How Much for a Fake I.D.?
If you want a Puerto Rican identity, it’s about $6000 for a “tripleta,” which can be used to hide illegal immigrants. Other forms of identification vary in price. A United States passport can range from $950 to $1650 to as much as$5500.
In the U.S., we have as many as 200 different forms of identification circulating, including passports from state to state, plus another 14,000 birth certificates and 49 versions of the Social Security card. These are paper and plastic documents that can be recreated with a PC, scanner, printer, and laminator.
McAfee Avert Labs researcher Francois Paget found and posted an ad showing U.S. identities for $650 each. It’s not incredibly difficult to buy fake IDs online, but will they pass muster with technologies that look for tampering? Unfortunately, many will.
An order form asks all the right questions:
“By placing your order, you must have read and agreed to our Terms of Service.
The order procedure is the following:
1. You send us all the Full Post…
New Zealand Lawmaker Who Stole Baby’s Identity Resigns
While we tend to focus on identity theft stories in the U.S., sometimes an international story crosses our desks that warrants some attention. While New Zealand is mainly known for its recent earth quake, and the importation of the most entertaining Flight of the Concords , a story from New Zealand captured our attention and has us truly flummoxed.
Check this out. A New Zealand politician resigned from his party Friday after admitting he stole a dead baby’s identity to obtain a false passport 26 years ago. David Garrett, a lawmaker with the minor Act Party, made the surprise admission in Parliament this week, calling the identity theft a “harmless prank” when he was in his mid-20s. Check out the full AP story here.
All we can say is really?? Stealing a deceased baby’s identity is a “harmless prank”? The word is
Personal Information Stolen from Rice University
Houston police are investigating the recent theft of personal information from Rice University.
Authorities say a device containing information for about 7,250 Rice faculty and staff, along with some students and retirees, was stolen last month. One of the files stolen contained a list of Rice employees and students on the university’s payroll, including information such as names, addresses, birth dates, employee identification numbers, salaries and emergency contacts. Another file stolen included Social Security numbers, mostly for Rice employees.
Rice says there is no evidence that an unauthorized person has discovered or used the data to date. The
Debit Cards Fraud Means Difficult Recovery
I get unfortunate emails like this all the time:
“I was a victim of debit card fraud. I live in Las Vegas, NV and have a debit card and I know that not all rules apply for debit cards. We had a problem out here with “skimming.” Over $300.00 dollars was taken from my account and I still had the card in my possession. It was done at 2 bank ATM machines, about 2 minutes apart on different sides of town. I contacted my bank and got no results. My bank said that I had to have given my card and pin number to someone. I fought and fought and lost. I know that there is or was a time limit of this but is there anything else I could have done?”
Federal laws limit credit card holder liability to $50 in the case of fraud, as long as the cardholder disputes the charge within 60 days. Debit card fraud victims must notify the bank within two days after discovering the fraudulent transactions in order to maintain this $50 limit. After that, the maximum liability jumps to $500. And if a victim doesn’t discover or report the fraud until after 60 days have passed, the liability could be the entire card balance, for a debit or credit card. Once your debit card is compromised, you might not find out until a check bounces or the card is declined. And once you do recover the funds, the thief can just start all over again, unless you cancel the account altogether.
Here is Regulation E in black and white:
“ELECTRONIC FUND TRANSFERS (REGULATION E)
Limitations on amount of liability. A consumer’s liability for an unauthorized electronic fund transfer or a series of related unauthorized transfers shall be determined as follows:
(1) Timely notice given. If the consumer notifies the financial institution within two business days after learning of the loss or theft of the access device, the consumer’s liability shall not exceed the lesser of $50 or the amount of unauthorized transfers that occur before notice to the financial institution.
(2) Timely notice not given. If the consumer fails to notify the financial institution within two business days after learning of the loss or theft of the access device, the consumer’s liability shall not exceed the lesser of $500 or the sum of:
(i) $50 or the amount of unauthorized transfers that occur within the two business days, whichever is less.”
Debit card fraud can happen a number of ways. ATM skimming, gas pump skimming, or point of sale skimming are a few. The key, of course, is the bad guy gets your PIN. In the end, the bank doesn’t want to believe that you were defrauded. It’s cheaper for them to conclude that you are lying.
Always cover up your PIN when entering in any POS, pump, or ATM.
As inconvenient as this may seem, if you are a regular user of a debit card, you should check your statements online daily.
Consider limiting your debit card use. I use mine for deposits and withdrawals. But I only use it around two or three times a month.
Robert Siciliano, personal security expert contributor to Just Ask Gemalto, discusses credit and debit card fraud on CNBC. (Disclosures)
Worst Person: Google Fires Creep Engineer for Accessing User Accounts to Stalk Teens
One often wonders just how protected our personal information is within major organizations like Google, Facebook, our banks and the like. The average cynic would believe that these organizations host pizza parties where employees get together and pour through our personal data for kicks. But the truth is far from that…at least at Google, where something much darker was going on with one rogue engineer.
Yesterday, Google confirmed that it fired an employee earlier this year for violating its policies on accessing the accounts of its users. The word is that David Barksdale, an engineer in Google’s Seattle offices, used his position as a key engineer evaluating the health of Google’s services to break into the Gmail and Google Voice accounts of several children. After