The Road Home for Katrina Victims is Frustrating

With all the allegations of "poorly spent money" in the hurricane disasters, it's become apparent that a lot of money hasn't reached the people, who need it.For instance, take the "Road Home Program", which has paid a company called ICF International over $60 million to issue $4 million in checks. The program is intended to assist victims in getting back into "livable housing," and will manage the distribution of $7.5 billion in federal relief money.ICF International is a "consulting firm" based in Fairfax, Virginia. According to Wikipeida, it's...

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Ask Eric if there is "Zero Liability" in Identity Theft

Sometimes to understand what an identity theft victim is faced with you need to hear about it from a person, who has actually experienced it.We live in a world where our information is gathered, sold and not protected very well. Meanwhile, there seems to be an army of fraudsters compromising credit issuers, who issue credit without checking very carefully.Then there is the advertising, which claims that their financial products have a "zero fraud liability."The Boston Globe did an interesting story that shows the liability innocent people face...

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Government uses "phishing" techniques to test information security

Internet abuse in the workplace has been a concern for a long time.Now the federal government is going to phish their own employees to determine if they will "click" on malicious links.Wade-Hahn Chan of FCW.com reports:Phishing is a technique of tricking or coercing users into giving up personal information, revealing log-in names and passwords or visiting malware or virus-infected Web sites. The government-sanctioned attacks will be designed to test how well federal workers adhere to organization's e-mail security policies.FCW.com article, here.Most...

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Federal Trade Commission will fight Internet Crime across Borders

Internet crime of often "elusive" because it crosses borders with "a click of a mouse." To fight this a new law has just been signed by President Bush, which gives the Federal Trade Commission a license to go after the problem at it's source.In their recommendations to Congress, the FTC wrote:Using Internet and long-distance telephone technology, unscrupulous businesses can strike quickly on a global scale, victimize thousands of consumers, and disappear nearly without a trace, along with their ill-gotten gains. For example, deceptive spammers...

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Tell it to the Identity Theft Task Force

On May 10, 2006, the Federal Identity Theft Task Force was formed and has been working on what some believe is a national crisis. And it very well could be, identities are a very personal matter and should be considered, "sacred."Now they soliciting advice from the public on how they can improve upon the recommendations they've already come up with.I...

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More Allegations of Money Wasted in Katrina

Recently, I blogged about - whether or not - we would ever discover how much money was wasted in the Katrina disaster. Unfortunately, this statement is turning out to be more accurate that I would have liked it to have been.Hope Yen of the AP is reporting:Federal investigators have already determined the Bush administration squandered $1 billion on fraudulent disaster aid to individuals after the 2005 storm. Now they are shifting their attention to the multimillion dollar contracts to politically connected firms that critics have long said are...

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It's illegal to ask someone to send in "fees" for a loan!

Fake websites offering loans, or credit cards at "too good to be true" terms are taking advantage of the post-Christmas blues. If an unwary person responds to them, they will ask for "up-front" fees before issuing the loan, or credit card.Bottom line is that it is ILLEGAL to ask for up-front fees in order to secure a credit-card, or a loan. If someone asks you to do this, it's a scam!The person sending these fees never receives the loan, or credit card and becomes an advance fee loan fraud victim.Annys Shin of the Washington Post writes:The scam...

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2006 was the Year of Internet Crime - 2007 is predicted to be even worse

Have you noticed spam getting past your e-mail filters lately? You're not alone, experts are saying 2006 was the worst year ever in Internet crime - and it appears - security fixes are being defeated.Brian Krebbs (Washington Post) is warning:Few Internet security watchers believe 2007 will be any brighter for the millions of fraud-weary consumers already struggling to stay abreast of new computer security threats and avoiding clever scams when banking, shopping or just surfing online.Washington Post story, here.Brian cites that in October 90 percent...

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Fraudulent Gift Cheque Update from American Express

Since September, I've been writing about counterfeit American Express Gift Cheques showing up in a variety of Internet fraud schemes.Readers have reported receiving these items primarily as a result of work-at-home scams, but they can show up in a variety of Internet fraud come-ons. They might also show up in secret shopper, romance, lottery and auction scams.The fraudsters want you to cash these counterfeit gift cheques and send (normally wire) the money back to them. When they are discovered to be fraudulent - you end up taking the "rap" and...

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Is Spending $550 Billion on RFID Going to Protect Us?

RFID is making the news again and some prominent politicians are saying we need take a hard look at it before we spend $550 billion (11 billion for each State) implementing it.RFID is being implemented, or being recomended for implementation (worldwide) to verify a person's identity electronically when identification is presented. And there are people claiming it can already be compromised, or that it is just a matter of time before it will be.EWeek wrote an interesting article about this about why two of our leaders don't feel RFID is safe, or...

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Colorado Identity Theft Victim Shares Her Personal Feelings on the Immigration Raids

When I saw the recent immigration raids in Colorado and all the "media spin" on them, I had a lot of mixed feelings about the issue.Then I came upon an interesting editorial from an actual identity theft victim.The Nothern Colorado Tribune published a story by Teresa Myer, identity theft victim and free-lance writer, which said:As I learned of the immigration raids taking place throughout the country Tuesday, I wondered if one of those arrested was me.Since 2001, someone has been using my name and Social Security number to gain employment as a...

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Consumers Union Calls for Congress to Protect People's Personal Information

The Consumers Union is calling for voters to let their elected officials know they are concerned about identity theft.Here are what the Consumers Union considers to be the key issues:In every state, you should be able to place a "security freeze" on your credit file so thieves can't open new accounts in your good name. Companies and agencies should...

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Boeing Holds Employee Accountable in Laptop Theft

Laptops are stolen all the time - and far too often - they contain personal and financial information that can be used for identity theft purposes.The Boeing Company announced Thursday that they fired the employee, who had their laptop stolen and compromised 400,000 people's personal information. This wasn't the first Boeing employee that lost a laptop containing sensitive information.Boeing is saying that the computer was "password protected," and they believe the intent of the thief was to steal the laptop rather than breach the information on...

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Discarded Computers might still have a lot of Sensitive Information on them

One of the ways identities are compromised is when computers are discarded without properly "washing" the hard-drive with specialized software, or destroying the hard-drive, itself.I did a post in about this, here.Bill Lambrecht of the St. Louis Post - Dispatch wrote an interesting article, where they purchased several old computers in Nigeria and were able to get a lot of information from them.Interestingly enough, he quotes a prominent Nigerian, Oladele Osibanjo, who is a regional coordinator for the Basel Convention - a global treaty intended...

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Romanian Second-Chance eBay Scammers Busted

The federal authorities are charging twenty-one Romanian fraudsters, who scammed a lot of people in second chance auction scams. According to the federal authorities, the scam was active for about three years and a lot of the victims lived in the Chicago area.From the article, it was one of the (now) notorious second-chance scams, where a person is given a second chance to win an auction and asked to wire money to a distant locale (in this instance Romania).Of course, once the money is wired, the person who sent it, never receives "fair value"...

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Another Record Set for Phishing and it appears Anti-Phishing Measures are being Defeated

Brian Krebs of the Washington Post did an interesting post on his blog about how phishing is increasing (again) and how anti-phishing measures (some recently marketed to users) are failing already.Brian writes:The Anti-Phishing Working Group reports that 52 percent more phishing sites were recorded on the Internet than a month earlier and nine times as many as were spotted in October 2005. The steep increase coincides with a massive spike in the volume of spam circulating on the Internet. According to e-mail security firm Postini, 90 percent of...

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Will We Ever Discover the True Losses in the Katrina Disaster?

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued another report stating that the fraud losses in Katrina and Rita are a lot higher than previously disclosed to the public.The report states:Almost $20 million in double payments was paid to people claiming damage to the same property in both hurricanes (Katrina and Rita).Almost $17 million in improper or fraudulent "rental assistance" payments given to people already receiving free housing.500 foreign students received $3 million in aid.$156,000 was given to foreign workers on temporary visas.Sadly...

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Hotmail Accounts being held for Ransom

Websense sent out an alert showing how Hotmail accounts are being held for ransom. Here's the warning (courtesy of Websense):Websense® Security LabsTM has received reports of a new form of cyber-extortion. Unlike previously documented cases (where end-users were infected with malicious code, certain file types were encoded or encrypted, and a ransom message was left on the machine), this attack compromises users' online web mail accounts. When end-users logged into their web mail accounts (in this case Hotmail), they noticed that all their 'sent'...

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Organized Crime in North America

Despite stories of organized criminal "types" becoming more and more involved in Internet crime, organized crime (itself) is a phenomenon that's been around for a long time.The Internet is merely another "avenue" for "organized criminals" to commit their misdeeds.I happened to read an interesting article by Joan Delaney of the Epoch Times in Canada about the Triads (Chinese Mafia), which have been operating in North America since we imported a lot of Chinese nationals in the 1850s to work the gold fields and build the railroads.The article states:A...

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Should We Trust Computers to be the Voice of the People?

If you were to ask Christine Jennings -- and a lot of voters in Sarasota County -- the answer is "no."Does it make sense that 18,000 voters in Sarasota County, Florida - most of whom used a computer to vote - would go to the polls and fail to pick a candidate for the House of Representatives?Hundreds of voters have signed affidavits attesting to the fact that when they checked to see if their votes tabulated properly - their vote for Ms. Jennings didn't record properly.A reasonable person might deduct - the computers were flawed - and a lot of...

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IT Students Aren't the Only Human Resources that Internet Criminals Desire

In the past couple of days, I've seen a lot of articles about IT (Information Technology) students being taken to the dark-side (recruited) by organized crime.Reuters is quoting a McAfee report released in the past couple of days.Although, hiring IT students seems to be the latest story going around, recruiting people to commit Internet crime is nothing new. As the article aptly states, organized crime has the money to recruit whatever experts they need.And IT students aren't the only ones being recruited.Starting with the fall of the (Soviet Union)...

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The Hurricane Disasters are a Sad Commentary on Society

During the Katrina and Rita disasters, I blogged frequently about what appeared to massive amounts of fraud going on. Reuters is now reporting that the dollar loss has topped 1 Billion dollars, here.From government employees to fake charities, it appears a lot of people took advantage of those less fortunate than them in their "time of need."And not very much of the money seems to have been recovered despite well publicized efforts.Sadly enough, the public awareness of all the fraud is also likely to make it harder for victims in future disasters....

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Walmart Employee Scams Customers via Electronic Checks

Processing checks electronically is becoming a standard practice, brought about the Check 21 law, or ACH (Automated Check House) processes.Electronic checks save businesses a lot of money in processing costs.Walmart is one business taking advantage of electronic checks - and when a check is written to Walmart - it's scanned in their point-of-sale system - then returned to the customer. From there, everything is handled "electronically."I read a story put out by KRTK Houston about a Walmart employee, who scammed a customer by keeping the check (supposed...

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Store Detective Discovers Traveling Credit Card Ring

I came across an interesting story about how a store detective at Target caught a group of traveling credit card fraudsters in Washington.The store detective noted suspicious behavior - customers purchasing large amount of gift cards and did a little checking. When he did, he discovered that the cards being used were counterfeits.When the merry trio was arrested at a bank down the street, police discovered maps to area retailers, a lot of counterfeit credit cards and - of course - gift cards.After being identified, the authorites determined that...

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An Identity Theft Protection and Recovery Service Based on Trust

The new identity theft protection and recovery service by Truston is live. The service is unique because it doesn't require you to give up your personal information, which could be stored in a database, and used to commit identity theft if it falls into the wrong hands.In case you've missed the weekly stories, databases are being compromised all the time and according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (which is keeping tabs), 97,326,222 people in the United States have been compromised by data-breaches since February, 2005.I probably need to...

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Terrorism on the Internet?

SITE (The Search for International Terrorist Entities) has published an analysis of a new "how to beat Internet security" magazine sent out to password protected "jihadist forums."SITE reports:The first issue of what is indicated to be a periodic magazine, Technical Mujahid [Al-Mujahid al-Teqany], published by al-Fajr Information Center, was electronically distributed to password-protected jihadist forums today, Tuesday, November 28, 2006. This edition, 64-pages in length, contains articles that primarily deal with computer and Internet security,...

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International Identity Theft Gang Tied to Bank

The Serious and Organised Crime unit, the UK's financial crimes warriors, have delivered a significant punch to an organized identity theft gang, believed to have been in operation for ten years.The gang, which seems Eastern European in origin, operated behind the cover of a "Moscow Bank" in Great Britain and Spain. Victims have been traced throughout Europe and the United States.Fake identities and cloned credit cards were used to purchase "electrical goods," which were later fenced on eBay. The illicit proceeds of these transactions were "laundered"...

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Technology isn't stopping Spam

Anyone noticed that spam is filling up your inbox? No, it's not your imagination, experts are saying the volume has increased up to 300 percent -- depending who you talk to.As usual - in the technology versus technology battle - the bad guys seem to have defeated a lot of the countermeasures (spam-filters) that have been developed in recent years.If you would like to see all the technical explanations, Network World did an excellent article with links to previous articles, here.According to the Network World article, a certain Amichai Inbar a.k.a....

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Tickets to the Oprah Show Smell a little Phishy

First gypsies impersonate Dr. Phil and now someone is selling tickets to the Oprah show that smell a little "phishy."Illinois Attorney General, Lisa Madigan warned the public in a official statement:In this case, e-mail recipients are asked to submit personal information and told they will receive tickets to The Oprah Winfrey Show after verification of certain financial information and/or the wiring of money to an unknown third party. However, according to Harpo Productions, Inc., The Oprah Winfrey Show does not sell tickets or ticket travel packages...

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India Deals with the Problem of Credit/Debit Card Cloning

We read a lot of stories about credit/debit card skimming in the West, but see very few stories about it in other parts of the world.India, which has become a giant in IT circles is now being victimized by the problem.In May, I did a post about cloned credit/debit cards showing up in India. Since then I've had the pleasure of corresponding with a "security...

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How to Protect Yourself from the Cyber Criminals on Cyber Monday

Black Friday has come and gone and now we have Cyber Monday to look forward to. Cyber Monday was coined by the National Retail Federation because it represents one the largest e-commerce shopping days of the year.While shoppers search the Internet for all the "deals" that will be offered, another element - the cyber criminals - will be offering "goods and services" at too good to be true prices.If we are to believe recent statistics, the cyber-criminals will be out there in force.According to the National Consumers League and National Cyber Security...

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Are Counterfeit Documents being Mass-Produced in Nigeria?

In the past several years, we've seen all sorts of counterfeit financial instruments (money orders, cashiers checks and now American Express gift cheques) being passed in Internet scams.A recent TimesOnline story stated:Nigerians are forging passports and cheques on an industrial scale and that huge numbers of false documents are passing through provincial British airports.The face value of the fraudulent financial instruments discovered in "routine checks" amounted to millions of dollars, and the documents (non-financial) are probably used in...

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Consumers Union Calls for Credit Card Reforms on the Eve of Black Friday

Recently, I blogged about "Credit Card Gotchas" after being inspired by a e-mail I received from the Consumers Union.I got another one that makes a lot of sense, which is to think carefully before spending money you don't have this weekend. Since tomorrow is "Black Friday," the biggest shopping day of the year, the timing is appropriate.In their own...

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buySAFE Survey Reveals Customer's Fears about e-Commerce

Rob Caskey - who is buySAFE's marketing guru - sent me this interesting survey they conducted. What's interesting about the survey is that takes the fear of Internet fraud beyond bogus financial instruments and identity theft to a more basic level.The survey reveals that the average person fears they won't get the product received, or get something other than what was represented. And if you consider all the variations of auction fraud on the Internet, this is what normally happens to the average customer when they are defrauded.And - after all...

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Is it a Lack of Security at Retailers Causing the Debit/Credit Card Breaches?

Whether by hacking databases, or placing skimming devices on point-of-sale systems, debit/credit card fraud is raising it's ugly head, worldwide.After finishing my most recent post about skimming devices placed on BP point-of-sale systems in the UK, I read an article in Computer World about what might be the latest large data breach.Jaikumar Vijayan writes:Several financial institutions last week canceled thousands of credit and debit cards in Michigan because of fraud concerns related to an apparent data compromise at a convenience store chain,...

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ATM Skimming Case Travels to 19 Countries on 5 Continents

Skimming device (courtesy of the "ATM Pool" at Flickr)Police in the United Kingdom are calling an ATM skimming case, one of the biggest of it's kind. ATM skimming is where a debit-card's magnetic stripe is counterfeited (cloned) and the PIN (personal identification number) is compromised - normally with a hidden camera.Official's estimate the fraud...

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