California District Court Rules Against Lifelock

Last month, the District Court in California granted Experian’s motion for partial summary judgment on its claim for unfair competition against Lifelock. However, Lifelock has filed a motion to reconsider in California’s U.S. District Court in the case of Experian v. LifeLock

In this case, Experian seeks to block Lifelock from placing fraud alerts for consumers.

To learn more about Identity Theft and what to do if you are a victim, visit www.StopIdTheftCrime.com and subscribe to the newsletter to obtain your free 46 page eBook "Fighting Back Against Identity Theft".

Remember, estimates are that every 2-4 seconds an Identity is compromised. Why take chances? Why not protect yourself and your loved ones with the best suite of services provided (including restoration) by the best NYSE company in the field? Educate yourself and visit the shameless plug below or call me at (909) 208-3728!

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Betsy Broder of the FTC Presents Testimony Regarding ID Theft

On June 17, Betsy Broder, Assistant Director of the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection at the the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) presented testimony regarding identity theft before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The testimony summarized the FTC's efforts to fight identity theft through:

► Participation on the President's Identity Theft Task Force;

► Law enforcement on data security;

► Consumer and business education; and

► Implementation of the identity theft-related provisions of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act).

The testimony also discussed the FTC's legislative recommendations on developing national data security standards, granting the FTC authority to seek civil penalties in data security cases, and passing legislation to help reduce the unnecessary use and display of social security numbers.

To read the whole testimony click here.

To learn more about Identity Theft and what to do if you are a victim, visit www.StopIdTheftCrime.com and subscribe to the newsletter to obtain your free 46 page eBook "Fighting Back Against Identity Theft".

Remember, estimates are that every 2-4 seconds an Identity is compromised. Why take chances? Why not protect yourself and your loved ones with the best suite of services provided (including restoration) by the best NYSE company in the field? Educate yourself and visit the shameless plug below or call me at (909) 208-3728!

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New Indiana Law Creates ID Theft Unit in AG's Office

A new law enacted by the Indiana General Assembly to protect consumers will take effect on July 1.

The first, Public Law 137, is the state’s latest weapon in the war against identity theft. Authored by State Rep. Linda Lawson, D-Hammond, the legislation creates a unit within the Attorney General’s Office to investigate and prosecute ID theft and to assist victims.

“As Hoosiers increase their reliance on electronic forms of payment, the risk of identity theft will continue to grow,” Lawson said in a statement released on Wednesday by the media office of the Democratic Caucus. “By giving the Attorney General’s Office additional powers to stop identity theft, we can greatly reduce the instances of these crimes and save innumerable Hoosiers from financial ruin.”

Other provisions of the law:

• To stop sloppy business practices which increase the risk of ID theft, the law requires database operators to report security breaches to the Attorney General and forces businesses which handle personal information to implement reasonable security procedures.
• The law requires businesses to make reasonable efforts to verify the identity of an applicant before extending a line of credit and bars businesses from denying credit to an applicant because he is a past victim of identity theft.

“Identity theft was the top consumer complaint made to the Federal Trade Commission in 2008,” the statement said. “Studies show that there were approximately 9.9 million ID theft victims in the U.S. that year. Of that number, 328 complaints were made directly to the Indiana Attorney General’s Office.”

To learn more about Identity Theft and what to do if you are a victim, visit www.StopIdTheftCrime.com and subscribe to the newsletter to obtain your free 46 page eBook "Fighting Back Against Identity Theft".

Remember, estimates are that every 2-4 seconds an Identity is compromised. Why take chances? Why not protect yourself and your loved ones with the best suite of services provided (including restoration) by the best NYSE company in the field? Educate yourself and visit the shameless plug below or call me at (909) 208-3728!

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Six federal agencies issued a set of FAQ's on Identity Theft Rules

Six federal agencies issued a set of frequently asked questions (FAQs) today to help financial institutions, creditors, users of consumer reports, and issuers of credit cards and debit cards comply with federal regulations on identity theft and discrepancies in changes of address.

The "Red Flags and Address Discrepancy Rules," which implement sections of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACT Act), were issued jointly on November 9, 2007, by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The rules require financial institutions and creditors to develop and implement written Identity Theft Prevention Programs and require issuers of credit cards and debit cards to assess the validity of notifications of changes of address. The rules also provide guidance for users of consumer reports regarding reasonable policies and procedures to employ when consumer reporting agencies send them notices of address discrepancy.

The agencies' staff have jointly developed answers to these FAQs to provide guidance on numerous aspects of the rules, including which types of entities and accounts are covered; establishment and administration of an Identity Theft Prevention Program; address validation requirements applicable to card issuers; and the obligations of users of consumer reports upon receiving a notice of address discrepancy.

Download the complete FAQ document here.

To learn more about Identity Theft and what to do if you are a victim, visit www.StopIdTheftCrime.com and subscribe to the newsletter to obtain your free 46 page eBook "Fighting Back Against Identity Theft".

Remember, estimates are that every 2-4 seconds an Identity is compromised. Why take chances? Why not protect yourself and your loved ones with the best suite of services provided (including restoration) by the best NYSE company in the field? Educate yourself and visit the shameless plug below or call me at (909) 208-3728!

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What You Don't Know About the World's Worst Breaches - Dr. Peter Tippett on the 2009 Data Breach Investigations Report

What You Don't Know About the World's Worst Breaches - Dr. Peter Tippett on the 2009 Data Breach Investigations Report
June 2, 2009 - Tom Field, Editorial Director

Verizon Business investigated 90 major data breaches in 2008, including 285 million compromised records. Nearly ¾ of those breaches were external hacks, and 99.9 percent of the records were compromised via servers and applications.

These are among the findings of Verizon's new 2009 Data Breach Investigations Report. In an exclusive interview, Dr. Peter Tippett, VP of Technology and Innovation at Verizon Business, discusses:

• The survey results;

• What these results mean to financial institutions and government entities;

• Which threats to watch out for most in the coming months.

Tippett is the chief scientist of the security product testing and certification organization, ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon Business. An information security pioneer, Tippett has led the computer security industry for more than 20 years, initially as a vendor of security products, and over the past 16 years, as a key strategist. He is widely credited with creating the first commercial anti-virus product that later became Norton AntiVirus.

....FIELD: Give us some highlights about this report that you have done.

TIPPETT: Well the report is different from most things we read in security because this is the actual data from our investigations of over 600 cases of computer crime that were the worst in the world; 90% of whatever made it to the major media were cases that we investigated; a third of all cases that have ever been published were cases that we investigated.

The quick, short story for the bank and financial industries this year is they have had an increase in organized crime and they were entirely focused at the financial sector, very focused. We saw an increase in sophisticated tool use. But the good news is that in all of those cases, they got in through some easy way. They got in somewhere on a non-sensitive, non-critical device where the password was password, or where it wasn't patched two years ago, or where it was a little SQL injection attack....

...FIELD: Now one of the interesting things I have heard secondhand about this report is that you talk about where a lot of these attacks are coming from and we've got people putting a lot of energy, particularly in financial services, on the insider threat. I am told that what you find sort of dispels some of that myth.

TIPPETT: Yeah. We all learned that 80% of all giant attacks are insider. But it turns out that 75% of our data is outsider and 30% or 40% are partner-type outsiders. Only 20% have anything to do with insiders and half of those were duped by the outsider, so only in the vicinity of 10% are true insider attacks, so it is not a very common mechanism. And again, this is of the bigger attacks... (Full interview at bankinfosecurity.com)

To learn more about Identity Theft and what to do if you are a victim, visit www.StopIdTheftCrime.com and subscribe to the newsletter to obtain your free 46 page eBook "Fighting Back Against Identity Theft".

Remember, estimates are that every 2-4 seconds an Identity is compromised. Why take chances? Why not protect yourself and your loved ones with the best suite of services provided (including restoration) by the best NYSE company in the field? Educate yourself and visit the shameless plug below or call me at (909) 208-3728!

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FTC Red Flags Rule Update

If you are unfamiliar with the Federal Trade Commission's Red Flags Rule then download a copy at www.ftc.gov/redflagsrule. Basically, if you are a creditor or have "covered accounts" then you must comply with the Rule.

Doctors, Dentists, and Veterinarians must all comply as they have lost their battle with the FTC, at least as of this date.

The best way to become compliant is by using IdBusiness and their online Red Flags Compliance module. It not only will assist you in creating your policy but trains your employees, and notifies your vendors as well.

Business owners may also want to download the following book "Protecting Personal Information - A Guide for Business" at www.ftc.gov/infosecurity

If you find that you do not need a Red Flags Policy, then I can assist you with setting up a Non-Public Information (NPI) policy at no direct cost to your company. Although, certain restrictions apply so give me a call.

If you need a Red Flags Policy, then click here for assistance.

To learn more about Identity Theft and what to do if you are a victim, visit www.StopIdTheftCrime.com and subscribe to the newsletter to obtain your free 46 page eBook "Fighting Back Against Identity Theft".

Remember, estimates are that every 2-4 seconds an Identity is compromised. Why take chances? Why not protect yourself and your loved ones with the best suite of services provided (including restoration) by the best NYSE company in the field? Educate yourself and visit the shameless plug below or call me at (909) 208-3728!

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Classic Fraud: 6 Scams That Don't Go Away

Classic Fraud: 6 Scams That Don't Go Away

From Check Fraud to Phishing, All the Old Tricks are Back with a Vengeance

June 1, 2009 - Linda McGlasson, Managing Editor

Bank fraud has evolved over the last several years (See: Fraud Update: The 13 Hottest Schemes You Need to Prevent), but some classic variations keep financial institutions busy.

Here are six old fraud tricks that are back with new twists to bedevil fraud departments and information security professionals.

#1. Check Fraud

Last week, New York indicted 18 people in a massive check counterfeiting ring that cashed more than $1 million worth of checks at major New York City banks. This case causes even the best fraud departments in financial institutions to check their own programs and safeguards.

Attempted check fraud at U.S. banks totaled $12.2 billion in 2006, according to the latest biennial survey conducted by the American Bankers Association (ABA). Bank prevention systems caught 92 percent or $11.2 billion of check fraud attempts.

Actual bank losses totaled $969 million, compared with $677 million from the previous survey in 2004. ...

#2. Elderly and Immigrant Identity Fraud

Financial institutions' mortgage and loan officers need to pay attention to this kind of fraud. While not new, elderly and immigrant fraud is regaining popularity, especially in the age of identity theft. In this predatory practice, Jennifer Butts, Director of Operations at the Mortgage Asset Research Institute, explains that elderly and non English-speaking consumers are taken advantage of by fraudsters who steal their identities and use them in straw-buying or other property transactions.....

#3. ATM Fraud/Skimming

This type of fraud made it into President Barack Obama's speech announcing his cybersecurity initiative, when he said "thieves used stolen credit card information to steal millions of dollars from 130 ATM machines in 49 cities around the world -- and they did it in just 30 minutes." The big question is: Can it happen at your institution? The answer is seen in the numbers from a Pulse EFT study (Pulse is one of the leading ATM/debit networks in the U.S.) -- the banking industry lost $662 million to debit card fraud in 2005. Of these losses, 60 percent resulted from ATM transactions, 37 percent from signature transactions, 37 percent from signature debit transactions and 3 percent from PIN point-of-sale (POS) transactions.....

#4. Phishing

Phishing continues to change and grow, and crimeware (or malware) is also growing, says noted phishing and crimeware researcher Dr. Markus Jakobsson, Principal Scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA. "There is a notable tendency for phishing to become more technical -- for example, using advanced obfuscation to combat anti-spam techniques," Jakobsson notes. At the same time, crimeware (what used to be called malware) is becoming increasingly more reliant on social engineering. "Trojan horses commonly use clever social engineering techniques to improve their success rates," he says.....

#5. Vishing

The increased number of "vishing" - or phone-based phishing -- scams hitting regions is cause for alarm. In the last week, there have been five different regions of the country hit by phishers using phone calls to solicit information about the person's credit union or bank account:

• New England Federal Credit Union in Williston, VT reported that a vishing scam hit residents, and the Heritage Family Credit Union in Rutland, VT also reported a similar scam.


• Customers of the Forward Financial Credit Union in Niagara, WI and the River Valley Bank in Iron Mountain, MI received calls last week from fraudsters asking for account information.


• Asheville Savings Bank, Asheville, NC was alerted last week by its customers that a vishing scam targeting area residents was trying to get debit card numbers.


• The final vishing scam of last week targeted all 22,000 residents of Guilford, CT. The calls started coming on May 24. Guilford Police say they believe by the time they were done every land line telephone in the town of 22,000 residents received a call.....

6. Insider Threat

The threat of a trusted employee or vendor taking sensitive information is not new, but the ways that insiders are getting to the juicy data or dollars is changing, according to Randy Trzeciak, Senior Member of the Technical Staff for the Threat and Incident Management Team in the CERT Program at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute. Collusion is the new way insiders are getting sensitive data. (Full Text at www.bankinfosecurity.com)

To learn more about Identity Theft and what to do if you are a victim, visit www.StopIdTheftCrime.com and subscribe to the newsletter to obtain your free 46 page eBook "Fighting Back Against Identity Theft".

Remember, estimates are that every 2-4 seconds an Identity is compromised. Why take chances? Why not protect yourself and your loved ones with the best suite of services provided (including restoration) by the best NYSE company in the field? Educate yourself and visit the shameless plug below or call me at (909) 208-3728!

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