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Online reputation services have a special responsibility to keep clients safe. How can you protect yourself when the very company you rely on is breached?
Would you trust a site with your personal information after it suffered a breach? What if that site’s sole purpose is to protect your reputation?
Reputation.com helps its members maintain a reputable online profile, but the site’s own profile was damaged by a recent data breach that led to the exposure of customer information. Although no Social Security numbers or financial information was lost,
names, email addresses, and physical addresses were exposed. It’s been reported that some dates of birth, phone numbers, and occupational information were also lost. A “small minority” of customer accounts had hashed and salted passwords stolen.
‘Hashing’ passwords is the process of using algorithms to change customers’ passwords to a unique data string. The ‘salt’ adds more characters to produce a unique data fingerprint. The company has notified all customers of the breach and reset passwords to protect them. But
Reputation.com is not alone in being hacked recently. LivingSocial, a daily-deal website, was breached, affecting 50 million customers.
Maintaining our online reputation is important to us and the internet, social media and mobile technology are great tools that give us a competitive advantage. However, we cannot ever take our
online privacy for granted. Three tips to keep you ahead of identity theft are:
- Use a password protection program that makes it easy to use highly-encrypted passwords
Posted in Digital Reputation & Trust by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: "Identity Theft, Data Breach, online privacy, Online Reputation
The Millennial generation tends to have a lax approach to online privacy protection – and it might put all of our security in jeopardy.
Those in their teens, 20s and early 30s – the “Millennials” – have widely prompted discussions as they enter and redefine the modern workplace. Recent information gives us a more in-focus picture of the general operating philosophy of this age group when it comes to handing out personal information over the internet. It’s been found that a devil-may-care attitude is much too prevalent.
A survey from the University of South California’s Annenberg Center for the Digital Future revealed that more than half of the Millennials it questioned would willingly give their personal information to companies in exchange for some sort of coupon or incentive. And then a disconnect occurs because the same study interestingly showed that 70 percent of those same Millennials believed their personal data should be kept private.
Posted in Digital Reputation & Trust, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: digital footprint, online privacy, online privacy protection
Everybody knows that online privacy is in the eye of the beholder. Just as the government is working toward lessening attacks on our internet from other countries, the FBI is stepping up its game on the home front – and it wants to look at your Gmail when you send it.
So much of preventing the unwanted use of your data is simply knowing that you are being watched online by others. The FBI already has the ability to check copies of messages sent through Gmail and other providers after the fact, but it wants more: the chance to monitor such interactions as they are happening. Andrew Weissmann, the organization’s general counsel, has asserted that live online services of many different kinds are being used to perpetrate illegal purposes, requiring more surveillance. And the feds are not stopping there, also championing to gain access to messages sent on iPhones.
Posted in Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: "Online Privacy Expert", online privacy, online privacy protection
If you’re on the fence about the merits of fraud protection, just trust me: if it can happen to a Supreme Court Justice, it can happen to you.
At the very least, credit card fraud is more than a nuisance. It’s a major crime, and while the immediate effects may be a block to cash flow, it can strongly impact the way a cardholder is perceived, especially when that person has a reputation to uphold. As with other types of identity crime, many may assume the “sheer number” defense – the idea that there are so many targets out there that no hackers would waste their time on them. But if you’ve got a credit card, you’ve got something to lose. There’s no bounds to who can be hit by such an attack, whether it‘s a barista serving coffee or the member of the U.S. government on the other side of the counter.
Posted in Fraud Detection & Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Fraud Protection, online privacy
It's not just hackers that make a habit of scooping your information. Google has had a notoriously dodgy record when it comes to user internet privacy – and some think it might have finally gone too far.
At this point, most of us accept that the marketplace is watching us all the time, or else we remain blissfully ignorant. Ads that respond to your browsing history are one thing, though: a company driving through your neighborhood and stealing your data is another. Thirty-eight states brought a case against the internet search giant recently for violating data privacy. Google has been charged a $7 million fine and will supposedly take efforts to stay further from user information. In the meantime, this action should serve as a reminder of how available your passwords, email conversations, and messages are.
Posted in Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: "Data Privacy", internet privacy, online privacy
Cyber attacks are a danger we face on a grand scale, not just as individuals, but as a country.
The past few years, America has been quietly (and not-so quietly) hit by one wave after another of devastating hacks. Last week, as this blog discussed, the government gave a long-overdue response to the matter of cyber-security. During his State of the Union address, President Obama announced that he had signed an executive order taking action against digital security breaches.
The President went on to identify key areas of our infrastructure that might come under attack, saying, "our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems."
If it still sounds far-fetched, consider that just this past year has seen an astounding number of attacks on oil, natural gas and electricity structures in the U.S. Hackers raided these systems for information, and the number of strikes was up more than 50 percent higher than what it was in 2011, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Posted in Cyber Data Security by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: data security breach, digital security, online privacy
How sure are you that your company’s computers aren’t being used against you for purposes of fraud and identity theft?
Recently, Bloomberg.com reported a case in which Microsoft and the antivirus company Symantec joined forces to take down a massive botnet group. Known as Bamital, this ill-intentioned family of bugs is believed to originate from somewhere in Eastern Europe, and operated by distributing malicious software to unsuspecting computers. Once the targets had been infected, the hackers on the other end could take control of Web browsers and drive them wherever they wanted, re-routing searches and addresses to dubious websites that could infect them further.
According to the article, at least a quarter of a million computers were hit in this most recent attack. Globally, Bamital’s victims are reckoned to number in the millions.
Posted in Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Cyber Security, fraud awareness training, Fraud Prevention, online privacy, types of identity theft
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV4RrF0Gc1g?rel=0]
Watch the entire Browser Spies Online Privacy series. To view the entire series, wait until the end of each video and click on the Next Video button in the lower right-hand corner of your screen. As you watch each short video in your browser, make the necessary changes based on each simple video tip on protecting your online identity and privacy.
Browser privacy expert John Sileo and Fox & Friends have teamed up to educate consumers on how your surfing habits are being intercepted, collected and sold as you browse the Web. These tips give you more control over your Internet Privacy in short, easy to implement tips. Privacy exposure, browser tracking and constant data surveillance are a reality of the digital economy. It’s important to defend your data privacy before it’s too late.
Posted in Burning Questions (Video), Online Privacy, Video Tips by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: "Online Privacy Expert", Browser Privacy, Expert, Internet Tracking, John Sileo, online privacy, Online Surveillance, Online Tracking, Privacy Tracking, Web Tracking
How secure do you think your email really is? Would you be surprised to learn that your inbox is scanned regularly, and not just by you?
Microsoft recently launched its humorously titled “Don’t Get Scroogled by Gmail” media campaign. The company commissioned a study that showed that 70 percent of consumers are unaware that free email service providers, such as Google, routinely scan their emails for information that allows them to deliver targeted advertisements.
Furthermore, 88 percent of respondents said they were opposed to this practice once they became aware of it. Now yes, Microsoft has an ulterior motive here. They’re not so much dedicated to your privacy as they are looking to convince users to switch from Gmail to Outlook. Let’s also not forget that Microsoft has long offered its own free email service, the all-but-forgotten Hotmail.
Google quickly responded to the media campaign taking swipes at Gmail with a statement of its own.
Posted in Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: data security, internet privacy, online privacy
