Identity Thieves Targeting Medicare Enrollees
With open enrollment for Medicare beginning November 15th, identity thieves are on the prowl. They are looking to obtain Social Security numbers and bank account information to commit fraud.
“There are people out there looking for opportunities to come and give you wrong information, or do things fraudulently,” said Renard Murray, Regional Administrator with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Atlanta. “It’
7 Tips To Better Credit Card Security
Every time you use a credit card, you increase the chances of that card number being used fraudulently. Cards can be skimmed and hacked in a number of different ways.
#1 Watch your card. Whenever you hand your credit or debit card to a salesperson or waiter, watch to see where your card is taken and what is done with it. It’s normal for the card to be swiped through a point of sale terminal or keyboard card reader. But if you happen to see your card swiped through an additional reader that doesn’t coincide with the transaction the card number may have been stolen.
#2 Cover your PIN. There may be cameras or “shoulder surfers” recording your PIN at an ATM or point of sale terminal. Cover up the keypad to foil the bad guys’ plan.
#3 Change up your card number. This is inconvenient but effective. The more frequently you change your number, the more secure that number will be. Once or twice a year is good.
#4 Select online shopping websites carefully. When searc
Friday’s Food for Thought: Note to Criminals – Stop Targeting the Elderly, Granny is Fighting Back
Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post from the ITAC blog. While this is not a new topic for us to cover, we would like this post to be a plea to all the criminals out there to stop targeting the elderly with identity theft- and fraud-related schemes. Yes, we understand that they are an easy target, but it’s just downright wrong to treat well really, anybody, this way. It is unfortunate that we live in a society that already marginalizes older citizens, but to add salt to the wound by defrauding them is just bad.
But be careful. Granny is starting to fight back. Check out this clip of a 75 year old woman going after a convenient store robber.
University of Hawaii Exposes 40,000 Students Personal Information
The Social Security numbers, grades and other personal information of more than 40,000 former University of Hawaii students were posted online for nearly a year before being removed this week.
University officials told the Associated Press that a faculty member inadvertently uploaded files containing the information to an unprotected server on Nov. 30, 2009. The information included names, academic performance, disabilities and other sensitive information of 40,101 students who attended the flagship Manoa campus from 1990 to 1998 and in 2001.
The university apologized for the incident, saying it was investigating how it happened. It was notifying the former students by e-mail and letters, and has also alerted the FBI and Honolulu police.
The incident is the third major information breach in the University of Hawaii system since last year. Ea
Botnets Turn Your PC into A Zombie
A botnet is a group of Internet-connected personal computers that have been infected by a malicious application, which allows a hacker to control the infected computers without alerting the computer owners. Since the infected PCs are controlled remotely by a single hacker, they are known as bots, robots, or zombies.
Consumers’ and small businesses’ lax security practices are giving scammers a base from which to launch attacks. Hackers use botnets to send spam and phishing emails, and to deliver viruses and other malware.
A botnet can consist of as few as ten PCs, or tens or hundreds of thousands. Millions of personal computers are potentially part of botnets.
Spain-based botnet Mariposa consisted of nearly 13 million zombie PCs in more than 190 countries. Further investigation determined that the botnet included PCs from more than half the Fortune 1000. Thi