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Hack into a smart phone? It’s easy, security experts find.
In a new LA Times article security researchers Nick DePetrillo and Don Bailey have discovered a seven-digit numerical code that can unlock all kinds of secrets about you.
It’s your phone number.
Using relatively simple and some old-school techniques almost anyone can hack into your smart phone. With the new wave of cellphone applications and a lack in cell phone security, you are leaving your mobile device vulnerable to identity spies and thieves. Anyone, trustworthy or not, can create an iPhone application and with over 250,000 apps people are doing just that. How do you know that the application you are downloading and allowing to access your cellphone is legitimate? In most cases – you don’t.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: cell phone, cell phone security, cellular phones, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, LA times
A new article in PC world discusses why the privacy settings on Facebook don’t matter – it instead blames the user for their own data breach. It recommends that those on Facebook should use their common sense and think in the long term. By controlling what you share and only sharing what is responsible Facebook is no longer in charge of your privacy.
Why Facebook Privacy Settings Don’t Matter
John C. Dvorak – I find it endlessly amusing how so many articles are written about Facebook and its cavalier lack of concern over privacy issues (case in point: Read Dan Costa’s column). A large community is up in arms over the fact that Facebook consistently changes the way it operates and constantly resets the privacy settings of the users to nil, as in NO PRIVACY.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: facbook, Facebook, facebook privacy, Facebook Safety, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Privacy Settings, Social Networking Expert
The new movie on Facebook entitled “The Social Network” released its first teaser trailer. The film, better recognized as “The Facebook Movie,” follows the early days of the world’s most powerful social networking site. It follows Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, from the creation of the website through the destruction of a friendship with his co-founders. In the process, it exposes the history behind the information sharing site that Facebook users will wish they knew sooner.
Facebook has had overwhelming success and gained huge momentum since they began in a Harvard dorm room in 2005. Their ability to get you and I to share personal information that we normally wouldn’t has made privacy a huge concern with the site. Zukerberg has faced scrutiny recently with the privacy changes that make more of your information available to businesses on Facebook that purchase your data in order to sell to you in a more targeted way.
Posted in Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: facbook, Facebook, Facebook Movie, Facebook Safety, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Online Safety, online victims, parents help, Social Networking Expert, The Facebook Movie, The Social Network
The FTC just busted a long-running internet scam where offshore thieves set up virtual companies and stole millions of dollars from US consumers one small charge at a time.
“It was a very patient scam,” said Steve Wernikoff, a staff attorney with the FTC who is prosecuting the case. According to him, the scammers found loopholes in the credit card processing system that allowed them to set up fake U.S. companies that then ran more than a million phony credit card transactions through legitimate credit card processing companies.
The fraudsters were able to fly under the radar for so long because they only charged consumers between $ .25 and $9 and set up over 100 fake companies to pull off these transactions. In this specific case they charged over 1.35 million credit cards a total of $9.5 million dollars – those nickles and dimes really add up! Shockingly, 94% of these charges went undetected by the credit card holder because they didn’t notice an unusual charge on their credit card statements and fraud detection agencies rarely detect anything under $10.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: credit card fraud, credit card scam, Fraud, FTC, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, scammers, Theft, thief, Victim
A New Study from the Ponemon Institute Reveals How Online Safety Behavior Leaves Consumers Vulnerable to Identity Theft.
Although more than 80% of study respondents expressed concern about their security while using social media, more than half of these same individuals admitted they do not take any steps to actively protect themselves. This data clearly demonstrates that while people may acknowledge that security is important, many do nothing to protect their information online.
Other key findings from the survey include the following:
- Approximately 65% of users do not set high privacy or security settings in their social media sites.
- More than 90% of users do not review a given Website’s privacy policy before engaging in use.
- Approximately 40% of all respondents share their physical home address through social media applications.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Facebook, Facebook Safety, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Online Safety, online victims, Online/Social Media Privacy, parents help, Social Networking Expert
The story about the Harvard student who fraudulently gained access into Harvard University is an excellent lesson in repelling fraud. Watching the video to the left, you will be struck by how many opportunities there were to catch him in the act of lying. But it didn’t happen for a long time. The underlying reason he didn’t get caught is the same for prestigious universities like Harvard, Fortune 500 Companies and small businesses alike:
No one verified his claims (until recently). Verification is a learned skill that is under-utilized and under-
trained in corporate America.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Adam Wheeler, Admissions, Fraud Training, Harvard, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Scam
You are the frog and Facebook is the slowly boiling water. Here is an excellent visual representation of how your default Facebook Privacy Settings have changed over the years. If you want to see the interactive version, click on the picture below and it will take you to the website where you can click on the image year by year and watch your privacy erode. Essentially, the amount of blue on the chart is how much of your information Facebook is sharing with the outside world. Can you say boil the frog slowly?
I found this map in a revealing article on Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerburg published by The Register (U.K.).
The first source for the disturbing comments attributed to Zuckerburg were pointed out to me by my lead researcher, Liz. This article on Mr. Zuckerburg calling his first Facebook users dumbf*&%#$. appeared on Gawker.com.
Posted in Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: "Delete Facebook", "How do I delete my Facebook account", "Mark Zuckerburg", Delete, Facebook, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Privacy
Wouldn’t you think Ben Stiller is famous enough to be immune to losing his identity to a thief? Not so! Credit card scams can bring anyone to their knees, even Hollywood’s most famous!
Many celebrities have recently been the victims of a credit card scam that seems too easy to be true. All it took was the suspect calling the credit card companies using the stars’ personal information, claiming the cards had been lost. He requested the replacement cards be sent to a Chicago address and in a matter of days was able to begin his shopping spree. Eventually, a skeptical undercover agent from the US Postal Inspection Service was able to think like a spy and detect the fraud after he hand-delivered the cards to the suspect.
Now this week Adedamola Olatunji, 29, a Nigerian-born man who allegedly used Stiller’s card to run up charges on iTunes and an on-line dating service, was indicted on forgery, mail fraud, theft, aggravated identity theft, computer fraud and other felony charges.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Ben Stiller, Credit card Scams, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, social engineering, Think Like A Spy
Dishonest Employees are a serious issue and common cause for corporate data breach. In this video, identity theft speaker and data theft expert John Sileo discusses several tools that will help you reduce the chances that you are hiring a data thief into your business. The Top 3 Tips for preventing the hire of dishonest employees are:
1. Insure that reference verification procedures are not just in place, but are actually taking place. The difference between a good policy and actual application is what separates best-in-class privacy cultures from those corporations that end up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as the poster child for data breach.
2. Perform comprehensive background screening in both the hiring process and after the candidate has become an employee. Believe it or not, employees do commit crimes after they have already taken a job with you. If necessary, utilize a strong background screening service to help you flag dishonest candidates.
Posted in Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: background screening, Dishonest Employees, human resources, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo
