Identity Theft Consumer Education is Paramount
Credit card companies, banks, financial advisors, retailers, hospitals, insurance companies, and just about every other industry and organization that deals with finances has been affected by identity theft.
All these entities have to deal with fraud at some level. For some it’s an occasional nuisance and for others it’s a part of their daily grind. Most have heavily invested in multiple layers of security, but all remain targets. Each has its own set of issues to overcome and each copes with the same underlying constant: the consumer is often the most vulnerable variable in the equation.
Joe and Sally Main Street generally offer the path of least resistance when a scam is launched. Everything from phishing emails, spoofed websites, un-patched or unprotected PCs, open wireless connections, lack of attention to statements, not shredding data, carrying too much information in a wallet, and overall lack of attention to personal security allows fraud to flourish.
Anne Wallace, president of the Identity Theft Assistance Center, explains that the risks are compounded by the increasing popularity of new technologies like mobile banking and social networking. “The Full Post…
Ripped from the Headlines!: More Than $9 Billion Defrauded from Banks and Investors This Week
Just like an episode of CSI Miami or Law & Order, we have decided to pull together a post that showcases the actual amount of money that banks and investors lost in just one week — taken directly from the media. Of course, this is a very, very informal study, and in many cases the fraud happened a while back and the bad guys got their day in court this week (for example). So, here’s the caveat: not all of the bank frauds happened this week — they were just covered this week. The big takeaway though is the astounding amount of money: $9,053,700,00.
Here’s the list of stories and their dollar amounts:
Judge Issues Gag Order in Stanford Fraud Case Concerns over extensive media coverage prompted a federal judge on Thursday to issue a gag order in the case of jailed Texas financier R. Allen Stanford and three of his former company executives — all accused of bilking investors out of $7 billion in a Ponzi scheme.
Internet Virus Steals Over 3 Million from US Bank Accounts
So far Federal prosecutors have charged more than 60 people allegedly involved in a global cybercrime scheme that used the Zeus Trojan and other Internet viruses to steal over $3 million dollars from U.S. bank accounts.
The U.S. investigation is related to the arrest of 19 people in London in a probe into an international cybercrime group that allegedly stole at least $9.5 million from U.K. banks. The U.K. banks included HSBC Holdings and Royal Bank of Scotland Group.
According to court documents the scheme was engineered by hackers in Eastern Europe who used malware, known as the Zeus Trojan, to access bank accounts of small and midsize businesses and municipal entities in the U.S.
The malware is often attached to a seemingly legitimate email message and has the virus attached, prosecutors said. The virus then secretly monitors a person’s computer activity and steals usernames and passwords, prosecutors said.
“The mouse and the keyboard can be far more effective than the gun and the mask,” U.S. Attor
Top 5 Credit/Debit Card Skimming Attacks
Credit card fraud is a multi-billion dollar industry. Skimming is one of the financial industry’s fastest-growing crimes, according to the U.S. Secret Service. ATM skimming alone is responsible for $350,000 of fraud daily exceeding a billion dollars in losses annually.
Skimming can occur in a few different ways;
Wedge Skimming
The most common skim is when a store clerk/waiter etc. takes your card and runs it through a card reader device that copies the information from the magnetic strip. Once the thief has the credit or debit card data he downloads it to his PC then he can burn the data to a gift card or blank “white card” or place orders over the phone or online.
POS Swaps
EFTPOS (electronic funds transfers at the point of sale) skimming occurs when the point of sale terminal is replaced with a skimming device. People commonly swipe both credit and debit cards through the in-store machines to pay for goods and services at these outlets. This i
Criminal Hackers Steal Victims Home
The business man had been overseas for a while and his neighbor contacted him at one point because his home was on the market and being sold. When the business man started investigating the non-permissioned sale, that’s when he realized the other properties had been sold and were no longer his.
The thieves, were believed to be Nigerian, and had enough information on the man to allow the real estate transactions to go through. It is believed the criminal hackers got into his email account and obtained his personal identifying information along with his property documents which enabled the criminals to sell the houses.
Reports state the transactions were made virtually via email, telephone and fax, without any physical contact between the owner and anyone else. I Full Post…