I’m sure you are tired of hearing that hard economic times cause crime and scam rates to go up. This seems to make sense and identity theft is no exception to the rule. I don’t know what causes people to take advantage of people during hard times, but it’s even worse when people take advantage [...]
If there’s anything worse than having your personal information leaked online, it’s finding your personal information along with your medical records leaked online. Unfortunately, the latter is more common than you might think. Over the course of a two-week study by Dartmouth College, researchers found a wide range of sensitive documents, from a spreadsheet of [...]
Eighty-six-year-old Arlene Hald says she never called a phone sex line. And certainly didn’t make $1,000 worth of sex calls. The Washington state widow recently received a credit card bill addressed to her husband, Sylvester. He died nearly 20 years ago. Her family suspects it’s a case of identity theft. The billing company, Preferred Platinum [...]
The number of Americans ensnared by identity theft is on the rise, but victims are striking back more quickly and limiting how much is stolen. In 2008, the number of identity theft cases jumped 22 percent to 9.9 million, according to a study released Monday by Javelin Strategy & Research. The good news is that [...]
As if job searching in this economy isn’t discouraging enough, those seeking jobs through Monster.com have been notified that yet another data breach has put users at risk of identity theft. Monster.com posted a warning to their users on their website Friday. Hackers were able to access user IDs, passwords, names, e-mail addresses, birth dates, [...]
Hackers have launched a new email scam that attempts to lure unsuspecting users to a bogus CNN.com news site using the Gaza conflict in an effort to steal passwords. The RSA FraudAction Research Lab discovered the scam and says the result of the attack is the infection of computers with a Trojan. The RSA blog [...]
Submitted by Keith843 Over the last two weeks, I went to my local Wells Fargo bank branch twice to place electronic wire orders. These wires usually take a little time to complete and I was in the branch for approximately 20 minutes each time I visited. The banker did all the work of inputting the [...]
Five Chicago-area residents are facing numerous federal felony charges after they allegedly went on a maniacal three-day shopping spree through three states spending thousands of dollars at Target and Meijer stores using fake credit cards. The 15-count indictment filed by the United States Attorney in Grand Rapids lists nearly 400 transactions from April 2007, when [...]
Identity theft was the No. 1 fraud complaint in a government-maintained database that keeps track of consumer gripes, according to a Federal Trade Commission. In 2007, the database received more than 800,000 complaints, with 32% of those about identity theft and the rest, or 68%, pointing to various other types of fraud, according to FTC. [...]