Last Thursday, law enforcement officials from the area of North Texas converged at an identity theft summit where they were informed of the latest ways fraudsters and scammers hijack technology in order to steal other people’s identity.
The discussion was led by Justin Feffer,
a leading reputable cybercrimes specialist and investigator for Los Angeles and it was organized by the FBI Law Enforcement Executive Development Association.
Attendees said that, as the presentation was reaching its end, several people of the audience murmured that they were more than ready to throw out their wireless devices, ditch their credit cards and live only on cash.
Amongst the most significant and also puzzling crimes commented during the lecture we can mention:
• Hackers both in Europe and the U.S. have figured out how to plant viruses in ATMs making them spit out cash at will.
• Hijackers seized a database of medical records and demanded $10 million for their safe return. Fortunately, the administrators had a backup.
• Mom-and-pop online stores with off-the-shelf "shopping cart" software are particularly vulnerable. With a few keystrokes, hackers can download their entire customer database, credit card numbers and all.
• Thousands of government employees downloaded a computer virus when they fell for a bogus e-mail Christmas card that appeared to be from the White House. Even some senior government computer security personnel were duped. And most consumer security software missed it.
Feffer advised not to rely on the anti-virus software to protect you. He said that it was like like wearing body armor – it doesn't make you bulletproof. Technology, he said, is more advanced than our understanding of it. We now have devices that can do things that we're not even aware of.
Here are some guidelines to lessen your chances of being a victim of identity theft:
• Use direct deposit, rather than getting a paycheck, which can be stolen out of a mailbox.
• Banks and other legitimate businesses never contact customers and ask for personal information to "update their records." These calls are almost always scams.
• If you throw away your computer, destroy the hard drive. Identity thieves harvest personal information from discarded drives.
• If you discover thieves have made purchases in your name, call the police, check your bank accounts, contact all three major credit reporting agencies, work with your creditors and report your case to the Federal Trade Commission.
Identity theft is an ever increasing crime not only in the US but also in many other parts of the world. Anybody can be a victim of identity thieves, fraudsters and scammers. It is our responsibility to learn and put into practise all the different ways we have available to protect ourselves. One of the most relevant characteristics of this kind of crime is that it can happen to us whether we operate through the Internet or we do not. And what is even worse, it can take a long time before we even become aware of our identity being misused.
