Q. I currently have a fax machine with its own fax number. If I move to online faxing, do I have to change my number?
A. Most Internet fax services allow you to keep your number. Some, such as RingCentral, let you choose a new number from a selection of available ones. Others, such as MyFax and MetroFax, assign you a number. However, you won’t be able to find out about your number specifically until you sign up: Some faxpanies won’t let you keep your number if you leave their service. So the rules of your original fax provider have a greater impact on whether you can keep your number than Internet fax services. Review your provider’s terms of service for more details.
Ok, we usually don’t write blog posts on identity theft crimes as we like to hold ourselves to a higher standard and provide great content and quite frankly that would have us posting multiple times every day and would just make the important content hard to find. This one, however, caught our eye and just goes to show you that identity thieves don’t care at all about the victim of their crimes.
Normally, when you think of individuals who an identity thief might target, it’s unlikely for your first guess would be a centenarian. It’s a little difficult to pass for someone that age, and the real person’s photograph may show up on Al Roker’s televised birth announcements on the morning news. If they do decide to target someone of a certain age, they should probably not choose Josephine McBride, the oldest graduate from Norfolk, Virginia’s citizen police academy.
The accused identity thief is Mark Hillard, who allegedly forged checks, used them to make purchases at local retail stores and then returned the items that he purchased for cash on a later date and at different establishments. Ironically, Hillard told the press that this was a case of mistaken identity, his identity. He says that
Read more…
Six people in California have been charged with defrauding banks out of more than $3 million dollars.
An indictment handed down by a federal grand jury charges the six individuals with 29 felony counts of bank fraud.
The suspects stole the identities of people with good credit scores to establish lines of credit and used the money for personal expenses.
According to the FBI, the group obtained personal information including dates of birth, Social Security numbers, credit profiles, FICO scores and driver’s license numbers. They then used this information to complete fraudulent applications for business lines of credit at Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank branches.
The stolen identities also were used to create phony corporate officers of shell corporations that did not exist, the FBI said.
To fool bank employees who made on-site inspections, the defendants created fake offices where they posed as employees to make it look like the corporations were legitimate.
Once the applications were approved, banks deposited money into the accounts, usually in amounts of $100,000.
The defendants liquidated accounts in a few days, making checks payable to themselves. The
Read more…
Published: May 09, 2011
After Osama bin Ladens Death a flurry of internet scams hit the internet. Most notably scam emails with links to pictures, videos and phony Facebook messages with links to videos that don’t exist.
When clicking these links your PC can be infected with a RAT which is a remote access Trojan and all your information may end up in the hands of a criminal.
Bottom Line: Be wary of any unsolicited messages that claim to have news on bin Laden, and never click on links or attachments included in these messages.
Tips to Avoid Becoming a Victim:
1) Never download or click anything from an unknown source. If you really think your friend is sending you a video clip, double-check with the friend to be sure before you click on the link.
2) Before clicking on any links related to the news, check to see that the address is going to a well-established site. If it is a shortened URL, use a URL preview tool such as http://hugeurl.com/, to make sure it is safe to click on.
3) The most common threats are links to spam and malware. Buy consum
Read more…
If you get a letter from your financial institution or another company you do business with saying that your account was compromised due to a data breach, first call the company to ensure the letter is legitimate. Then, watch your back if it is. According to a study by Javelin Strategy and Research, if you receive one of these letters your chances of becoming an identity theft victim increase by 400% over persons who did not receive one.
Javelin’s survey of about 5,000 American consumers found that 19.5% of those who got a letter were later victimized, compared to 4.3% who were victimized but did not get such a letter. Robert Vamosi, an analyst at Javelin, told SCMagazineUS.com that it was not a fluke. The company has seen similar numbers in 2006 and 2007.
One of the reasons why this could be the case is because companies may only send letters to persons most severely impacted by data breaches, such as people whose ATM card personal identification numbers or Social Security numbers got out. Persons who simply had their addresses or other more minor information released may not get notified.
A second reason is that many consumers do not know what to do when they receive one of these letters; so instead, they do nothing at all. T
Read more…
Published: May 07, 2011Tags: data breaches, Defcon, smartphone, Social Engineering
1. Data Breaches: Businesses suffer most often from data breaches, making up 35% of total breaches. Medical and healthcare services are also frequent targets, accounting for 29.1% of breaches. Government and military make up 16.2%, banking, credit, and financial services account for 10.5%, and 9.2% of breaches occur in educational institutes.
Even if you protect your PC and keep your critical security patches and antivirus definitions updated, there is always the possibility that your bank or credit card company may be hacked, and your sensitive data sold for the purposes of identity theft.
2. Social Engineering: This is the act of manipulating people into taking certain actions or disclosing sensitive information. It’s essentially a fancier, more technical form of lying.
At 2010’s Defcon, a game was played in which contestants used the telephone to convince company employees to voluntarily cough up information they probably shouldn’t have. Of 135 “targets” of the social engineering “game,” 130 blurted out sensitive information. All five holdouts were women who gave up zero data to the social engineers.
3. Failur
Read more…