Detection: Fraud and Identity Theft.

“Consumers are spending considerably more time on fraud Resolution, up to an average of 30 hours in 2008. This increase may be attributed to the increased sophistication of fraud schemes.”
-    2009 Identity Fraud Survey Report, Javelin Strategy & Research

Most cases of identity theft are discovered by the victim, which reinforces the importance of monitoring your various accounts for suspicious behavior. Here are a few of the most common warning signs for the detection of fraud, identity theft or data breach:

The Top 15 Ways Victims Detect Identity Theft

1. You receive a data breach notice in the mail from a company you do business with.
2. Your bills or statements are not arriving in your mail (or email) on time.
3. You notice unauthorized charges on your credit card bill or debit card statement.
4. You notice new accounts or erroneous information on your credit report.
5. You are denied credit for a purchase.
6. You receive credit card bills for cards you don’t own.
7. You are contacted by a collection agency about an item you didn’t purchase.
8. You receive bills for unknown purchases, rental agreements or services.
9. Businesses won’t accept your check or credit card.
10. You are unable to set up new banking, loan or brokerage accounts.

What began in early 2009 as a free ‘information network’ that offers users the ability to microblog may have already reached the top. A new CNN article discusses how the number of Twitter users has flattened out and even deccreased recently. In July 2009, the site had 21.2 million users which dropped to 19.9 users only 5 months later in December.

Some believe this slump is due to Twitter’s inability to keep up with its users and others are finding the site less and less useful. Perhaps people are less inclined to put so much personal information on the World Wide Web, knowing that everything you post is public, permanent and exploitable. Or maybe we’re just tired of seeing how boring the average person’s day is.

Click Here to read this entire article.

John Sileo became one of America’s leading Social Networking Speakers & Identity Theft Expert after he lost his business and more than $300,000 to identity theft and data breach. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer and the FDIC. To learn more about having him speak at your next meeting or conference, contact him by email or on 800.258.8076.

What started in 1997 as a research project and a mission as the way to organize the world’s information has turned into the worlds largest search engine. Google has given anyone with an Internet connection access to more information than they realize. With such quick access to information, you need to be careful what you put on the World Wide Web and realize what is contained in your Google History.  Remember, posts – and searches -  are permanent. Here are a few privacy issues when it comes to Google:

1.    Google’s Cookie and Toolbar. When you use their search engine, Google places a self-renewing cookie with a unique ID number on your hard disk. As you search websites, Google records your surfing activity and saves your searches. There are ways to change your Internet options to stop the cookie tracking and you can learn more by visiting www.google.com/support/accounts/.Remember, nothing you do on the Internet is private; it is all tracked, aggregated, analyzed, sold and used for a variety of purposes (many of them good). The advanced features of Google’s new toolbar for Internet Explorer not only updates automatically, but it also tracks which websites you visit.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, was interviewed just last week by Mike Arrington, co-founder of TechCrunch. They discussed privacy and how Facebook is looking to move forward in the future. Zuckerberg made some really interesting comments on Facebook, but I think the most prevalent to Identity Theft would be what he said on the progression of information sharing.

“People have really gotten comfortable, not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.”

Zuckerberg also said that when Facebook began most people thought: why would I put any information on the internet at all? Now most users don’t think twice about privacy before making posts. Due to the Privacy changes Facebook made in December, your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. Many people feel that this is a contradiction to what Zuckerberg had said before — that Facebook privacy controls are “the vector around which Facebook operates.” With more than 350 million users on Facebook, privacy is more important than ever.

It is also imperative that we all understand that we don’t have to share that information. It isn’t just Facebook’s responsibility to look after our privacy, it is ours as well.

As we discussed in Electronic Information Privacy – Securing Your Job Part I, if you are an employee at a corporation, association, university or small business, you must realize that protecting electronic information and organizational data is vital not only to your company’s profitability, but for your job security.

Here is a crash course on how to promote information security within your company. The most effective way to build a Culture of Privacy is to break it down into 3 simple steps (most corporations skip the first step, dooming them to failure):

1.    Motivate the Individual. Train yourself, your employees and executives on how to protect identity and company information first. Learning the basic principles of privacy at an individual level is a pre-requisite for all subsequent forms of data security, and supplies the necessary motivation to apply the same habits at work. Each employee needs to overcome their own apathy, ignorance and inaction before they are equipped to protect corporate assets.  By making it personal, your executives and employees are acquiring the building blocks necessary to construct a corporate Culture of Privacy. Electronic information privacy training is good for their wellness, and is a means to a safer and more profitable end.

Electronic information privacy will eventually be one of the criteria on your job performance review. In fact, it’s not just electronic data that you should be concerned about, but all data. If you are an employee or executive at a corporation, association, university or small business, you must realize that protecting organizational data is vital not only to your company’s profitability, but to your job security. If it isn’t right now, it will be soon.

As a company employee or business leader, it is essential that you clearly understand the relationship between identity theft, data breach and your bottom line.  One of the costliest data security mistakes I see executives make is that they initially approach data privacy from the perspective of the company. They don’t recognize the following reality: All privacy is personal. It’s not electronic information privacy. It’s not physical data privacy. It’s personal.

In other words, many people in your organization won’t care about data security, privacy policies, intellectual property protection or data breach until they understand what it has to do with them. If employees and executives don’t care about protecting their own identities (to prevent identity theft), how can you expect them to care about protecting corporate identity (to prevent data breach)? Like the emergency oxygen masks on a de-pressurized airplane, you’d better put your own on first or you’ll be worthless to those around you. Protecting yourself first isn’t self-centered; it’s effective and educational. Information Privacy Training begins at the human level and expands outwards to the group level. And it is not technical by nature.

Albert Gonzalez, the Miami hacker who creeped into the systems of Heartland Payment Systems, TJ Maxx and 7-Eleven plead guilty last week to the cyber crimes that stole over 130 million debit and credit card records. He previously plead guilty in September in a separate case where he stole 40 million credit and debit card information. In the latest case he could now serve no less than 17, but no more than 25 years for the theft of payment card details from the compromised systems. Not too tough a sentence for someone who stole from over 170 million of us!

Gonzalez’s attorney claimed a mix of Internet Addiction, Asperger’s Syndrome and alcohol abuse for this identity information theft. Although, when he plead guilty in September, Gonzalez admitted he led an international ring that stole credit and debit card records from U.S. retailers including Naperville-based OfficeMax Inc. and BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. The question still remains if those that worked with him will even be found, let alone prosecuted. The light punishment doesn’t seem to fit the extensive ring of information theft and identity crimes that Gonzales committed.

Cases like these make me wonder what it would take for a white-collar criminal to get a life sentence for such a crime?