(Tom Fragala, CEO of Truston and Identity Theft Victim Advocate) 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 industry say the services they provide are available for free and the proponents say they are making a difficult process easy for busy... Read Full Story
(Photo courtesy of naveenium at Flickr) 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 might add a little malicious software (containing a keylogger) and steal all your personal and financial information. A recent case showing how pirated software... Read Full Story
(Photo courtesy of wazzywooze at Flickr) 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 really knows? Here is the possible compromise, where no one seems to be certain, whether or not, a lot of people were compromised courtesy of the State of... Read Full Story
*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 of these records have been sitting in different county offices for a long time, however in the past ten years; many of them have gone online. These records contain everything a criminal would need to... Read Full Story
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 Administration ( TSA ) became aware of a potential data security incident involving approximately 100,000 archived employment records of individuals employed by the agency from January 2002 until August 2005. An... Read Full Story
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 secure. With all the data breaches that occur, my guess is that it is stored in a lot of not very secure places. The Consumers Union’s FinancialPrivacyNow.org is running a campaign, where you can... Read Full Story
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 wide assortment of crimes. It also allows a person to protect themselves, as well as, find out if they have anything to be concerned about free-of-charge. A person is only charged for using the... Read Full Story
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 Protection Services: Double Digit Growth to Continue ." The report, released December 2007, provides a comprehensive analysis of the key identity theft protection services and is based in Javelin's... Read Full Story
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 banking industry. They also reported at least $151 million in fraud losses have been associated with the breach. This isn't the first time in recent history that the estimate of losses has risen... Read Full Story
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 reported. So far as information used before the breach is discovered, it's pretty hard to prove where the information came from in an identity theft case. With so much compromised information out there... Read Full Story
