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:
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?”
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.
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.
College Students Destroy Financial Future with Poor Choices
College is the perfect period of life to begin sound financial practices including protecting privacy. Not only are college students vulnerable, but they are impressionable and well positioned to learn strong habits that will last them a lifetime. As students launch into independence, we, as parents, hope to give them the best tools possible to insure a bright future. One of the most vital tools is to establish healthy habits that will guard their financial and personal identities for the rest of their lives. People ages 18 -24 are the least able to spot identity theft according to the BBB. That age group needed more than four months to realize someone had damaged their credit history or used their identity. By taking a few precautions, a young adult can avoid the crushing job of trying to recover from having given away the keys to their financial future, which is especially overwhelming while navigating life away from home for the first time.
Identity thieves don’t care a whit if the student has a dime – they just want a clean financial record in order to commit crimes using their credit and future buying power. Unfortunately, thieves are often someone the student trusts: a friend, dorm mate, co-worker, or someone who poses as a sanctioned person on campus. Identity thieves may use personal information to open credit card accounts, access financial accounts, rent an apartment or even commit larger cases of fraud, implicating the student. Here are some tips to get you and your student started down the road to protecting their financial future:
If You Hacked into Rupert Murdoch’s Voicemail…
If you hacked into Rupert Murdoch’s voicemail, you would hear the message I just left him:
Thank you , Mr. Murdoch, I owe you one. I’ve spent the past five years trying to convince the world of something you managed to do with one simple scandal. I’m sorry that you will probably lose your reputation and much of your company and wealth because of it (not to mention your self-respect), but the world will be a better place for it. Why? Not just because our phone is ringing non-stop with companies and individuals that want to protect their private information.
It’s because you, Mr. Murdoch, awoke the PRIVACY BEAST! Two weeks ago, no one paid very much attention to voicemails being hacked. The average Facebook user was shrugging off the knowledge that their data was being systematically collected, aggregated and sold to the highest bidder all for Facebook’s financial gain. Android users ignored the warnings that malicious apps disguised as harmless games were funneling their bank account numbers, contact lists and geographic whereabouts to locations in Iran and North Korea. iPhone users continued to load their phones with as much data as a laptop without even password protecting the darn thing. Most of us lived in a comfortable, pitiful, stupor of privacy ignorance. But today, everyone suddenly cares .
How Secure is Your Gmail, Hotmail, YahooMail?
I just finished an interview with Esquire magazine about the security of webmail applications like Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and YahooMail. Rebecca Joy, who interviewed me on behalf of Esquire, wanted to know in the wake of the Rupert Murdoch phone-hacking scandal, how secure our photos and messages are when we choose to use free webmail programs.
The simple answer? Not very secure. Just ask Vanessa Hudgens (nude photos), Sarah Palin (complete takeover of her email account) and the scores of celebrities and power figures who have been victimized by email hacking.
Think of using webmail (or any web-based software, including Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, etc.) as checking into a hotel room. Unlike a house, where you have tighter control over your possessions, the same is not true of a hotel. While you definitely own the items you bring into a hotel room (laptop, smartphone, wallet, passport, client files), you don’t have nearly as much control as to how they are accessed (maids, managers, social engineers who know how to gain access to your room). In short, by using webmail to communicate, you are exchanging convenience for control.
Here are the five most common ways you lose control:
- The password on your email account is easy to guess (less than 13 characters, fail to use alpha-numeric-symbol-upper-lower-case, don’t change it often) and someone easily hacks into your webmail account, giving them access to your mail, photos, contacts, etc.
Sileo In the Media
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