Fight identity theft by monitoring and reviewing your credit report. The FTC site has information regarding free credit reports available from AnnualCreditReport.com. Don’t be fooled by other for-pay sites that try to trick you into using their services. Other websites that claim to offer “free credit reports,” “free credit scores,” or “free credit monitoring” are not part of the legally mandated free annual credit report program. In some cases, the “free” product comes with strings attached. For example, some sites sign you up for a supposedly “free” service that converts to one you have to pay for after a trial period. If you don’t cancel during the trial period, you may be unwittingly agreeing to let the company start charging fees to your credit card. You may request your free credit report online, by phone or through the mail. Free credit reports requested online are viewable immediately upon authentication of identity. Free credit reports requested by phone or mail will be processed within 15 days of receiving your request.
In Jeffery Deaver’s new thriller, The Broken Window, the villan is an identity thief. Deaver relied on his own experiences with identity theft when creating this villain. Read about his experience with identity theft as well as some tips about protecting yourself at Parade Magazine.
From the article:
Each year close to 9 million people are victims of identity theft in the U.S. alone. The cost to businesses and individuals is up to $50 billion annually, and victims spend about 300 million hours a year re-establishing their identities.
A new zero-day Trojan horse/virus email is circulating the Internet. It has a subject line like “UPS Tracking Number XXXXXX” and has a zip attachment containing an executable, which if run will do very bad things. This trojan is so new anti-virus filters are not yet detecting it.
If you receive one of these emails, DO NOT open the attachment. DELETE it immediately.
Remember: NEVER open an attachment unless you’re expecting it or verify its legitimacy with the sender.
VIENNA, Va. - The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is reminding the public to be alert to ongoing financial scams that attempt to solicit funds from unsuspecting victims.
In some of these scams, individuals misrepresent themselves as FinCEN officials and try to trick victims into revealing confidential information. These scams may involve the fraudulent use of FinCEN’s seal in a letter or email that claims to be an official correspondence. These scams often involve the enticement of a phony inheritance or sum of money, and claim that FinCEN is holding or blocking the transfer of funds.
Recipients of these letters or emails should not respond to such messages, and should not send money or provide any personal or confidential information. Those who believe that they are or have been a victim of a financial scam, should report this information to local, state, or federal law enforcement authorities.
FinCEN does not send unsolicited requests and does not seek personal or financial information from members of the public. FinCEN does not have authority to freeze assets or block funds transfers. In addition, these fraudulent letters or emails may purport to be from an overseas office of FinCEN. FinCEN does not have any offices outside of the United States.
As part of its mission to deter and detect criminal activity, FinCEN devotes significant resources to the discovery and prevention of fraud. FinCEN supports law enforcement and regulatory agencies through the sharing and analysis of Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) information. As illustrated in its most recent strategic analytical reports on the real estate, mortgage loan, and insurance industries, FinCEN is committed to detecting and preventing money laundering and fraud.
For additional information on money laundering scams, please see the following:
The mission of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is to safeguard the financial system from the abuses of financial crime, including terrorist financing, money laundering, and other illicit activity. They achieve this mission by: administering the Bank Secrecy Act; supporting law enforcement, intelligence, and regulatory agencies through sharing and analysis of financial intelligence; building global cooperation with our counterpart financial intelligence units; and networking people, ideas, and information.
It’s vacation season, the time of year when you leave your home for a week to spend that quality time with your family. But while you are away, is your home secure?
The guys over at the Institute for Security and Open Methodologies (ISECOM) have put together a Home Security guide. Basically, the took general security principles and applied them to your home. There’s both no brainers and some good tips inside.
Websense Security LabsTM has discovered a run of spam emails that attempt to dupe users into downloading and installing a video of the solar eclipse. We have also seen similar blocks of spam purporting to contain videos of movie stars, singers, and other entertainers.
Sample subject lines include:
Lunar Eclipse Video
Your guide to the total lunar eclipse.
Shocking video with Total moon eclipse
Total Moon Eclipse Video on NASA TV
Moon Eclipse is visible today
Read more
Wired follows up to their previous report of a the arrest of 2 individuals responsible for stealing CitiBank ATM card numbers and their associated PINs. Wired now reports that following stakeouts and a few lunck breaks, the FBI has arrested 6 more individuals associated with this crime spree.
Bank Technology News has an article on 38 individuals indicated for bank fraud, racketeering and other related offenses.
AT&T has created an interactive online safety game for kids.
“It can be difficult for children to understand the dangers of the Internet, but information presented in a fun, inviting format sometimes makes it easier to learn. Our Internet safety game for kids is designed to teach elementary school children about safety and security while surfing the Web.” Play the game now.
They also offer some good tips for people of all ages on the AT&T Protecting Our Customers Page. Wondering if your ISP offers any advice? Project Online Safety has compiled a list of resources from various sources.
Cape Cod Times, MA - Apr 28, 2008
The only way to win a battle with malware is not to be infected.
Anti-virus, anti-phishing, even the multi-function security applications and the best firewall cannot completely protect you from malware. In most cases, by the time the definition file for your security program contains the information needed to detect a given malware program it is already so old that it is not in common use. The following precautions, while not guaranteeing safety from malware, will lessen the likelihood of infection — but only if you are scrupulous in maintaining a constant awareness and practice good surfing security.
System utilities and add-ons: Anti-virus and anti-phishing tools are the obvious place to start, not because they can detect the malware but rather because they can detect the delivery system used to infect your computer with malware, effectively stopping the infection before it happens. This will work best if you regularly update the definition files for your programs and run them on a daily basis. Activate e-mail-scanning for anti-virus and anti-phishing programs.
Buff-up your web browser: Giving your web browser the ability to warn you if you are about to go someplace that you shouldn’t is a very good idea, and McAfee’s Site Advisor is an excellent place to start. Site Advisor (www.siteadvisor.com) is free, easy to obtain, and once installed provides a simple color-based warning system whenever you do a Web search.
For Microsoft Internet Explorer: Go into the settings menu and lock all active content from adservers via the “Restricted Sites” zone to help limit auto-loading of disguised binary files. Prohibit JavaScript across the board as well as file downloads in the Internet Zone to plug up the larger threat. This is inconvenient, but you can then go in and configure on an individual basis to allow JavaScript or to download from sites you implicitly trust. Finally, as an added point of warning, install a download manager and configure it to ask for permission to start a Web download.
For Mozilla Firefox: In addition to disabling JavaScript and automatic downloads and installing Site Advisor, you will want to visit the Firefox Add-On Library and install NoScript, a web utility created specifically for Firefox that is constantly updated by its author and that will prevent hostile scripts from running. NoScript comes with an easy to use authorization button so that you can re-enable scripting on sites that you trust.
Safe surfing: The final tool in your anti-malware arsenal is you — adopting and practicing a personal policy of safe surfing on the Internet. A place to start is to avoid sites you do not know. If you have a PC and a notebook computer, you might want to consider restricting the use of one of these to your more sensitive transactions such as online bill paying, eBay, and gaming, and do all of your web surfing on the other.
The price of safety in our online world is eternal vigilance. Don’t store unnecessary and sensitive data on your hard drive, use a thumb drive and keep it safe. Pay attention to what’s happening on your computer and don’t take unnecessary risks. Remember, safety is something that happens between your ears, not something you hold in your hands.