Identity Fraud in the US is on the rise

Identity fraud in the US is fast becoming the de facto consumer fraud. Current fraud costs as reported by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Javelin Strategy & Research highlight that the consumer fraud cost could be as high as $56.6 billion in cash, goods and services.

Click here to read more

Safe surfing folks!
Julian

RBS WorldPay hacked - more bad news for banks

News coming out from the US today has highlighted yet further bad news for UK state owned Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). RBS now faces a $200 million (£141 million) class action lawsuit after admitting hackers had breached security on its computer systems. (Thankgoodness they've admitted it!)

RBS WorldPay - the payment processing arm of Citizens Bank confirmed that for a period of 30 mins in November 2008, hackers used 100 cloned pre-payment cards to withdraw a total of $9 million from 100 cash machines in 49 cities around the world.

The company said customers will not be liable for the losses against their accounts but American lawyers are worried that thieves may use stolen social security numbers from RBS WorldPay's computer systems to commit further fraud.

RBS WorldPay have announced that upto 1.1 million customers may well have had their Social Security Numbers accessed. RBS WorldPay say that a total of 1.5 million customer have been affected by the security breach.

Our suggestion, is register for access to a credit bureau for your FREE credit report. See below. If you suspect you have been a victim, then we suggest you apply for a credit freeze. (Only applicable to the US).

ID Theft Protect suggests that US visitors/members who believe they have been affected by this theft should do the following:

Check your credit file immediately - you can do this by signing up to any ONE or ALL of the following credit monitoring agencies:

Please click on one of these links:
(you will be taken to a secure website: https://)

- Transunion
- Experian
- Equifax

What will this credit report do for you?

• They can place a fraud alert on your file
• It will also provide you with either or both text/email alerts if there is a change to your credit report
• Help you establish whether you might be successful when applying for credit

Safe surfing folks!
Julian

Is the UK identity card database a good thing?

The UK's proposed identity card database will never be 100% secure! I've been saying this since I started ID Theft Protect back in early 2006.

A recent report from the UK's Information Assurance Advisory Council claims that a national identity database is essential as the need for each person to have a "trustworthy" electronic identity increases. This is totally daft.

If you look at the data breaches, most of the serious breaches have happened with the government. Think HMRC, where 25 million records (that's right 25m!!) disappeared and a yet no one really knows where the missing CD's are. Maybe they are down the side of the sofa? Either way, not to know where the CD's are is a serious breach of data.

Have you heard anything in the media about them?? I don't think so. So why would you trust a UK national identity database with your personal and potentially financial details any differently?Also worth a mention is - could the database be manipulated?

What do I mean by "manipulation" - this could involve wiping your very existence and removing you from society - it might also contain inaccurate information (which if held by government will prove difficult to amend) - the government will also consider the value of this data, so expect them to sell it the highest bidders - or worse the data may be compromised (hacked is a good word!) and 61m UK citizens will be at very high risk of identity/financial fraud.

A practical and less costly approach might be to use the existing DVLA database, the Credit Reference Agencies databases and Identity and Passport Service database to authenticate and verify rather than invest billions of taxpayers much hard earned money and putting all our lives at risk of identity fraud and potential financial loss.

Safe surfing folks!

Julian

CBL error when sending an email from home

Some of you may have experienced problems with sending emails at one time or another from home and inadvertently thought your ISP was to blame.

One of the most common errors I've found when sending email with my Outlook, in particular 2003 (I know it affects 2007 as well) is that for some unknown reason it shows a 'CBL sending and receiving error' now and then - more importantly some people have been unable to send emails for days, which is very annoying indeed! (AlertMe: I understand that this CBL error also affects other email systems)

Lets get one thing out in the open - you might have a spam bot on your computer! A spam bot will send out spam from your IP address (think of this as your post code). However (this is a very big however), you might not find anything at all after using a FREE bot remover like Spybot.

If so, I suggest you find out your IP address:
http://www.whatismyip.com/
Then go to:
http://cbl.abuseat.org/lookup.cgi

Type in the IP address

You will then need to follow the instructions for removal of your IP address from the blocked list. Scroll down the page to where it says: "Okay then, how can I make sure I won't be listed again!" You should then see some bullets. You will need to look at the top bullet where it says 'NATS' (not 'nuts' which some of us are!!:))- this is the firewall that you would be using. Click the link to the right and have a read. At this point you might want to run Spybot. Finish reading and scanning with Spybot and return to the previous page.

Removing your IP address from the CBL listing

Scroll to the bottom and 'check' the 'I have read the above explanation' and then click 'Remove .

You'll have to wait about an hour or maybe two and then try sending your email(s) from the domain or domains that had the original CBL errors. All should then be fine. If you experience a CBL block again you may have a spam bot on your computer. So redouble your efforts, and look for it with Spybot or visit my website - www.id-theftprotect.com for further guidance.

Safe surfing folks!
Julian

AlertMe: Website administrators might want to look at http://www.openspf.org/Project_Overview - this will help setup an SPF. This is the defacto site for stopping forged emails from being sent from your mail server.