You’ve probably seen in the news that a hacker gained access into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo.com email account. The hacker used a simple scheme and basic social engineering tools (research on Google and Wikipedia, common-sense guessing) to reset the password on the account and assume ownership of her email. [For a full account of how a professor, Herbert H. Thompson, used these tools to steal a friends identity (with their permission), visit his recent and extremely interesting article, How I Stole Someone's Identity and the companion radio interview.]
In addition to denying Governor Palin access to her own account, the hacker had full control to:
Read every saved and current email in her account (hopefully she never sent her Social Security Number, passwords or account numbers via email, not to mention correspondence pertaining to her role as candidate for Vice President of the U.S.)
Steal the email addresses and any other sensitive information stored in her contacts (John McCain might want to change his email address)
Send out emails as if the hacker were Sarah Palin, or worse yet, send out official emails as Alaskan Governor, Sarah Palin
The Privacy Problem: Thanks to laptops, smart phones, DVDs and a deluge of other data-holding mobile devices, we carry as much sensitive data with us as we keep in our homes and offices. These devices are at a much higher risk of theft when they are in transit.
Are you one of the 200,000,000+ Americans (almost 66% of the US population) who had their identity stolen from TJ Maxx, Marshalls, BJ’s Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21 or DSW?
Some readers might not know that I was a two-time victim of identity theft for losses of more than $300,000. That is the reason I wrote Stolen Lives and that I am now a professional identity theft speaker. I don’t promote my services any more than necessary on my blog (I leave that to my commercial website which deals with my profession as an identity theft speaker and expert). Quite often, however, I have blog readers requesting to see a preview video of my speaking. To satisfy that request, I’ll post a copy of my identity theft speaker preview video below. By the way, I learned the value of linking my YouTube videos, my blog and my website from an amazing SEO guy named Steve Mertz. Check out his SEO advice.
I just finished giving an identity theft prevention and data privacy speech for Pfizer and one of the questions I received was how to protect your laptop, passports, client files, etc. when you leave them behind in your hotel room. I’ve blogged on this before, but thought that I would post a quick video reminder on protecting your identity in a hotel room. We are at such a greater risk of identity theft when we are traveling that it is worth taking a second look at your habits.
For more tips of this type, please visit my YouTube Identity Theft Expert Video Channel at www.YouTube.com/JohnSileo. It is relatively new, but my office is working diligently to add content every week. Some people like to read, some like to watch, so I will continue to add blogs of both types. Travel wisely this summer.
I’ve never been a big fan of LifeLock. You can easily implement most of what this identity theft protection service offers by doing it for yourself - for free (see the identity theft tool box). It appears that Ron Lieber of the New York Times is also questioning the validity of this identity monitoring service (along with many other industry experts, journalists and class action lawyers). But all services are not created equal. Continue reading “LifeLock Identity Monitoring a Fraud?”
Since the publication of my identity theft prevention book, Stolen Lives - Identity Theft Prevention Made Simple, several resource links listed in the book have changed. Since the book is not a dynamic document, but this blog is, I’d like to provide updated links here. If you find other links in Stolen Lives that have become outdated since publication, please use the Contact form above to let me know. If you have good sources of identity theft prevention, please include them with a response below. Click through for the update links that I know about so far… Continue reading “Stolen Lives Book Updates - Identity Theft Resources”
If you receive my newsletter, you’ve already seen this article on identity theft during tax season, but I thought I would re-post it here.
Tax time is like Christmas for identity thieves. Our personal information sits out on desks (ours and our tax preparer’s), is mailed improperly, emailed incorrectly and stored unsafely. And to top it all off, Continue reading “Top Tips to Stop Tax Time Identity Theft”
I just finished speaking to an amazing group of financial advisors at the Lincoln Financial Group Planning Forum. This is a group of people who take the security of their business information, the privacy of their clients and their own personal data safety very seriously. It was an identity theft prevention speech, but specifically geared to the exceptional amount of identity handled by financial planners. These are people who have to proactively protect physical client files, filing cabinets, computers access, wired and wireless networks, trash, mail, hiring policies (to avoid bringing an identity thief into the company), mobile devices, and many other forms of information vulnerability as part of their everyday job. That is a lot of responsibility, and this group handles it beautifully. But I gave them some advice that turned out to be suspect… Continue reading “Protect Your Laptop from Identity Theft while Traveling”
You’ve probably seen in the news that a hacker gained access into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo.com email account. The hacker used a simple scheme and basic social engineering tools (research on Google and Wikipedia, common-sense guessing) to reset the password on the account and assume ownership of her email. [For a full account of how a professor, Herbert H. Thompson, used these tools to steal a friends identity (with their permission), visit his recent and extremely interesting article, How I Stole Someone's Identity and the companion radio interview.]
Since the publication of my identity theft prevention book, 
