A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the 26.5 million vets whose personal records were lost by Veterans Affairs due to employee negligence, reports the AP.
identity theft
How Many Weeks Does It Take To Tell A Veteran His Identity Has Been Stolen?
By 5.24.06
we cursorily mentioned the fact that the authorities investigating the theft of the laptop that resulted in the names, addresses and social security numbers of every living veteran being stolen waited three weeks to alert the public. But it took awhile for that to sink in.
Are Identity Thieves Targeting Idiot Employees?
By 5.23.06
Consumer Affairs raises an interesting question in its summary of the theft of 26 million social security numbers on a burgled laptop: are these targeted thefts?
New Homeless Sign: Will Die for Food
By 5.19.06
A Double Indemnity for the skid row set, a pair of golden grannies have been arrested in a homeless life insurance scam nothing short of diabolical. You won’t wash the taste of this one out your mouth with a bottle of discount lighter fluid anytime soon.
On Second Thought, You Can Have Your Identity Back
By 5.19.06
Call it a case of mistaken identity. Extremely, mistaken identity. For, it’s always a good idea when stealing someone’s identity to make sure the person is worth pilfering. Look for people with good credit records. Also, avoid assuming the form of a convicted sex offender. From Tennessean:
Email Users Incompetent At Spying Out Scams
By 5.16.06
We saw this great post indicating exactly how clueless the average person is when trying to detect spam of phishing schemes in their in-box. The blogger launched a site called SpamorHam.org to see how savvy Internet users were across the board when trying to detect email fraud. Unfortunately, users of the site are failing the test in overwhelming rates.
The Terrorists May Have Already Won, In Bed
By 5.5.06
According to this article, your identity can be stolen simply from your airplane ticket stub. The story also has some interesting information about how American travelers are classified to government security experts, based on sophisticated data mining techniques drawing from every piece of information available about you. The system is purported to rank travelers as risks using an increasing danger code of green, amber and red.
Baby’s Identity Stolen By Crackhead
By 5.4.06
Even our nation’s fat Churchill-looking cherubs aren’t safe from identity theft. The parents of a three week old baby in Bothell, Washington discovered he had his identity stolen when he got a bill from a local hospital for $94.The bill was in relation to a lumbar disc displacement and a prescriped dose of narcotics to deal with the pain.
HOW TO: Get Through Having Your Identity Stolen
By 5.3.06
After our last post on identity theft, regular Consumerist commenter trixare4kids sent us a great, well-crafted email detailing her own experience having her identity stolen. Better yet, she wrote us a personalized How To for getting through an identity theft crisis.
Interviewing The Victims Of Identity Theft
By 5.2.06
The Dayton Daily News has a good article up interviewing the victims of identity theft and describing how their lives have changed because of it. Although we’re all concerned by the murky underworld of Eastern European hackers that prey upon badly secured financial records, the article is a good reminder that most identity theft actually originates with people close to you: friends, relatives and (natch) employees of the very institutions you trust to keep your financial details safe.
Consumers Think Online Banking Sucks
By 4.18.06
Banks are continuing to feel the sting of their own cyber-incompetence. After much publicized security breaches like the Citibank scandal, more and more customers are moving away from online banking due to fears of identity theft. The growth of online banking as an industry in 2005 was only 3.1%, sharply down from the growth of previous years.
GaMillions of ID Theft Victims
By 4.3.06
Victims of identity theft numbered an estimated 3.6 million in 2004, according to a new report by the Justice Department.
New York Times Story On Identity Theft And Cybercrime
By 4.3.06
We write a lot about data loss at American companies and financial institutions. Some of you might wonder why we spend so much time on Verizon losing the occasional CD, or the occasional Citibank security breach. Maybe you’re wealthy, with a million dollars in credit and a shimmering Porsche. Maybe you’ve got 75 bucks in your checking account and need to eat beans and rice until your next paycheck. Either way, cyber-crime tends to seem faceless, not really a threat to you personally.
Scamming ATM Cards for Fun and Profit
By 3.20.06
It’s a lot easier than you might think for the Ruskies to start vacuuming funds from your account after they steal the account number and PIN codes from Office Max.
HR 3997: Worst Bill Ever for Identity Theft?
By 3.15.06
HR 3997 might be a bill to watch if you’re concerned about your data getting sold to identity thieves by companies like ChoicePoint
