Latest Identity Theft News:

23 October 2009

TrustedID’s Risk Rating Service

Score Helps Consumers Prevent Identity Theft by Calculating Their Risk and Suggesting Steps to Reduce It.

San Francisco, Calif. – October 27, 2009 : TrustedID, the nation’s leading provider of identity theft prevention solutions, today announced the immediate availability of its new Identity Threat Score. This risk rating service helps consumers reduce their chances of falling victim to identity thieves by calculating their risk level as a numerical score. The service also suggests steps that customers can use to improve their score and lower their risk of theft.

The Identity Threat Score serves as an early warning system to help prevent identity theft before it happens. This score employs TrustedID’s exclusive IdentityScan™ scoring model to analyze data from hundreds of sources, including public records, credit reports, the Internet and other proprietary databases. Using this data, consumers are assigned an Identity Threat Score, on a scale of 0-500 that indicates their risk of ID theft as being high (over 400), low (0-300), or somewhere in between. Based on this score, the system suggests immediate preventative steps that consumers can take to reduce their risk and improve their score.

“Understanding your risk is the first step to preventing identity theft,” said Scott Mitic, CEO and founder of TrustedID. “It’s easy to keep track of things you can control – like safeguarding your wallet and not giving out your personal information over the phone. But there are literally billions of bits of data floating around about each and every one of us that we can’t easily control – online browsing and shopping habits, magazine subscriptions, catalog mailing lists, and many others. The Identity Threat Score helps you discover how this relatively unknown data can affect your risk of becoming a victim and how you can reduce that risk.”

Identity Threat Score with IdentityScan empowers consumers with access to the type of sophisticated technology that is currently used by major credit card providers around the globe to analyze risk. The system works by identifying specific patterns and combinations of information proven to increase a consumer’s risk of identity theft. By analyzing this data, IdentityScan is able to accurately predict the likelihood of identity theft, while limiting the number of false positive alerts that lead to unnecessary concern for consumers.

With its direct, real-time communication with consumers, Identity Threat Score provides up-to-the-minute risk analysis to further enhance the accuracy of IdentityScan’s scoring models, identify real cases of fraud or theft and the patterns of data that lead up to them.

“It’s one thing for us to show you that you are at risk, but the Identity Threat Score goes one step further to help you reduce that risk,” Mitic said. “Based on your individual risk profile and score, Threat Score provides information that you may implement immediately to help reduce your risk, giving you a more proactive solution that doesn’t just warn you about the problem.”

Identity Threat Score is the newest addition to TrustedID’s comprehensive suite of identity theft protection and prevention that recently received a Five-Star rating from Javelin Strategy & Research comparing the identity theft and fraud prevention services of 20 vendors. TrustedID was the only vendor in the report to address medical identity theft, and also earned high marks for its lost wallet assistance and CreditLock^TM, which allows customers to block credit bureaus from releasing their credit reports to third-party vendors.

About TrustedID
TrustedID delivers proactive identity theft protection solutions to help safeguard individuals, families, and businesses. With the industry’s most comprehensive platform of identity theft prevention solutions, TrustedID provides over a dozen forms of protection. TrustedID’s IDFreeze service includes access to our 24/7 On-Call Protection team and is backed by a $1,000,000 warranty. The company’s latest innovation, Identity Threat Score, calculates an individual’s immediate risk of falling prey to identity theft and recommends immediate steps that can be taken to prevent it. These and other aspects of TrustedID’s protection are based on proprietary technology that dramatically reduces the likelihood of identity theft. TrustedID’s Data Breach Solutions group serves businesses of all sizes with protection for data breaches, immediately safeguarding the identities of those directly affected.

17 July 2009

Twitter Was Hacked, Again!

The San Francisco-based company, Twitter, has become victim of a security breach for the third time.

In this latest case, a hacker got the password for an employee’s personal e-mail account, possibly by guessing or by correctly answering a security question. He then worked from there to steal confidential company documents.

Most social security sites do not use SSL, thereby the session ID of their user, which is included in the URL, sits on a proxy. Hackers use this effectively to gain entry. Also, password recovery features of employees private email account get compromised as in the case of Twitter.

Identity theft is vulnerability on social networking sites. It’s always important not to leave open complete profile and contact information. It is an area that needs user education.

Article on FOX NEWS: Twitter Hacked, Confidential Files Made Public

17 July 2009

Police Sergeant Arrested!

University of Central Missouri police sergeant and wife arrested in identity theft scheme

A University of Central Missouri police sergeant and his wife have been arrested in an identity theft involving the stolen Social Security numbers for 7,000 students and alumni.

James and Amanda Drake have been charged with fraud, forgery, illegal credit card use and filing a false police report.

The FBI and university police are continuing their investigation.

Read Entire Article: The Kansas City Star

16 July 2009

Student Stole 80 Identities!

A medical student from Chicago is facing federal charges in connection with an elaborate financial scheme he allegedly carried out while living in Portland and studying at Saint Joseph’s College two years ago.

He was charged June 29 in federal court with one count of bank fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft. But court affidavits say he stole the identities of more than 80 people all over the United States. If convicted, he could face as much as 34 years in prison.

Investigators say Pidan admitted to using the identities of between 80 and 100 people to steal money from various banks.

Pidan admitted opening between 80 and 100 bank accounts in other people’s identities at Bank of America, Chase Bank and Washington Mutual Bank. He opened mailboxes in places like Fargo, North Dakota, and Rapid City, South Dakota, to be used as mailing addresses in connection with the fraud.”

Read Entire Article on Portland Press Herald

16 July 2009

ID Theft concern after burglary

Burglary of state storage facility creates ID theft concern

Thieves targeted a Phoenix storage facility near 7th Street and Indian School Road last October, taking two hard drives.

“We think simply somebody broke in and was after the computers, not knowing anything about what might have been on the computers,” said Steve Meissner, communications director for the Arizona Department of Economic Security.

The backup drives stored sensitive information about parents and children enrolled in the Early Intervention Program for children age three and under with disabilities or developmental delays.

Read Entire Article on ABC15.com

15 July 2009

SecureID to combat ID Theft

“Identity theft and fraud is the fastest growing crime in the United States, and government-issued documents like our driver’s licenses and ID cards are targets for people who commit these crimes. In fact, the BMV today has over 500 active cases of identity theft or fraud.” – Andy Miller, commissioner of the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV).

The SecureID initiative to combat identity theft and enhance the security of driver’s licenses and ID cards was announced last week.

Effective January 1, 2010, all Hoosiers will need to complete three simple steps when renewing, amending or applying for a new driver’s license or ID card: 1. Assemble appropriate documents proving their identity, 2. Present those documents at a local license branch, and 3. Receive their driver’s license or ID in the mail after security checks are complete.

Read Entire Article Here: http://www.carrollcountycomet.com

14 July 2009

State Protects ID Theft Victims

State protection for victims of identity theft

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (ABC 4 News) – Millions of people become the victim of identity theft in the US every year, but the State of Utah has set up a website to make it easier for ID theft victims to protect themselves.

“Identity theft is a crime of opportunity, what we encourage people is take away the ability for somebody to do it to you,” said Utah Attorney General’s Office Chief Deputy Kirt Torgensen. He said the state spent hundreds of hours creating the id theft site because of the overwhelming increase in id theft crimes.

Read Entire Story Here: http://www.abc4.com

13 July 2009

Identity Theft Top Complaint

FTC: Identity Theft Top Consumer Complaint in 2008 – FOX NEWS

According to a report issued by the Federal Trade Commission, identity theft accounted for 26 percent of all consumer complaints received in 2008.

The report says among the most common forms of identity theft, credit-card fraud was tops at 20 percent. Following close behind were government documents/benefits fraud and employment fraud, both at 15 percent.

Entire Article on FOX: http://www.foxnews.com

FTC Releases List of Top Consumer Complaints in 2008

12 July 2009

Hackers Sell Your Identity

Hackers Can Sell Your Identity for Pennies – Associated Press

Stolen credit card numbers now go for as little as 6 cents each, if they’re bought 10,000 at a time.
Access to hijacked e-mail accounts: 10 cents to $100.
Bank account credentials: $10 to $1,000.

“The pipeline for stolen data is being replenished by phony “phishing” e-mails that are becoming more common as the economy worsens. Three-quarters of the phishing e-mails Symantec examined were banking-related, for things like low-interest loans and mortgage refinancing. When people pay for those services, their money vanishes.”

“It estimates that more than 5 million U.S. consumers lost money to phishing attacks from September 2007 to September 2008 — a 40 percent increase over the estimated number of victims a year earlier”

Read Entire Article: http://www.foxnews.com