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Dropbox is a brilliant cloud based service (i.e., your data stored on someone else’s server) that automatically backs up your files and simultaneously keep the most current version on all of your computing devices (Mac and Windows, laptops, workstations, servers, tablets and smartphones). It is highly efficient for giving you access to everything from everywhere while maintaining an off-site backup copy of every version of every document.
And like anything with that much power, there are risks. Using this type of syncing and backup service without understanding the risks and rewards is like driving a Ducati motorcycle without peering into the crystal ball of accidents that take the lives of bikers every year. If you are going to ride the machine, know your limits.
This week, Dropbox appears to have altered their user agreement (without any notice to its users), making it a FAR LESS SECURE SERVICE. Initially, their privacy policy stated:
Posted in Cyber Data Security, Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Cloud, Cloud Computing, Data Breach, data security, Dropbox, Education, Identity Theft Prevention, John Sileo, Privacy Policy, Security, Seminar, Speaker, Terms of Service, training, Workshop
Identity thieves are increasingly targeting children, in some cases stealing their identities even before they are born.
A TODAY Show/NBC investigation into child identity theft revealed that criminals routinely use a child’s untouched credit record to their advantage and get away with it for years or decades. This story shows how in more and more cases Social Security numbers are being stolen even before the child has been born.
Why is it so easy? Because Social Security numbers are not assigned randomly, meaning that they can predicted with a certain amount of accuracy. A SSN is simply a code that includes the location and date of where and when a baby was born. Thieves have figured out a system to predict these numbers and used them before they have been issued. The federal government maintains that in the next month or so, these numbers will be randomized and harder to predict and therefore, steal.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: child identity theft, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Protection, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo
A report was recently published claiming that nearly 100,000 Facebook apps have been leaking access codes belonging to millions of users’ profiles. Symantec released the report and said that an app security flaw may have given apps and other third parties access to users’ profiles. Facebook maintains that they have no evidence of this occurring.
In their report, Symantec wrote:
We estimate that as of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage. We estimate that over the years, hundreds of thousands of applications may have inadvertently leaked millions of access tokens to third parties.
These “access tokens” help apps interact with your profile.They are most often used to post updates from the application to your wall. When you add the applications to your profile you, as the Facebook user, is giving the apps access to your information by accepting their conditions. According to the investigation, these tokens were included in URLs sent to the application host and were then sent to advertisers and analytics platforms. If the recipient recognized the codes (meaning they have to be qualified to read and write HTML code), they could gain access to the user’s wall’s and profile.
Posted in Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: "Facebook Speaker", Facebook, Facebook apps, Facebook Safety, Facebook Security, John Sileo, Online/Social Media Privacy, Social Media Security, social networking, Social Networking Expert, Social Networking Speaker
At this point, we are all pretty used to the classic Nigerian Scam. Someone who is recently wealthy needs your help to gain access to the funds. They will let you keep $1 million if you will simply send them your bank account number so he can transfer $30 million to you. Its a dream come true to most!
What happens when that same scam is used on Facebook by one of your friends, by someone you trust? The results can be disastrous. One woman was scammed out of $366,000 because she felt sorry for the scammer’s sob story. The woman contacted the local authorities after realizing she had been conned by her Facebook “friend”. Police arrested six male suspects in Kepong, all allegedly connected to the Facebook scam: two Nigerians, two Bangladeshis, and two Malaysians. Investigators only managed to recover $5,000 in cash of the victim’s money, although they also seized 18 ATM cards, seven cell phones, and a laptop.
Posted in Cyber Data Security, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Facebook, Facebook Safety, Facebook Scams, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Nigerian Scams, social networking, Social Networking Expert, Speaker
It was recently discovered that there is a significant security hole in the Skype design for Apple Mac users. While logged in to Skype, a security researcher discovered a zero day vulnerability (meaning that the software developer, Skype, doesn’t know that the security hole even exists). This hole can give a hacker temporary remote access to the victim’s Mac via Skype. In other words, it means that someone else can take control of your computer while you are logged into Skype.
Solution: For now, I recommend you update your software with the fix made available on April 14th. To do this, get into your software and click on Skype -> Check for Updates, or you can download the software here. Make sure you check for an even newer update in the coming weeks.
Skype has been alerted to the problem and released the following statement:
Posted in Cyber Data Security, Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Identity Theft Prevention, John Sileo, Privacy Expert, Security Patch, Skype, Skype for Mac, Skype Security, Software Updates, Threat, Zero Day, Zero Day Threat
Based on a recent assessment of 40,000+ SSNs of children, it was found that more than 10% those SSNs were being used by someone other than the child, far in excess of the rate of misuse in the adult population. The study points out the major issues that surround child identity theft and why we need to start paying attention now. It is more prevalent than many think and the threat is growing. Here are a few of the statistics that were found:
- 4,311 or 10.2% of the children in the report had someone else using their Social Security number – 51 times higher than the 0.2% rate for adults in the same population
- Child IDs were used to purchase homes and automobiles, open credit card accounts, secure employment and obtain driver’s licenses
- The largest fraud ($725,000) was committed against a 16 year old girl
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: child identity monitoring, child identity theft, Child Identity Theft Statistics, children, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Statistics, John Sileo, Theft
Sony just admitted this week that their Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) division, which they though was not affected by the recent breach, has also been compromised. They believe that the hackers stole personal information from an additional 25 million users and that the breach included credit card information.
In an unrelated article, Mizuho Investors Securities analyst Nobuo Kurahashi estimated the cost of Sony’s recovery from the data breaches to be approximately $1.25 billion:
Kurahashi estimates that the data breach will cost Sony about Y100 billion, or $1.25 billion from lost business, various compensation costs and new investments–assuming that no additional security problems emerge. The cyber attacks on Sony in recent weeks involved the theft of personal data that include names, passwords and addresses from accounts on its PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment gaming services. Sony has also said that more than 10 million credit-card numbers may have been compromised.
Posted in Cyber Data Security, Fraud Detection & Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: 25 million, 77 Million, breach, Costs, Data Breach, data security, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, play station hacked, PlayStation, Playstation 2, PlayStation Account, Sony, Sony Breach
Recent information available in Britain has shown that popular hotspots can be easily mimicked by thieves, which leaves consumers vulnerable to identity theft.
Tests conducted showed that security experts were able to obtain usernames, passwords and messages from phones using WiFi in public places. The tests all used volunteers so that no actual breach occurred. In cases where the iphone 4 was targeted, the information could be taken and stored without the user even knowing.
This issue is a huge problem for the UK’s nearly 5 million BT hotspots located in train stations, coffee shops, hotels, and airports. While the smartphone service providers have knows about these WiFI security flaws for some time, they have still not done anything about it.
Using inexpensive communication equipment and free software that you can download from the internet, thieves can set up bogus hotspots to start sniffing your personal information. Once you have established a connection with one of these impersonators, whether on a phone or laptop, they can start decrypting your sensitive data.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: British WiFi, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Smartphone, Smartphone wifi, wifi, wifi hotspots, wifi internet, WiFi Security
Apple has been hit with a lawsuit in Florida alleging the company is violating iPhone user’s privacy and committing computer fraud. The case came in response to news that the iPhone maintains a time stamped location log, and that data is also stored on user’s computers.
The lawsuit was filed in Federal court in Tampa Florida on April 25 by two customers who claimed Apple was tracking iPhone owner’s movements without consent, according to Bloomberg.
The case was filed after word that the iPhone and iPad with 3G support maintains an unencrypted log file showing where users are based on cell tower triangulation. That file is transferred to user’s computers during the sync process with iTunes and is maintained as part of the device’s backup file collection.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: 3G, Apple, data security, GPS, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, ipad, iPhone, John Sileo, Keynote Speaker, lawsuit, Location Tracking, Privacy
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