Help-Desk Worker Admits Role in Large ID Theft
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A former help-desk worker at a New  York company that provides credit reports to banks and other  lenders pleaded guilty on Tuesday for his role in what federal  prosecutors said was the largest identity theft case ever.
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Things just aren&#39;t going well for Timothy Scott Short. Just days after a pair of tech support calls he made to printer manufacturer Digimarc&#160;resulted in his arrest, he now finds himself on the receiving end of a data breach with his Social Security number and birthdate accidentally made public via the federal court&#39;s Electronic Case Files (ECF) system.It&#39;s an ironic development, because Short, 33, was arrested in connection with the Oct. 5 theft of a Missouri Department of Revenue printer and a PC containing data on as many as 500 state residents.Short&#39;s personal information was discovered by the IDG News Service, listed on a court document called a Criminal Case Cover Sheet, which was publicly available to users of the ECF system. Normally, this document should only be accessible to those involved in the case, but it appears to have been inadvertently made public, according to a clerk with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, who asked not to be identified because she was not authorized to speak with the press. &quot;It&#39;s something on our side,&quot; she said, adding that technical staff is now looking into the problem.The U.S. Judicial Conference, which sets policy for U.S. courts, has said that this kind of information should be removed from publicly available electronic court records, but actually removing all the sensitive information has proved difficult.&quot;If you went online to various court systems, you could find social security numbers of many individuals,&quot; said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. &quot;It&#39;s a really, really difficult question to answer, just because you&#39;re dealing with so many jurisdictions.&quot;Social Security numbers are the building blocks of identity theft crime because they can be used to secure credit cards. &quot;Any time you are placing Social Security numbers online, your are subjecting that person to identity theft,&quot; Stephens said.With the push to make public documents available online, other government databases have had similar problems. Earlier this year, the states of California and Colorado were forced to take their Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) databases offline after privacy advocates pointed out that the Social Security numbers and other data they contained could be misused by identity thieves.Short, however, may have bigger problems to worry about. He&#39;s facing $250,000 in fines and 10 years in prison on charges of possession of &quot;document-making implements&quot; in connection with the theft. He was arrested after U.S. Secret Service Special Agent John Bush recognized his voice in calls placed to a tech support line of the company that makes the stolen printer.&#160;
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Robert Vamosi talks with data loss expert Dan Geer about identity theft.
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Hackers got into a database containing the Social Security numbers of
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A state government intern in Ohio last week lost a backup device that contained personal data on more than 64,000 state workers and tens of thousands of other people.
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About 146,000 people using a jobs Web site sponsored by the U.S. government have had their personal information stolen by hackers who broke into computers at Monster Worldwide Inc, a government spokesman said on Thursday.
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InfoWorld - A Colombian man pleaded guilty Wednesday to a 16-county indictment involving an identity theft scheme in which he installed keylogging software on hotel business center computers and Internet lounges in order to steal passwords, account data, and other personal information, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
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Tens of thousands of U.S. consumers  face a greater risk of identity theft after criminals gained  access to a database of personal records compiled by  ChoicePoint Inc., a company spokesman said on Tuesday.
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A man charged in one of the largest identity theft scams in U.S. history pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and fraud in connection with identity documents Tuesday and could face up to 50 years in prison, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney David Kelley, of the Southern District of New York.
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A computer technician who prosecutors said made possible the largest identity theft in U.S. history, surpassing $50 million, pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy in a scheme that poached personal information from tens of thousands of people.
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Police in the U.K. have arrested a man in connection with the theft of source code from networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. in May, a Scotland Yard spokeswoman confirmed Friday.
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About 146,000 people using a jobs Web  site sponsored by the U.S. government have had their personal  information stolen by hackers who broke into computers at  Monster Worldwide Inc, a government spokesman said on Thursday.
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Job portal Monster.com has released details of how cyber thieves stole confidential information.
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A repeat ID-theft suspect who allegedly stole a specialized printer and PC setup from a Missouri government office was nabbed when he made a call to tech support seeking a license for the gear.
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A Colorado prisoner obtained sensitive  information on a county sheriff and nearly 1,000 other  local-government employees after he got a password into the  county's computer system, authorities said on Friday.
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When Michelle Brown, a corporate banker outside of Los Angeles, filled out paperwork for an apartment rental, little did she realize that financial details offered to a landlord would lead to identity theft that plagued five years of her life.
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Weeks after the government admitted that it had lost computer discs containing the names and bank account details of 25 million people, exposing nearly half the population to possible fraud and identity theft, the U.K. said a contractor has lost personal data on 3 million learner drivers.