The F.B.I.
says
identity theft is the fastest-growing crime in the
United States.
| TRAVEL IDENTITY THEFT: On holiday? Be wary -- identity thieves could be
lurking: More than a third of the 686,000 complaints that
the Federal Trade Commission received in 2005 were about
identity theft, making it the No. 1 reported problem.
Travelers should be careful where they discard boarding
passes, because some contain information. This spring, data
security expert Adam Laurie performed an experiment for the
Guardian newspaper in London. Using only the information on
a British Airways boarding pass found in the trash at a
London train station, he bought a ticket in the passenger's
name and accessed his information using the frequent-flier
number on the boarding pass. Never asked for a password,
Laurie was able to access the passenger's passport number,
issue date, issuing office, nationality, country of
residence and date of birth.
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| CHILDREN IDENTITY THEFT: A year ago,
Attorney General Mark Shurtleff warned us about an
unprecedented epidemic of illegal immigrant-driven identity
theft targeting our children. In fact, according to the
Attorney General's Office, the identities of thousands of
Utah children have been stolen by illegal immigrants who
need Social Security numbers in order to get jobs and
credit.
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| CHARACTER IDENTITY THEFT: Stolen-ID nightmare finally
ends -- A man spent almost 8 weeks in an Osceola jail. A
photo could have freed him sooner. After nearly eight weeks
in jail, Hector Omy Collazo pleaded with deputies one last
time: Let me go. You have the wrong man. A criminal stole my
identity.
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| CREDIT IDENTITY THEFT: The Scramble to Protect Personal Information --
In February last year, a magnetic tape with information on
about 120,000 Japanese customers of its Citibank division
disappeared while being shipped by truck from a data
management center in Singapore. The tape held names,
addresses, account numbers and balances. It has never turned
up. And this week the company revealed that it had happened
again - this time the loss of an entire box of tapes in the
care of the United Parcel Service, with personal information
on nearly four million American customers. When so much
commerce is conducted online and when just a few bits of
stolen data - a Social Security number, a name, an address,
a date of birth - can be turned into cash by opening false
credit accounts, thieves have proved themselves skilled at
getting the information they need.
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| SOCIAL SECURITY IDENTITY THEFT: The secret list of ID theft victims -- Linda
Trevino, who lives in a Chicago suburb, applied for a job
last year at a local Target department store, and was
denied. The reason? She already worked there -- or rather,
her Social Security number already worked there. Follow-up
investigation revealed the same Social Security number had
been used to obtain work at 37 other employers, mostly by
illegal immigrants trying to satisfy government requirements
to get a job.
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| MEDICAL DATA IDENTITY THEFT: Medical group: Data on 185,000 people was stolen --
A California medical group is telling nearly 185,000
current and former patients that their financial and medical
records may have been exposed following the theft of
computers containing personal data.
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| DRIVERS LICENSE IDENTITY THEFT: Illegals Charged in Bogus Driver's License Scam
-- WASHINGTON -- Thousands of illegal immigrants have
obtained driver's licenses in three states, federal
authorities said Thursday, highlighting a security hole that
the Sept. 11 hijackers exploited. Three employees of
Florida's motor vehicles agency were among 52 people
arrested in a bribery scam that put driver's licenses in the
hands of at least 2,000 illegal immigrants, officials said.
The case, announced Thursday, follows similar arrests in
Michigan and Maryland over the past week. "With a valid
driver's license, you establish an identity," said Michael
Garcia, assistant secretary of the Homeland Security
Department.
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PERSONAL INFORMATION IDENTITY THEFT: Pharming Attacks Target the Web -- Surfers may be
unknowingly redirected to malicious Web pages. A new round
of so-called "pharming" attacks is targeting the .com
Internet domain, redirecting some Internet users to Web
pages controlled by the unknown attackers. The SANS
Institute's Internet Storm Center (ISC) issued a warning
this week about the new attacks, which corrupt some DNS
servers so that requests sent to those servers connect users
instead to Web sites maintained by the attackers. The latest
attacks use a strategy called DNS cache poisoning,
in which malicious hackers use a DNS server they control to
feed erroneous information to other DNS servers.
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“More people are victimized by
identity fraud than almost any other crime, and, unfortunately,
most don't even know they've been targeted until too late.”
-- DANIEL F. CONLEY, SUFFOLK DISTRICT
ATTORNEY |
|