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Q: I use PayPal to accept credit cards for my online collectibles business. I recently received an email that my PayPal account was going to expire in five days if I didn’t click a link in the email and give them my PayPal account information. Being naturally paranoid I decided not to give this information and I’m happy to say that my PayPal account did not expire. Was this a scam? — Brenda A.

A: Be thankful that your paranoia kicked in, Brenda, because you were about to fall victim to the scam of the week, this one aimed at the 35 million merchants and individuals who use Paypal.com as their online payment processor.

The email you received was not from PayPal, but from an Internet bad guy behind a forged email address using the PayPal.com domain. You should understand that no reputable online company will ever ask you to provide your account information. Think about it. They already have this information. Why would they ask you to provide it.

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Tags: identity theft, PayPal.com

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By CAROLYN MALONEY

SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR

Imagine for a minute a world in which you go to a locksmith to have locks put on your doors at home. To your surprise, the locksmith tells you that federal law doesn’t allow you to get locks until after a burglar has actually broken into your home and stolen your belongings. Chances are you would be bewildered – and more than a little bit upset.

Unfortunately, this type of counterintuitive thinking isn’t confined to a bizarre alternative universe — it could become a reality. A data security bill on its way to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote, as currently constituted, contains language that would allow consumers to control access to their credit reports only after they discover an identity thief has established a false account in their name.

In this age of electronic banking and Internet transactions, it is easier than ever to have your personal data stolen. Twenty six million of our nation’s veterans recently were made vulnerable to the dangers of identity theft when a single government laptop went missing for almost two months, and each week we read of a new loss of personal data that threatens thousands more Americans. By now, many victims have found out the hard way that once a criminal sets up false accounts in your name, it is very difficult to clear your credit, and you may be unable to buy a car, or a house, or get a credit card, for years.

Giving consumers the ability to "freeze" their credit reports equips them with an invaluable tool to keep identity prowlers away from their information – like putting locks on your doors. Twenty states, including my home state of New York, already have laws that give their residents full control over access to their credit reports. It has been reported that the Ohio legislature is considering enacting a file freeze law, and other states are moving in that direction. But with H.R. 3997, a bill due on the House floor shortly, Congress might roll back those state laws and prevent states like Ohio from enacting the same protections.

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Tags: identity protection tools, identity theft, Social Security number, PayPal, eBay

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Theft of a company’s identification can silently destroy a business. A fraud detection specialist explains what it is and how it works.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) July 24, 2006 — For three years a fraud was perpetrated upon A2G Company Inc. of Los Angeles. The company’s real name is being withheld because the fraud almost destroyed it. The crime was finally discovered when a tax department levied the corporate bank account for three years in back taxes.

The Company president (name withheld) couldn’t understand what was happening. He had signed all the tax payment checks himself. And they had been prepared for timely submission by the company’s CFO.

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Tags: identity theft, fraud

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7/25/2006 - ALBANY (AP) — The names, addresses and Social Security numbers of as many as 540,000 injured workers have been lost, and the state and a contracted company are trying to protect the workers from identity theft.

In New York, company and state officials said Monday that the data was on computer hardware that is missing from a secured facility of the company, Chicago-based CS Stars, an independent insurance brokerage.

Most of the workers are New Yorkers from across the state who are in two special funds of the workers’ compensation system. One group is all workers who have a second injury and another is all workers who have a past injury that creates new problems, said state Workers Compensation Board spokesman John Sullivan. The state-owned personal computer provided to the contractor, CS Stars, ‘‘cannot be located,’’ according to a letter the company sent to the people whose information was lost.

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Tags: identity theft, social security number theft

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By Ria Taormina
NewsChannel 3

What will thieves think of next? Identity theft is happening more and more. Now, we even have to be on the look out for our car’s ID! Tonight, we have more on why you should watch out for your car’s personal information, too.

There’s a new kind of identity theft — your car’s identity, that is. It’s your auto’s VIN number, which is its Social Security number, in a way. Not only can it tell someone the car’s history and owner’s name, its stat’s are there, too!

"What the year is, the model is and some vehicles, the paint it has and gives the characteristics of that car," said Tracey James with AAA in La Quinta.

The VIN number is unique to every car. Just like your Social Security number is used to steal a person’s financial identity, a VIN is used to steal a car’s identity.

Here’s how it works:

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Tags: ID thieves, Identity theft, auto’s VIN number, Social Security number, AAA, VIN numbers, a lemon, DMV

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20/20 Looks at Ways Thieves Can Steal Your Information
By GLEEN A. RUPPEL

June 16, 2006 — A simple home-grown experiment by one crafty citizen showed just how easy it can be to steal someone’s personal information.

Rob Cockerham was tired of getting pre-approved credit card applications in the mail and he reacted the way most of us do by cutting them up and throwing them in the trash.

Anyone who can get hole of it can use it to their advantage at your very expense. Identity theft is basically the act of using your personal information without your knowledge to commit fraud or other crimes. On credit card identity theft, it could mean that such criminals can use your account for their own purchases.

How can such crime happen to someone like you? If you use your credit card on your regular purchases, there are a lot of chances that criminal can get hole of your credit and personal records. If you handout your credit card to servers at restaurants, you might be making yourself vulnerable to identity theft. If you sign your credit cards, criminals may be able to make use of your signature to commit a variety of crimes under your name.

Your personal information should be on your own safeguard because a lot of crimes can be committed using your own records. It can be as easy as calling your own credit card issuer to change your billing address once they get hole of your credit card information. The impostor can then run charges on your account without you even knowing it because your bills are being sent to a different address.

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Tags: identity theft, identity theft book, Your Evil Twin, Exxon Mobile Speedpass, Independent Security Evaluators, annualcreditreport.com

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By Tim Mullin Cox News Service

WASHINGTON — As identity theft becomes a growing problem for Americans, Congress has begun pushing for greater personal identity safeguards.

But the effort has sparked a battle on Capitol Hill between consumer advocates and the banking industry over just how far the government should go to protect the public.

Among the contentious issues: At what point should financial companies notify consumers when their personal data — such as social security and drivers’ license numbers — have been compromised or stolen? And when should consumers be able to demand that their credit reports be inaccessible to people or companies wanting to see them?

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Tags: identity theft

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Tags: identity theft

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Best Places expert, Bert Sperling, announces national survey results; Intersections Inc. characterizes new phenomenon as ‘iJacking’

Jul 11, 2006

CHANTILLY, Va., July 11 — The phenomenon of iJacking, a new term created by Intersections Inc. (NASDAQ = INTX) to encompass the far reaching financially and emotionally devastating impact of having thieves assume your identity or use your Social Security number to commit fraud, is found to be an alarming problem with clear geographic and socio- economic divides for cities at risk. With identity theft complaints to the FTC topping 250,000 last year, Sperling’s Best Places finds the San Francisco Bay Area to be the most at risk area for iJacking. In fact nine of the top ten cities most at risk for iJacking are on the West Coast, while the majority of the safest cities fall to the East.

- San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, San Jose, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Las
Vegas, Sacramento and Phoenix are all among the top ten most at risk
cities.
- Eastern cities like Pittsburgh, Buffalo, New Orleans, Providence,
Rochester and Virginia Beach are among the safest.

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Tags: iJacking, identity theft

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Goeteborg University Chooses Strong Authentication Solution to Help Protect Student and Faculty Records With Entrust IdentityGuard

Jul 11, 2006 | 817 words, 0 images

DALLAS, July 11 — In order to help protect records from 60,000 students and faculty so that those records can only be accessed by authorized parties, Goeteborg University plans to implement Entrust IdentityGuard from Entrust, Inc. (NASDAQ = ENTU) represented by the Entrust Nordic distributor Pointsec. Entrust IdentityGuard is a cost effective and user friendly solution that provides a range of authentication options supported from a single platform.

"We wanted an authentication solution that would provide strong security but also be easy to use for our students and faculty and also be economical to manage," said Sven-Elof Kristenson, IT manager at Goeteborg University. "Because we can combine the Entrust IdentityGuard grid authentication capability with the identity cards we already issue to our students and faculty at the beginning of the school term, it fit seamlessly into our existing system and will give us the ability to make even more services available online for everyone."

The university chose the Entrust IdentityGuard because it offered unprecedented flexibility. Because the Entrust IdentityGuard grid authentication capability can be used to access records administration, file storage, reports, e-mail and calendar functions, it was a natural choice for stronger authentication. Ease of integration and usability also were factors that led to the decision to implement Entrust IdentityGuard.

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Tags: identity theft, Entrust IdentityGuard, Goeteborg University, Authentication Solution, www.entrust.com, Pointsec, mobile device security, automatic data encryption, mobile devices, Pointsec Mobile Technologies AB, Protect Data AB, www.pointsec.com, Michelle Metzger, Entrust, Inc.

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