U.S. identity theft losses fall: study
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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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Hundreds of millions of people were left vulnerable to identity theft in 2007 because of data breaches, resarchers say.
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Increasing concerns about identity theft are driving a growing number of counties to start redacting personal data from public records on their Web sites. But the work remains challenging.
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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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Online tricksters looking to dupe consumers out of credit card numbers and other personal information have netted about $500 million from their hapless victims in the US, a national study released Wednesday showed.
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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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Thousands of Wells Fargo mortgage and student-loan customers may be at risk for identity theft after four computers were stolen last month from a vendor that prints loan statements.
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Rise in online identity fraud has companies on the hook: Educate customers or lose them.
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Thousands of Wells Fargo &amp; Co. mortgage and student-loan customers might be at risk for identity theft after four computers were stolen in October from a vendor that prints loan statements.
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A poll suggests that a large majority of Americans support restrictions on the use of Social Security numbers if it would help prevent identity theft.
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Millions of veterans and active-duty troops whose sensitive personal information was lost by the Veterans Affairs Department will receive some form of credit protection against identity theft, the government said Wednesday.
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(InfoWorld) - An identity theft task force created by U.S. President George Bush has recommended nationally accepted police reports that victims could fill out online, and a change in U.S. law that would require those convicted of such crimes to pay victims for the time used to clear up identity problems. The President's Identity Theft Task Force, which met Tuesday, also recommended that U.S. agencies examine whether their use of Social Security numbers is necessary and called on an interagency working group on ID theft to develop best practices for data security in government. The U.S. government needs to lead by example in protecting consumers from ID theft, Deborah Platt Majoras, chairwoman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), said. "Identity theft truly is a direct assault on our citizens and attacks the very foundation of the information economy," Majoras said in a joint press conference with U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The task force's recommendations are an interim list, with a full plan of how to attack ID theft to be released in November. But the recommendations released Tuesday are steps U.S. agencies and other groups can take immediately, Gonzales said. About 4 percent of U.S. residents are ID theft victims every year, Gonzales said. Bush established the task force because of "the prevalence of this crime, combined with the lingering burdens and effects on victims," Gonzales said. "When we look at the problem of identity theft, we are reminded that the same technological advances that have improved our lives have also given new and broad opportunities to criminals, including identity thieves," he added. "As with any crime, victims suffer feelings of violation and stress, but in these cases, victims have the added burden of essentially cleaning up the mess that the identity thieves leave behind." Among the task force's recommendations: -- The U.S. Congress should change laws to require that defendants convicted of ID theft pay victims for the time they spent clearing up the mess. -- The U.S. should adopt a universal police report that ID theft victims can fill out online, print out and take to their local police station. -- The U.S. Office of Personnel Management should speed up its review of the use of Social Security numbers by federal agencies. -- U.S. agencies should work with experts to find other ways of authenticating people's identities, such as biometrics. -- U.S. agencies should develop better plans to disclose data breaches to potential victims. In May, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) had a laptop and hard drive stolen from an analyst's home, and the agency took about two weeks to report the theft to the public. Majoras and Gonzales didn't talk about the VA case, but members of Congress have called for the VA to do a better job of notifying potential victims.
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Gimme shelter US identity theft losses dropped 11.5 per cent last year to $49.3bn, according to a new study.â¦
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Internet still a den of thieves For the seventh year in a row, identity theft is the number one complaint reported to the US Federal Trade Commission.â¦
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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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The loss or theft of personal data such as credit card and Social Security numbers soared to unprecedented levels in 2007
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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.