Questions Remain About eBay Members' Info Theft
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It's still not known who the culprit is nor how and when this person obtained the information.
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Robert Vamosi talks with data loss expert Dan Geer about identity theft.
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(InfoWorld) - Hard drives full of confidential data are still turning up on the second-hand market, researchers have reported. Investigations carried out on behalf of BT by the University of Glamorgan in the U.K., Edith Cowan University in Australia, and Longwood University in the U.S., found that 37 percent of drives surveyed had traces of personal data on them. Damningly, this figure is much the same as it was for the same surveys undertaken by the universities in each of the last two years, suggesting that either companies are ignoring the issue or simply lack the tools to adequately wipe data before resale. Sensitive information retrieved included salary details, financial data of specific companies, credit card numbers, medical data, visa applications, details of online purchases, and inevitably, online pornography. The sample totalled 350 hard drives acquired in online auctions. "Given the level of exposure that the subjects of security and identity theft has received in recent times, and the availability of suitable tools to ensure the safe disposal of information, it is difficult to understand why disks are still not being effectively cleaned before they are disposed off," said BT's security research head, Dr Andy Jones. "When organizations dispose off surplus and obsolete computers and hard disks, they must ensure that adequate procedures are in place to destroy any data and also to check that the procedures that are in place are effective -- whether they are handled by internal resources or through a third party contractor," he said. The full report -- which has yet to be made publically available -- reveals that buying second-hand disks is an unreliable way to get hold of storage. Of the 133 disks bought in the U.K., 44 percent of them didn't even work. But of those that did, 19 percent had enough information on them to identify the organization from which they had come, 65 percent had enough data to identify named people, and 17 percent contained "illicit" data. Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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A sophisticated multistage attack by identity thieves appears to have significantly compromised eBay and perhaps PayPal as well.
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Questions abound over the posting of confidential information from eBay Inc. members on one of the vendor&#39;s discussion forums, a sinister incident that has many of the online marketplace&#39;s buyers and sellers worried.
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Ask Eileen Harrington, associate director of the FTC's consumer protection bureau, questions about spam and consumer fraud on the Internet.
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ICO to investigate The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) is to investigate eBay after Privacy International lodged an official complaint about the company's data retention practices.â¦
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Auction monitoring pays off Two eBay traders agreed this week to pay a total of $100,000 in damages after they were caught selling illegal copies of Norton security software.â¦
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Sensitive customer details are lost in an Atlanta burglary - the third such theft in a year. For the third time in a year, criminals have stolen computers that contained names and sensitive financial information of customers of Wells Fargo &amp; Co.
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Backdoor man Letters Our story reporting the abundance of people who believe there is a secret backdoor in eBay's network appeared to touch a nerve.â¦
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Wild and dynamic eBay users are being targeted by an advanced Trojan that attempts to redirect traffic so it can silently bid on a car from the auction site's car site, Symantec is warning. It is the latest security headache for eBay, which has faced an onslaught of complaints from some users who say fraud on the site has increased to unacceptable levels over the past few months.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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Who stole Christmas? eBay has nothing to say today on why many subscribers to its Manager Pro service are unable to access the service.â¦
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A laptop drive offered for sale as new on eBay turned out to have come from the laptop of an Arkansas Democratic Party official -- and still contained sensitive information when the buyer received it.
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Motown singer Martha Reeves says a posting on internet auction site eBay has left her open to identity theft.
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For audio files, visit http://www.absolute.com/anr  SUGGESTED ANCHOR LEAD: What are companies doing to keep customers' private information safe from criminals? Not enough according to the experts. Walter Ocner reports.
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Everyone knows that income earned from online auctions is taxable. But should sites like eBay be responsible for policing their users?