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CSIdentity Protector Tri-Bureau
Only 25% of identity theft can be detected by traditional credit report monitoring, which means that you need a more sophisticated service than the average offering (LifeLock). If you are time starved, convenience based or just simply want a comprehensive way to detect the inappropriate use of your data, you need to enlist an identity monitoring service. It’s similar to having someone monitor your home alarm system.
Here’s a bit of background. Traditional credit monitoring only detects a portion of identity theft. The remaining theft happens on non-credit loan activities (pay-day loans, etc), as part of public records (court cases, real estate transactions, government filings, etc.), over the internet (bought and sold on identity-for-sale sites), or in relation to medical or criminal records. It is important to monitor these forms of potential identity theft as well as your credit file. CSIdentity’s Protector Tri-Bureau product wins the award for Best-in-Class identity monitoring based on 7 criteria:
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Credit Monitoring, CSIdentity, CSidentity Protector, Equifax, Experian, ID Watchdog, identity monitoring, Identity Theft Monitoring Services, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Services, Identitytheft911, idradar, idradar.com, John Sileo, LifeLock, Product Reviews, TransUnion
Nigerian scams happen everyday to thousands of victims in various ways: email, snail mail, fax, Facebook and for the first time in our experience, the “Contact Us” page on our website. This is significant because it shows the the technology of the Nigerian crime rings has advanced enough to foil the Captcha device on our website.
Nigerian scams (more accurately known as advanced-fee fraud) have been around for ages and were named because they originated in Nigeria. To create the scam, criminals generally claim that there is a large sum of money that can only be released to a relative of some deceased member of royalty. Victims are asked to provide a bank account into which the money can be transferred and are promised a large percentage of the money for performing the service. In some cases, victims may also be asked to pay a fee or a series of fees for the release of the money. Once the victim has provided account information, the criminals will often drain their bank accounts, and occasionally use that information to open new, fraudulent accounts.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: 419 Fraud, 419 Scam, Advanced Fee Fraud, Email Scam, Facebook, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Nigerian Scam
Fellowes Powershred
Who cares about document shredders in a digital world? You should. We were supposed to have gone paperless by now, right? Rubbish. Paper rubbish, in fact.
You and I both know that we use as much paper as ever. We sign up for electronic statements and then print and file them, along with important emails, financial documents, etc. Paper documents are more plentiful than ever, and they pose a significant risk of workplace identity theft and data breach.
According to a recent study conducted by the ASBI: 80% of large organizations surveyed indicated that they had experienced one or more data breaches over the previous 12 months. 49% of those breaches involved the loss or theft of paper documents. The average breach recovery cost $7.2 Million!
Many businesses fail to realize is that paper documents pose just as much of a risk to an organization as electronic documents.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention, Product Endorsements by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Alliance for Secure Business Information, ASBI, Best Practices, Data Breach, Document Shredders, Document Shredding, Fellowes, Fellowes Shredders, identity theft expert, John Sileo, Paper Shredders, shredder selector, Workplace ID Theft
People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.
—Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
People don’t change bad habits until they have a compelling reason. Too often that compelling reason is the result of a habit’s negative outcome; but the promise of positive rewards resulting from the establishment of good habits can be a strong motivator. In the workplace, aligning responsible information stewardship with personal and professional gain can set the stage for good privacy habits.
Here are 5 steps you can take towards perfecting your own Privacy Habits:
- Tighten up online passwords. Create strong, alphanumeric passwords. Instead of your password being Sunflower make it $uNf(0w3R. Don’t use common password reminders such as your dog’s name, street address, or mother’s maiden name. All of those would be easily uncovered by an identity thief.
Posted in Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: 5 steps, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Privacy Habits, Privacy Means Profit, Protection
According to a recent Yahoo! article, Facebook has created a new “Panic Button” for London users to help protect children on the social networking site. This new function gives the youngsters the ability to easily report a problem or suspicious activity to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and Facebook.
The Panic Button will automatically appear on the homepage of users between the ages of 13 and 18 years old. Recently Facebook has been scrutinized because of their relaxed privacy controls and lack of protection for all users, including children. This marks another effort by Facebook to attempt to calm users concerns and team up with other organizations to offer protection to younger participants. In the US, Facebook is teaming up with the Parent Teacher Association to help keep children informed and safe while using the website.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: children online, facbook, Facebook, facebook privacy, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Online Safety, Yahoo!
Senior Citizens are more vulnerable to Identity Theft because they are more trusting and less aware of the increasing variety of scams. Although most of our older relatives have no interests in the complexities of smart phones, computers, the Internet, and online banking; many that give it a try leave themselves defenseless against thieves.
The Elderly can be easily targeted online or through the mail in old fashioned schemes to steal their identity and ultimately their money. They are more likely to tell a stranger stories of their past that include simple password reminders (birth date, city, childhood pet, etc). They are less likely to suspect that an interested individual is a con-artist and not just a new friend. They can also be conned through the phone or in person by thieves impersonating a representative from a charity or a well-known company.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Elderly, Identity Fraud, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Fraud, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Protection, John Sileo, senior citizens
SentrySafe Fire Safes
A majority of our most valuable identity documents (passports, birth and death certificates, wills, trusts, deeds, brokerage information, passwords, health records, etc.) are exposed to identity theft (and natural disasters, such as fire and floods) as they sit in unlocked filing cabinets, banking boxes in the basement, office drawers or out in the open, on our desks. I spend an entire chapter in Privacy Means Profit talking about which documents to lock up, which to destroy and which to stop at the source. To complicate matters, the problem of data theft goes beyond paper documents to digital media. More than ever we need to be concerned with the physical protection of hard drives, cell phones, thumb drives, CDs and DVDs with sensitive personal or business data on them.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention, Product Reviews by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Data Breach, Document Protection, Document Shredding, Document Storage, Fire Safe, Fire Safes, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, John Sileo
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
