Another Scam, Another Potential Identity Theft Threat

I open my inbox, and what do I see? Another scam alert. Another potential identity theft threat. This one is not particularly original. It refers to a telephone scam targeting senior citizens. The goal of this scam is to get people who fall for it to fill out a phony grant application, provide a cell phone number and then wire money using the Western Union service. In exchange for wiring the money, the people are promised a much larger sum in the form of their approved grant.

In Maryland, this scam is perpetrated using the name “Living Well.” This is an actual grant, but in terms of the scam it is of course not legitimate. In fact, it could easily lead to identity theft, since grant applications ask for personal information. If you are contacted and the phone call you receive sounds eerily familiar to this entry, you’re asked to contact the Federal Trade Commission at ftccomplaintassistant.gov.

The reality is, though, that there are literally hundreds of scams out there, and more and more are created every day. While some of them are so obviously fake that pretty much anyone can guess, there are many that even the savvy consumer can get victimized by. If this weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be over nine million identity theft victims in this country every year. This is where an identity theft protection plan can really come in handy. You shouldn’t have to spend your days worrying about whether every letter or phone call or piece of mail you get is actually legitimate.

If a thief gets a hold of your personal information, a protection plan can help ensure that he or she is unable to use it without your knowledge. Left to his or her own devices, said thief could drain your bank accounts and even impersonate you on identification such as a drivers license or a passport. With a plan in place, you should be alerted to fraudulent usage of your information right away so that you can put a stop to it.

This doesn’t mean that you should ignore the obvious, though, even if you have a plan. For example, if someone you don’t know asks you to wire money, it’s a good idea to just say no to that. The problem with wiring money is that it is difficult to get it back, if possible at all. It’s not like a credit card charge where you can simply reverse the charge if you find that it was ill begotten.

Study Shows Lackadaisical Attitude Towards Identity Theft

A lot of predictions are made about 2011: what the weather will be like, what songs will be big hits, what movies consumers will flock to see … Predictions are also made about what might trouble us in the year ahead. The Faces of Fraud: Fighting Back survey was designed to do just that, in regards to identity theft. The Information Security Media Group, which got responses from over 230 professionals in the finance industry, came up with some sobering findings which could spell trouble for 2011.

*A full 76 percent of those surveyed first found out that fraud has occurred when they are notified directly by their customers or members.
*Only 34 percent of those surveyed said that they plan to increase the money they spend on fraud prevention in the new year.
*Only 20 percent of the respondents said that they had the resources they needed to combat or prevent phishing attacks.
*A full 55 percent still use manual methods to prevent fraud instead of more integrated cross-channel protection.

According to George Tubin of TowerGroup, this somewhat lackadaisical attitude to identity theft is just unacceptable in this day in age. He told the managing editor of Bankinfosecurity.com, “Many institutions only know about fraud when they get notified by the customer, and that is not indicative of an industry that is really trying to address the problem.” Matthew Speare of M&T Bank agreed that many security issues are simply seen as an afterthought.

Not giving you a huge amount of confidence in the protection capabilities of your financial institution? Good. The number one person who should be looking out for your information’s safety is you. In fact, 76 percent of those who responded to the survey said that consumer education, as well as employee education, is key – the top way to fight back against fraud.

The educated consumer should read up on identity theft protection companies. They have a track record of success, and many Americans swear by them. This site is a great resource to help you with your research, and save you some money when you make your decision on which one is best for your needs.

Famous Cases of Identity Theft

If you’ve been following our identity theft blog pretty closely, it’s likely you know quite a bit about the case of Albert Gonzalez, who stole debit and credit card information from large national retailers in order to acquire $1.65 million, a condominium and a BMW. Gonzalez is now serving a prison sentence of 25 years, but his is just one of the high profile cases that have occurred during our time.

A second one that you may have heard about, but probably only through a cinematic experience, is the case of Frank Abagnale. As far as identity thieves go, Abagnale was a pioneer. Back in the 1960s, before anyone even knew what the Internet was, he committed over $2 million in check fraud and pretended to be eight different people with eight different occupations, including a doctor, a lawyer and an airline pilot. His five year reign finally ended when he was captured by the FBI – after escaping two other times. He was sentenced to 12 years and served four. Now, he’s a respected identity theft consultant.

While you’ve probably heard a lot about Tiger Woods recently, and none of it portraying him in a particularly kind light, have you read about the other Tiger Woods: real name Anthony Lemar Taylor? This “Tiger” was able to obtain a real driver’s license in the state of California with the name Eldrick Tiger Woods on it. With this license, and a Social Security card he was able to get thanks to having said license. As Tiger Woods, he got 12 credit lines from retail stores and charged over $25,000 on them. Too bad he already had two strikes against him. As a result of the conviction for this third crime, in 2002, he was given a prison sentence of 2002.

These examples show that identity theft is certainly not a new crime, even though it has only really been making major headlines for the past few years. It is also interesting to note that identity thieves still have a lot of the same MO: taking advantage of people’s tendency to trust others to be who they say they are. The warning here is to be wary, especially when you have a gut feeling that you shouldn’t trust someone. If you feel suspicious of a person who is asking you for personal information, you are perfectly within your right to refuse to give it away or ask to do so through another channel.

Clean Old Cell PhonesOr Risk Identity Theft

Since new cell phone models get released all the time, and older cell phones reach the end of their battery life spans, people are constantly looking to upgrade to the newer and the better. This means that you may soon be looking to unload and old and tired cell phone or offering it up for sale. Before you do so, make sure it’s clean so that the new owner, or a person who grabs it from your trashcan or the electronics recycle bin, won’t be able to see your private information or commit the crime of identity theft against you.

Take the SIM Card

This piece of electronics, also known as the Subscriber Identity Module, holds information like text messages, phone numbers and addresses of your contacts and other personal details. To take it out, you should be able to simply remove the cover from the back of your phone and then slide it out. If you need help, go to a store that carries your phone and ask a customer service representative or call the manufacturer for instructions.

Take the Memory Card

If you have a more sophisticated phone, especially a SmartPhone, it may have a second card – called a memory card – that you use to store video and apps. If you see one when you’re removing the SIM card, be sure to take it out as well.

Delete the Internal Memory

The mistake a lot of people make is thinking that once they complete the first two steps they are done. The problem is, a lot of phones also have an internal memory that stores some of the details. You will need to completely reset the phone to get this information removed. To find out how to do this on your particular phone model, check the owner’s manual that came with it or call the manufacturer. Just make sure you save anything you need before you do this, or you’ll have lost it permanently.

Finally, if your unsure how to do any of the above then reach out to someone who does know or check with your phone provider. The last thing you want to do is leave yourself vulnerable to identity theft because you left your personal information in your old phone.For more practical tips on preventing Americas fastest growing crime please read our identity theft blog.

Identity theft service shopping tips

So you’ve decided that you want to buy an identity theft protection plan. Good for you for taking the initiative to start protecting your personal information. Now, you might be a little confused as to how to shop for the right policy for you. Luckily, I can provide you with some tips.

Find out the company’s basic information. This site is a great resource for discerning who offers each identity theft protection plan, where each is based and who provides the insurance policy, if applicable.

Here are a few more things you should find out or ask yourself before buying identity theft protection

Find out what exactly the service monitors. Some services monitor only your credit report, while others keep an eye on the use of your Social Security number, driver’s license number and other information as well. Some even check for address changes.

If its a credit monitoring service do they monitor all three major credit bureaus daily?

Do they offer additional fraud detection systems?

Find out what the service offers to help you if you’re already a victim of identity theft or if you become victimized while you are under the protection of the service.

Find out if you can have multiple people on your policy, such as your spouse, household members or your children, at a discounted rate.

Find out the exact cost of the service. Some services are segmented, so the cost is catered to the services that you choose based on personal preference and needs.

Read through the privacy policy. If you don’t see one posted on the particular service’s website, call and ask to have one sent to you by email or by postal mail.

Read the text of any guarantees that the service offers so that you know what you’re expected to get out of the service.
Look over the cancellation policy. It’s important that it offers a fair way to discontinue the service just in case you try it and decide that you would prefer to use a different policy instead.

Check to see if they have any free trial offers.

What about customer service… how good are they? Where are they based? What are the hours?

Remember that choosing an identity theft protection plan is an important decision to make. Since there are so many different ones to pick from, there’s no need to be hasty and perhaps end up with one that’s not perfect for you. Take time to do your research and make an educated choice. Even if you are pressed for time you should at least review the top three or four companies, LifeLock, TrustedID, Identity Guard and Debix. No matter which policy you choose, you’re doing your part to protect yourself and your family from the increasingly prevalent and potentially devastating crime of identity theft.

Can Weddings Cause Identity Theft

Weddings bring with them a lot of stress, with all of the decisions that need to be made and the sometime disgruntled relatives involved. Along with these well-documented problems, there is one that few engaged couples think about. It is the fact that they could be at a higher risk for identity theft.

An article last year in the Dallas McClatchy-Tribune explained some of the reasons why this elevated risk can happen. Basically, couples can be distracted at a time when their information is especially vulnerable.

Here are five reasons why:

1. The couple and their families are involved in a busy and hectic time, which can cause them to be a little more lax than usual in managing everyday affairs.

2. Couples may register for gifts over the Internet, which can give thieves both members’ full names, their address and a good idea of personal preferences they may use when generating their passwords.

3. The couple deals with many different vendors they may not be familiar with, from photographers to florists, opening them up to the possibility of scams more than usual.

4. The couple may be making a lot of financial transactions, which could increase the likelihood of thieves getting a hold of their account information.

5. The couple may set up a wedding website, which again exposes their personal information to the public at large, even if it only contains their names, their wedding date and the venue.

The most secure thing to do is to keep all wedding information off the Web. However, in this day and age this is not very practical. The next best thing is to keep the details posted to the absolute minimum and to change any passwords related to them in any way. For example, if you put a picture of your dog Pongo on your wedding website, don’t use Pongo as a password, or username, for any of your accounts.

Other ways to prevent ID theft from happening are the same in these circumstances as in any other one. For example, check your credit report three times per year using annualcreditreport.com, shred any mail that has personal information in it before throwing it out, put mail with personal information (such as the checks you have to send for vendor deposits) in a locked mailbox to send them out and consider enrolling both yourself and your future spouse in an identity theft protection plan.

Though it may seem nontraditional, you can even ask for a year’s payments on an identity theft protection service as one of your wedding gifts. Just select the plan that you would like and add it to a registry that is not store specific, such as one you put up on that aforementioned wedding website. You can have people send you money through PayPal to pay for it as well, since they cannot sign up at LifeLock for you due to evident security reasons.

It is a good thing for a couple to have when they are starting out. In fact, it could be the most important gift you get on your special day.

Child Identity Theft

Childhood is supposed to be an innocent time. Kids shouldn’t have to worry about paying bills, getting loans or using credit cards to make purchases. For this reason – plus the fact that most credit is only available to persons over 18 – kids should not have credit records on file. If you look up your child’s name through one of the three credit bureaus it should come back as “no record.”

The sad truth is, though, that some kids aren’t so lucky. These kids have been victims of identity theft, and most don’t even know it. They will find out – of course – when they get older and want to buy a car or a house or even just open a low-limit student credit card. That’s when the delinquent accounts, bad debts and even bankruptcies will come to light – which could have been on the record for years, making it even harder to get the removed in a lot of cases.

You may be asking yourself how kids can be victimized by identity thieves when they don’t even have any credit available to steal. It’s easy. Kids still have names, birth dates and Social Security numbers, with the Social Security number being the key item in this case. When you simply see a string of nine digits, you don’t know the age of the person it belongs to and you have no idea what this person looks like, buy you’d probably assume it is an adult – an assumption that can get an identity thief pretty far.

This assumption has led to babies with auto loans, toddlers with utility bills and the like. A lot of times a relative or close family member – sometimes even a parent – steals the child’s Social Security number to pass off as his or her own if this person has gotten into some credit trouble, but this isn’t always the case. Sometimes it’s a hospital or school employee, and sometimes it’s someone who simply guesses the number and doesn’t know it belongs to a child.

This is why identity theft protection plans – such as TrustedID – offer protection to parents and grandparents as well as their dependent children. While some people may think it’s silly to buy such a plan, it could be the best investment you ever make in your child’s future, and an affordable one at that. LifeLock also protects your children but grandparents will have to sign up separately.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

While the new movie that just came out highlights some of the problems that occurred when Facebook was getting its start, it’s important to know that the mother of all social networks still have some serious issues, identity theft being one of them. Even with the management of Facebook getting a lot of flack as of late in regards to sharing users’ personal information with the community at large, it’s still super easy for an identity thief to create an account using another person’s name and picture – and then to use that profile to become “friends” with people that individual knows. There is no identity verification required to create a Facebook account.

Think about it. If you got a friend request from someone with a name you know and a photograph you know, you really wouldn’t have any reason to think that account was illegitimate, unless you specifically asked the person about it. Thieves take advantage of this innate trust and use these Facebook accounts to mine for additional personal information or to ask their “friends” for money.

One of the leading scams in regards to this was one that circulated for several weeks. Facebook users told their “friends” that they were stranded overseas and needed money wired to them so that they could get home. There is no record of how many people actually fell for this scam, but it’s likely that tens of thousands of individuals were contacted. The sheer volume of people with Facebook accounts makes these types of scams easy simply due to the law of odds. If you try enough times, someone will eventually fall for it.

FBI agent Alice Tsujihara recently told NBC LA, “A few years ago, statistically they said one in four are victims of identity theft, but with all the skimming and counterfeiting, I think all of us will eventually become a victim and we certainly will know people that have been victims of identity theft.”

Even if you’re not a member of Facebook, you can still be targeted by a thief using a Facebook scam. This happened to Diane Solomon. The only reason she found out she had a “Facebook account” is because a friend sent her a text message and brought up their recent Facebook chat, of which Solomon was not actually a participant.

Those who have Facebook accounts need to change their passwords on a regular basis and make sure they are not the same ones they use for other online accounts, such as their primary email address. If you get a strange message from a “friend” on Facebook, even if you know the person, contact that person directly to verify the legitimacy. Think of it in the same way you would a phishing email. There is nothing wrong with being suspicious.

Johns Hopkins Identity Theft

If you live in the Baltimore area, you probably know of Johns Hopkins as one of the premier medical centers in the country. If you live in another part of the country, you may have heard of Hopkins because it is the setting for a case of identity theft involving fraudulent credit cards and the stealing of over $600,000. On October 4, five individuals were indicted on charges of stealing patients’ personal information and using it to open accounts at retailers that offer instant credit.

At least one of the individuals, Jasmine Amber Smith, was on the hospital’s staff. Among the victims were both patients and the parents of patients who were under the age of 18. Smith and her accomplices allegedly got credit accounts at at least 50 different stores. While not all of these cards were in different people’s names, each one created a different file on the person’s credit accounts.

It is hopeful that the victims of these thefts had identity theft protection plans. That way they could have learned quickly that the fraudulent accounts were being set up in their names. Otherwise, it could have been weeks or even months before they noticed anything was awry. The protection plan not only helps prevent some cases of identity theft, but it also helps the victims know before collection agencies have the opportunity to get involved. It’s much easier to fix things before you have a negative mark on your credit.

Zeus Malware Program Designed to Steal Data

While those familiar with Greek mythology know of Zeus as the king of the gods, those familiar with identity theft know that the mighty Zeus has a much more sinister side. Zeus is the name of a malware program that has been around for a while and is designed to steal data. Recently this program was used to phish people’s information when they made online purchases. While you are probably familiar with phishing emails, you may not have heard of this newer and similar scheme.

With this Zeus attack, legitimate merchants are having their websites taken over. When a customer goes to make a purchase, a popup window appears stating that the person needs to create an account with either MasterCard SecureCard or Verified by Visa to continue. These legitimate services are, ironically, designed to give you greater Internet security. They require you to set up a password to use when shopping online so that people who have your credit card number and three digit security code still can’t use it to shop online without your permission.

However, when you “sign up” for these protections through a Zeus hacked site, this of course isn’t the case. To register for one of these services, you’ll need to – understandably: – provide your credit card information. If you enter your credit card information on a hacked site, well, the rest is history.

To prevent this from happening, pay attention to your online surroundings, so to speak. If you notice a suspicious popup window on a site that is not itself suspicious, get off the site and contact the webmaster. Sometimes webmasters don’t know that their sites have been victimized. Either they don’t visit often or the attack hasn’t been going on very long

– usually the latter. If the site itself is suspicious, it’s likely the webmaster knows and is probably embracing the practice.

Before entering personal information, even if you’re just signing in to an existing account with your username and password, look for the Web address to start with “https” instead of just “http.” Also look for the lock icon, which is just like what it sounds like. It appears to be a padlock and should show up in the bottom right corner of your screen. If the page is super secure, you might see a green address bar. This is not something to worry about…. its a good thing.

While this Zeus virus is, obviously, out in the open now, it doesn’t mean it’s not still out there – plus – you may have already been victimized and not realized it. That’s where identity theft protection can come into play as your fallback option. To paraphrase an old commercial, it works hard so you don’t have to. If you’ve seen a questionable popup or you do in the future, it’s smart to run a virus scan on your machine. Sometimes malware can take residence on your computer behind the scenes – logging keystrokes or recording your preferences so it can send you spam.

« Previous Page — Next Page »