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Child Identity Theft (Part II)
If you missed the first part of this series, please visit Child Identity Theft (Part I).
Child Identity theft is the fastest growing sector of the identity theft “industry,” and the numbers are staggering. Although it’s difficult to estimate exactly how many children lose their identities since the crime can go undetected for years, the FTC states that 5% of identity theft cases target children, which translates into 500,000 kidnapped child identities per year, and growing. The Carnegie Mellon CyLab Report states that in 54% of the cases, the child was under the age of 14.
The identity thief is not always a stranger. In many cases, it’s a relative with bad credit who takes advantage of a child’s pristine credit. Conveniently, these family members generally have access to the information necessary to maximize the fraud with little attention. This seems absurd, but imagine a parent who is strapped for cash, has a bad credit score and needs to buy groceries. In this case, short-term thinking blinds the relative or friend to long-term consequences. In other instances, the child’s future is not taken into consideration at all.
Frankly, it doesn’t take much to get the crime underway; all a criminal needs is the child’s name and Social Security number. These pieces of personal information are exposed in a variety of ways:
Credit Freeze Stops Financial Identity Theft
Freezing your credit is the number one way to protect against financial identity theft. If everyone in the country applied for a Credit Freeze, identity thieves would quickly be out of business. At least, a major part of their business. Take 30 minutes and lower your chances of identity theft drastically (see the online Freeze links at the bottom of this post).
To go directly to placing a security freeze on your 3 bureau accounts, page down to the bottom section.
Every time you establish new credit (e.g., open up a new credit card, store account or bank account, finance a car or home loan, etc.), an entry is created in your credit file which is maintained by companies like Experian, Equifax and TransUnion (listed below). The trouble is, with your name, address and social security number, an identity thief can pretend to be you and can establish credit (i.e., spend your net worth) in your name.
Your Child is 51X More Likely to Become Victim of ID Theft (Part I)
Allowing our children the innocence of their childhood is paramount to us as parents. Because our children are pretty much the center of our universe, we want to do everything in our power to keep them safe and to safeguard their futures. In this information age, identity theft has become global in its reach and can have devastating consequences for our children’s futures if we’re not vigilant from the day they acquire a Social Security number.
Why are our kids, the very people we most want to protect, so vulnerable? Because they have unused, unblemished credit profiles. Richard Power, Distinguished Fellow, Carnegie Mellon CyLab, recently published the first ever child identity theft report based on identity protection scans of over 40,000 U.S. children. It is extremely alarming that 10.2% of the children in the report had someone else using their Social Security numbers. That figure is 51 times higher than the rate for adults of the same population.
We take so many steps to protect our children. But how often do you check their credit report? “Check my kid’s …credit report?,” I can hear you say. “She is only seven! She doesn’t even have her front teeth yet, let alone a credit card! There are so many years to go before we need to worry about that. Right?”
Top 7 Reasons Mobile Banking Apps Aren’t Safe (Yet)
A new study produced by The Ponemon Institute and ThreatMetrix (Mobile Payments & Online Shopping – October 2011) states that only 29% of consumers use mobile banking apps on their smart phones and tablets. Of those that don’t participate, 51% cite security reasons for their lack of participation. In other words, consumers like you and I are not yet comfortable with mobile banking. And our instincts are correct! Why shouldn’t you be comfortable with mobile banking appsquite yet?
Top 7 Reasons Why Mobile Banking Apps Aren’t Yet Safe
- Because most app stores (e.g., Android Marketplace) don’t review apps for security, it is very easy for criminals to post malicious apps that steal information from your mobile device (like your bank account numbers).
- The average smartphone or tablet user has installed no security software on their mini-computer (that’s what smartphones and tablets are), meaning that they have only a fraction of the security of a laptop or desktop.
- Detected malware developed for the Android platform alone has increased by 400% in the past year.
- The technology that keeps apps separate on your smartphone or tablet doesn’t separate them out into private sandboxes, meaning that one app can read the juicy details stored in the other without much difficulty.
Is Your Wireless Carrier Tracking Your Surfing Habits (Maybe)
Oh what your mobile phone carrier knows and tracks about you! A one-page document from the Justice Department‘s cybercrime division shows how cell phone companies record and retain your call and surfing activity (calls, text messages, web surfing and approximate location). Here’s a summary of how each company retains your information (full details in the image below):
- Verizon Wireless – rolling one-year records of cell tower usage & what phone accessed what web site
- AT&T / Cingular – ongoing records of cell tower usage since July of 2008
- T-Mobile USA – doesn’t keep any data on Web browsing activity
- Sprint Nextel’s Virgin Mobile – 3 month record of text content
- Other than Virgin Mobile and Verizon, none of the carriers keep texts but they keep records of who visited a particular web site.
- Verizon keeps some information for up to a year that can be used to ascertain if a particular phone visited a particular Web site
- Sprint Nextel’s Virgin Mobile keeps the text content of text messages for three months. Verizon keeps it for three to five days. None of the other carriers keep texts at all, but they keep records of who texted who for more than a year.
- AT&T keeps up to seven years of records of who texts who — and when, but not the message content. Virgin Mobile keeps that data for two to three months.
iPad Vampires: 7 Simple Security Settings to Stop Data Suckers
Information is the currency and lifeblood of the modern economy and, unlike the industrial revolution, data doesn’t shut down at dinnertime. As a result, the trend is towards hyper-mobile computing – smartphones and tablets – that connect us to the Internet and a limitless transfusion of information 24-7. It is an addiction that employers encourage because it inevitably means that we are working after hours (scanning emails in bed rather than catching up with our spouse).
In the work we do to change the culture of privacy inside of organizations, we have discovered a dilemma: iPads are not as secure as other forms of computing and are leaking significant amounts of organizational data to corporate spies, data thieves and even competing economies (China, for example, which would dearly love to pirate the recipe for your secret sauce). Do corporations, then, sacrifice security for the sake of efficiency, privacy for the powerful touch screens that offer a jugular of sensitive information?
Of course not! That’d be like driving a race car minus seat belts and air bags.
iPads provide a competitive advantage, and like generations of tools before it (the cotton gin, the PC), individuals and organizations alike will be forced to learn how to operate this equipment safely or risk the bite of intellectual property vampires. Here are 7 Simple Security Settings to help you lock down your iPad much like you would your laptop.
U.S. is Dumb About Smart Cards
The typical US consumer still swipes their card, credit or debit, with those same old black magnetic stripes. And, we hold our breath and hope they work, and don’t lead to erroneous (fraudulent) charges we have to defend. The rest of the world has switched to Smart cards, according to Peter Svensson, The Associated Press, in The Denver Post. “The problem with that black magnetic stripe on the back of your card is that it’s about as secure as writing your account information on a post-card”.
Svensson comments “Smart-cards (chip-based cards) can’t be copied, which greatly reduces the potential for fraud. Smart cards with built-in chips are the equivalent of a safe: They can hide information so it can be unlocked only with the right key”.
This begs the question, why is the US lagging in this technology? How do we re-vamp our system to promote smart-card transactions? Some experts maintain that it is a lack of demand by everyone from consumers and issuing banks to retail establishments. In essence, we don’t want the added security. This, of course, is just a smoke screen to obscure the underlying issue: no one wants to pay for it. Consumer don’t feel like they should pay for the technology (through higher card fees) even if it makes them safer (Haven’t we always been pretty safe?). Banks don’t want to pay to issue higher-cost cards with chip technology (they probably think it is cheaper to weather the costs of fraud – it is not). And retailers don’t want the added expense of new, more sophisticated equipment.
Sileo on 9News: Aurora City Council Identity Theft
AURORA – Five of Aurora’s most powerful politicians found out how vulnerable they truly are. They’ve joined a long list of people who have fallen victim to identity theft.
The city councilors thought they were alone, until they heard from their colleagues at a council meeting.
“It was kind of a relief when I found it was a council thing and not me personally,” said Councilor Molly Markert.
Markert and four other councilors received bills for items they never even purchased, including electronic devices.
If there was ever an expert on identity theft, John Sileo would certainly be high on the list.
He’s written a few books on the issue and even does work for the Department of Defense and Homeland Security.
Sileo says the thief or thieves likely cracked the councilors’ codes by one of two ways.
“It’s either an inside job which is someone got paid to funnel information out, or, the second way is their systems were hacked in to, it’s also very common,” Sileo said.
Read the full Aurora City Council Identity Theft Story.
John Sileo is America’s leading keynote speaker on identity theft, social media privacy and trust building. His clients include the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, the FDIC, Pfizer and organizations of all sizes. Learn more at ThinkLikeASpy.com.
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