ID Theft Not Down, Only Different
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A report funded by the banking industry finds U.S. ID fraud is down by a half-million victims in 2006. But a data-privacy expert says the study is dead wrong. In 27B Stroke 6.
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Plus: Are you having an identity crisis? [News.com Extra]
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By KEVIN DeMARRAIS  We hear about identity theft almost every day, and it's easy to know why: It's the No. 1 source of consumer fraud gripes. But it is far from the sole means crooks are using to separate you from your hard-earned money.
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By Phil Mulkins, Tulsa World, Okla.  Sep. 15--Dear Action Line: My kids think I'm an old fuddy-dud and bought me a computer with Internet service to "modernize me." On Monday, you said there were sneaks out there using "spyware" to steal my identity.
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The drives from LaCie, use biometrics to restrict access to data and will not work if they've been removed from the case and are plugged into another machine.
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Not compulsion - sign here to end the pain... "Various forms of coercion" could be used to accelerate the rollout of ID cards, the idea being that ID cards will remain 'voluntary' for as long as possible, while not having an ID card will become more and more uncomfortable. This, precisely what the government has intended to do all along, is stated baldly in an Identity &amp; Passport Service leak cited by the Sunday People.â¦
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If you&#39;re a convicted identity thief, you&#39;ve got about a 50 percent chance of avoiding jail time.That&#39;s one of the findings of a new study of closed U.S. Secret Service case files, released Monday by Utica College&#39;s Center for Identity Management and Information Protection. This is the first time researchers have been allowed to sift through the Secret Service&#39;s data. The study&#39;s authors based their findings on an&#160;analysis of 500 closed Secret Service cases.&quot;Prosecutors had a slightly better chance of sending a convicted identity thief to prison than not (51 percent) and could expect to see the imprisoned offender sentenced to three years or less of incarceration,&quot; the report said.The college has been working with a number of partners, including the Secret Service, IBM, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, since the Center&#39;s creation in mid-2006 to study the methods used by ID thieves and to help corporations and law enforcement prevent this type of crime.Technology like printers, mobile phones, and computers were used in about half of the cases, but the Internet was the exclusive tool of ID thieves only about 10 percent of the time.Identity theft is concentrated in the northeastern and southern United States, the study found. And the majority of the offenders in the Secret Service cases were African-American; more than two-thirds of all offenders were male.The study also found that ID thieves tended to hit people that they did not know, rather than preying on friends and relatives. A family member or friend was the victim in 16 percent of cases. In about a third of the cases, the theft was an inside job, with the data being stolen from an employer.Identity theft is a well-studied phenomenon, but it&#39;s unusual for a survey to be based on this kind of closed-case data. &quot;This study is significant because it did not depend on self-reported or survey data,&quot; the authors wrote.The median loss from identity theft was just over $31,000, but in one case, investigated by the Secret Service&#39;s Dallas field office, the defendant spent millions on luxury vehicles and then managed to set up shell companies and defraud investors. Total losses: $13 million. &quot;In general,&quot; however, &quot;the more offenders involved in the case, the higher the victim loss,&quot; the study stated.According to Javelin Strategy &amp; Research, identity theft cost U.S.businesses and consumers an estimated $49.3 billion in 2006.&#160;
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The always provocative Brad Templeton, who hung out with a large cadre of geeks at the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW, or IIW2007) last week, has some cautions about new identity systems, even if they are all &quot;user-centric&quot;. These cautions lie in a paradox: &quot;The easier it is to give somebody ID information, the more often it will be done. And the easier it is to give ID information, the more palatable it is to ask for, or demand it.&quot; The italics are his.  Here he hits on the problem of market power asymmetries (vendors strong, customers weak) that have been with us for the whole Industrial Age, and are with us still. I think we have a way to overcome those, and that Brad's Paradox may provide exactly the conceptual hurdle we need to see before we can make progress. \
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(InfoWorld) - Despite widespread media coverage of data breaches over the past year, identity fraud is actually dropping in the U.S., Javelin Strategy & Research Inc. reported Thursday. In fact, the cost of identity fraud was down 12 percent from Javelin's 2006 survey, at an estimated US$49.3 billion in losses. The number one source of ID fraud? A lost or stolen credit card. "ID fraud is down," said James VanDyke, Javelin's president and founder. "It hasn't been growing for several years, but we hadn't seen it drop." Nationwide, there were about 500,000 fewer victims, according to this year's survey, VanDyke said. Much of the drop can be attributed to improved antifraud practices on the part of consumers and businesses, he said. "Businesses are doing a better job of not granting new accounts [to criminals]," he said. And consumers are also monitoring their account activity more closely and reporting suspicious transactions to the banks much more quickly. Javelin based its findings on 5,000 telephone interviews with U.S residents conducted over three weeks last October. The survey follows a methodology established by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which released a similar study back in 2003. The Javelin research was sponsored by CheckFree Corp., Visa USA Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. The survey's findings are at odds with those of research firm Gartner Inc., which has reported that ID theft is on the rise. But VanDyke says that this is because Javelin's numbers include responses from a wider range of people, including those who lack Internet access. "Thirty percent of people in the U.S. are not on the Internet, and those people have a vastly different way of managing their finances," he said. According to Javelin, there are also important differences between the way rich and poor people react to ID theft, something that VanDyke describes as a "fraud detection digital divide." "The low-income people essentially run away from purchases and they run away from the Internet," Van Dyke said. Affluent people, on the other hand, tend to embrace the Internet as a way to avoid having sensitive data stolen from the mail, and to keep tabs on their account activity, he said. Mail theft accounted for about 9 percent of all ID compromises. That's more victims than data breaches and phishing combined, according to Javelin's numbers. Javelin also found that young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 were at greater risk of ID theft, with more than 5 percent of respondents having been victimized. "They're being haphazard and as a result, they're being victimized," VanDyke said. "They're not protecting their PCs with antivirus software and firewalls.
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Here&#39;s a tip: If you steal a printer used to print driver&#39;s licenses, don&#39;t call the manufacturer asking for driver software.It&#39;s a lesson that Timothy Scott Short learned all too well this month, when he got arrested after placing a couple of calls to Digimarc&#39;s tech support line.Short, 33, is facing felony charges for possession of &quot;document-making implements&quot; in connection with the theft of a Digimarc printer used by the state of Missouri to manufacture driver&#39;s licenses.The printer, along with a PC, were stolen on the evening of Oct. 5 from the St. Charles contract office of the Missouri Department of Revenue, said Trish Vincent, director of the department. These offices are run by individuals who are subcontracted by the department to issue driver&#39;s licenses, Vincent said. The pilfered printer could be used to produce a license, Vincent said.The PC, however, was locked with a key, and because the key was stored in a secure location, the PC was unusable to the thief, said Vincent.So what do you do when you have a stolen driver&#39;s license printer, but can&#39;t use the PC that goes with it? Enter Digimarc&#39;s tech support line.According to a sworn statement by Secret Service Special Agent John Bush, someone who identified himself as &quot;Scott&quot; called Digimarc two days later and asked if he could buy printer drivers for the model of printer that had been swiped from the St. Charles office.The Secret Service agent later listened to a recording of this call and recognized Short&#39;s voice from a prior investigation, Bush said. The caller also gave Digimarc the same phone number Short had used in an unrelated identity theft case, Bush said.Short was charged on Oct. 11, and is facing 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to court filings.&quot;The stolen equipment contains the identifying information and photographs of between 200 to 500 Missouri residents,&quot; Bush said in the statement. &quot;The only use of the equipment is the manufacture of state identification documents.&quot;The state has sent notification letters to those affected by the theft, Vincent said. The computer contained name, address, and date of birth data, but not Social Security numbers, she added.Digimarc declined to explain how the Secret Service ended up listening to its customer support calls. &quot;Because of a confidentiality agreement with our customer and because this is a criminal matter, we are not able to comment on the incident,&quot; said Digimarc spokeswoman Leslie Constans.
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Identity theft concerns are pushing some counties to take down or black out personally identifiable information from their Web sites but the work remains a challenge.
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A new study shows that convicted ID thieves often avoid jail time, reveals common methods of ID theft.
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State officials warned California residents Wednesday to take preventative steps against ID theft after an unknown hacker gained access to a database at the University of California, Berkeley.
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The number of reported ID thefts dips, but it still accounts for more than a third of complaints to FTC.
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Americans lost about $49.3 billion in 2006 to criminals who stole their identities, an 11.5 percent decline that may reflect increased vigilance among consumers and businesses, a study released on Thursday shows.
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Personal identity has taken on a new meaning in the digital age, where basic facts like your name, address or age are far less important to some people than the collected records of what you were looking at online.
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(InfoWorld) - Most large data breaches don't appear to lead to identity theft, and proposals that would require companies to notify customers of most breaches may lead to increased costs without significant benefits, says a report from a U.S. government agency released Thursday. The report, from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), said only four of the 24 largest data breaches between January 2000 and June 2005 appear to have resulted in identity fraud. Wide-ranging data breach notification laws that would require nearly all breaches to be reported could lead to notifications that "present little or no risk, perhaps leading consumers to disregard notices altogether," the report said. While a breach notification law would have several benefits, a law that requires notification for nearly all breaches could also create significant costs for businesses, the report added. The U.S. Congress is currently considering several breach notification bills, including some that would require notification for nearly all breaches. Instead, Congress may want to consider a notification rule based on the potential for the risk of ID theft, the report said. The U.S. President's Identity Theft Task Force has recommended a national standard for determining when government agencies and private companies should report breaches, the report pointed out. A risk-based standard "could avoid undue burden on organizations and unnecessary and counterproductive notifications of breaches that present little risk," the report said. A data breach law would create costs for businesses, including the cost of developing incident response plans and notifying customers, the report said. While it's difficult to determine costs, a Ponemon Institute study in 2006 found that 31 companies with breaches incurred an average cost of $1.4 million per breach for notifying customers, staffing call centers, paying legal fees, and other expenses, the report said. The GAO researched 24 large data breaches reported in the media between 2000 and 2005, and found that 18 of them had no ID theft or fraud identified. Three of the breaches, at CardSystems Solutions, DSW, and CD Universe, had reports of fraud associated with existing customer accounts. And a breach at ChoicePoint had reports of unauthorized new accounts opened. In the remaining two breaches, GAO was unable to determine if there had been ID fraud. It's difficult to track ID theft resulting from data breaches, the report said. In some cases, thieves don't attempt to use the data until a year or more after the breach, the report said. A breach notification law could be beneficial because it would encourage organizations to improve data security, the report said. "Care is needed in defining appropriate criteria for data breaches that merit notification," the report said. "Because breaches vary in the risk they present, and because most breaches have not resulted in detected incidents of identity theft, a notification that is risk based appears appropriate." Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a security research and training company in Maryland, praised the report, saying some in Congress have focused too much on data breaches. Some lawmakers have "dropped the ball on the far more important area of attack-based defenses," he said. The report is important because it gives Congress more information about data breaches, added Thomas Lenard, senior fellow and acting president at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank. "Itâs very good to have more data on this issue," he said. "[The report] reinforces my view that we should only adopt new regulations in this area if it can be shown that their benefits are greater than their costs."