file?
A: To figure out if 50GBs will be enough, you’ll need to do a rough estimation of the amount of data you intend to back up. First, decide what you want to back-up. If you’re just backing up text documents and emails, it should be no problem. If you want to back up music files and photos, it might not be enough. Go to each folder you want to back up and choose “properties” to see what the folder size is. Then add them up, keeping in mind that you’ll be adding more data over time. You need room to grow.
It sounds like SugarSync might be just the thing you need. You’ll see in the screen shot below how you can use the SugarSync interface to access files on multiple computers.
With open enrollment for Medicare beginning November 15th, identity thieves are on the prowl. They are looking to obtain Social Security numbers and bank account information to commit fraud.
“There are people out there looking for opportunities to come and give you wrong information, or do things fraudulently,” said Renard Murray, Regional Administrator with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Atlanta.