Tuesday - February 15, 2005USAToday: Identity Thieves can lurk at WI-FI Hot SpotsUSA Today has posted an article on how "identity thieves use wireless
devices to impersonate legitimate Internet access points to steal credit card
numbers and other personal information."
Posted at 06:52 AM Read More Friday - September 03, 2004Foxnews: ID Verification, Protection Key to U.S. SecurityFoxnews is running an article entitled "ID Verification, Protection Key to U.S.
Security." According to this article,
Identity authentication is becoming a widespread technique for preventing identity theft that could otherwise facilitate criminal or terrorist exploitation. Check out the article for details. Posted at 09:38 PM Read More Wednesday - September 01, 2004Computerworld: Organized Crime Invades CyberspaceComputer World is running an interesting story,
entitled Organized Crime Invades Cyberspace. According
to this article, "viruses and worms carrying Trojan horse code are powering
massive identity theft rings" amongst other things.
Posted at 05:30 PM Read More Sunday - May 23, 2004CBS News: Preventing Identity Theft Can Cost YouCBS News is running an interesting article
entitled Preventing Identity Theft Can Cost You. It's
become quite clear to me during this last year that neither the credit card
issuers nor the credit
bureaus (Equifax,
Experian, and TransUnion) have any interest in taking steps to prevent identity
theft. Credit card issuers make plenty of money, considerably more than enough
to offset losses due to fraud, by encouraging spending with instant credit. At
the same time, the credit
bureaus (as well as
the credit card companies) make an increasingly enormous amount of money by
selling identity theft protection plans at
exorbitant prices.
Posted at 07:06 AM Read More Thursday - March 04, 2004Warning: Computer Virus Targeting cox.net UsersI received the following email containing a virus
as an attachment. This is apparently similar to the virus sent to salve.edu
users that I described in an earlier email.
----------- From: noreply@cox.net
Subject: Notify about your e-mail
account utilization.
Date: March 4, 2004 10:48:04 AM
EST
To: user@cox.net
Return-Path: <email address of some
person who opened the attachment>
Received: from cd021548904-1
([24.220.210.205]) by fed1mtai08.cox.net (InterMail vM.5.01.06.08
201-253-122-130-108-20031117) with SMTP id
<20040304154806.IZSP21825.fed1mtai08.cox.net@cd021548904-1> for
<user@cox.net>; Thu, 4 Mar 2004 10:48:06 -0500
Message-Id:
<qreyahogsqceamnsual@cox.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary="--------puvhxayjgcijyfasawmx"
Dear user of e-mail server "Cox.net", Our main mailing server will be temporary unavaible for next two days, to continue receiving mail in these days you have to configure our free auto-forwarding service. Advanced details can be found in attached file. Attached file protected with the password for security reasons. Password is 42166. Best wishes, The Cox.net team http://www.cox.net ----- The attachment followed the above email text. [UPDATE: I received another bogus email carrying a virus from management@cox.net a few days later. This one had a slightly different story line.] As usual please do not open attachments. Posted at 08:53 PM Read More Wednesday - March 03, 2004Warning: Computer Virus Targeting salve.edu UsersI received a bogus email this morning, which
appeared at first glance to be from 'staff@salve.edu'. This email has the
following headers:
From: staff@salve.edu Wed Mar 3 07:27:07 2004 Return-Path: <email address of some person who opened the virus attachment> Received: from localhost by mail.salve.edu with LMTP for <myemail>; Wed, 03 Mar 2004 07:27:07 -0500 Received: from owner-t3gdbbaf7 (sabeti.user.msu.edu [35.11.33.48]) by mail.salve.edu (8.9.3 (MessagingDirect 1.0.4)/8.9.3) with SMTP id HAA24301 for myemail@salve.edu>; Wed, 3 Mar 2004 07:27:06 -0500 Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2004 07:23:11 -0500 To: myemail@salve.edu Subject: Notify about using the e-mail account. From: staff@salve.edu Message-ID: <ycermlrarqhindkewit@salve.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="--------ugcbcbswtfljppinmqgj" ----------ugcbcbswtfljppinmqgj Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The text of the email follows: ---------------------------------- Dear user of "Salve.edu" mailing system, Some of our clients complained about the spam (negative e-mail content) outgoing from your e-mail account. Probably, you have been infected by a proxy-relay trojan server. In order to keep your computer safe, follow the instructions. For details see the attach. Kind regards, The Salve.edu team http://www.salve.edu ---------------------------------- The attachment followed the text of the email. Once you look at the headers, it becomes obvious that the email is bogus. It's actually a pretty cowardly and pathetic attempt do harm to total strangers. At any rate, if you receive this email, please do not open the attachment. Posted at 08:05 AM Read More Monday - December 29, 2003Nigerian Letter ScamsI must admit that I am extremely disappointed. I
really thought I was very special after receiving so many "STRICTLY
CONFIDENTIAL AND URGENT" emails from Nigeria. Well guess what. It turns out
that thousands of other people have received this same email. All I can say is
that for someone who wants to keep things "strictly confidential," the apparent
sender of this email seems to have a very big (electronic) mouth!
Posted at 09:22 AM Read More Sunday - December 28, 2003Useful Resource For Identity Theft Victims and Potential Victims (i.e., everyone).This morning I came across an interesting weblog,
Bear Left on Unnamed Road, maintained by Ron
Bell who happens to be a victim of identity theft. His identity theft
experience has apparently led him to post some very useful information on this topic. Please keep in mind that there are
three kinds of people in the world:
Posted at 10:00 AM Read More Friday - December 05, 2003Identity TheftOne of the fastest growing crimes in the Unites
States is identity theft. Identity theft occurs when a group or individual uses
your name, credit card information, social security information, or any of your
personal information without your permission, usually to commit fraud. In a
frighteningly common situation, the perpetrator(s) will obtain your social
security number and use it to fraudulently open credit cards in your name. You
may discover that this has happened when you notice a charge on one of your
legitimate credit cards, or when one your legitimate credit card issuers sends
you a letter stating that some service will be reduced as a result of a negative
credit report from one of the three major credit reporting bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion). So what should you do?
Posted at 08:24 AM Read More |