When Google launched Doodle-4-Google, in which children can compete to design Google’s homepage logo, they requested contestants’ Social Security numbers in an effort to prevent duplicate entries. Americans have become accustomed to handing over the last four digits of their Social Security number as a password or identifier for various accounts and applications. But with […]
For nearly a year, a prisoner at Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution operated an identity theft ring from his jail cell. “Federal prosecutors say the man was able to get personal information communicated to him while in the prison, including names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of credit card holders at various department stores. He […]
Get ready to cringe. The Nigerians really have cornered the market on scamming the unsuspecting. In business, if they were to have a niche’ their clientele are the extremely naïve, very gullible and stupidly vulnerable. Florida seems to be their stop off point in the US as many “419” scams begin and end in Florida. […]
This is just nuts: “Situationist is an iPhone app that makes your everyday life more thrilling and unpredictable. It alerts members to each other’s proximity and gets them to interact in random “situations”. These situations vary from the friendly “Hug me for 5 seconds exactly” or “Compliment me on my haircut”, to the subversive e.g. […]
The Huffington Post reports, “The Identity Theft Resource Center says Ty Powell is a victim of identity theft. Freddie Mac says he hasn’t paid his mortgage in two years. The local paper says he’s dead. Powell says, ‘I don’t know what to say.’” Powell bought a house in Arizona from a builder, paying $217,000 in […]
Cellular phones are becoming a bigger target for crime. As smartphones continue replacing landlines and billions of new applications are downloaded, mobile crime, or mCrime, will inevitably increase. McAfee’s threat report for the fourth quarter of 2010 reveals steady growth of threats to mobile platforms. New mobile malware increased by 46% in 2010. 20 million […]
When a municipality has an organized ring of home invaders you know they have problems. In Fresno Country California a special task force including officers from the sheriff’s department, SWAT teams, and local police agencies had to be created to conquer the growing problem of home invasions in their district. As you know a home […]
Scammers and hackers often originate from Ghana, Nigeria, Romania, Korea, Israel, Columbia, Argentina, Philippines, Malaysia, and, of course, China and the good old USA. These developing countries breed MIT-like hackers who spend all their days targeting consumers and Internet users like you and me. But Râmnicu Vâlcea is different. Wired describes the odd contrast between […]
While criminal hackers are cracking databases and stealing millions of electronic records every year, street level identity thieves are a more insidious element of the identity theft epidemic. Thieves of this nature live in your neighborhood. In some parts of the country, local identity thieves tend to be meth heads. Local identity thieves understand all […]
The songstress wasn’t home at the time, but her security team was. Madonna’s London manse worth an estimated $10 million is equipped with security guards, cameras and a home alarm system. And while these are all effective layers of security and are often good deterrents they didn’t stop her stalker from breaking a window and […]
