Tax scams abound during tax filing season. Taxpayers can steer clear of trouble by watching for these telltale signs that identity thieves have targeted them.
Just when you think you’ve heard the latest in identity theft, along comes a new and innovative way to rob you of your personal information and compromise your identity. It’s happening in condo and townhouse developments primarily, but it could also occur in a neighborhood of single-family homes.
There are a couple ways the theft happens.
Identity theft is on the rise, according to a report released today by Javelin Strategy & Research.
The crime struck almost 12 million victims in 2011, a whopping 13 percent increase from 2010. The main reasons why: the growing number of data breaches and increasing reliance on smartphones and social media.
By , partner, Jackson Lewis LLP
According to a study*, data breaches occurring in the hands of third-party vendors amounted to 39 percent of breaches in 2010. Whether it be cloud service providers, benefits brokers, medical billing services, debt collection companies, consultants, accountants, law firms, staffing services, shredding/data destruction services, cleaning service providers and other businesses, most companies utilize third party vendors to provide an array of services. Those services often involve letting the vendor access, store and/or process personal information, which creates additional risk and legal obligations for the company using the vendor, such as the service provider contract requirement in Massachusetts.
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VeriSign Inc., the company responsible for assuring that more than half the world’s websites are authentic, was hacked multiple times in 2010, and the thieves succeeded in stealing information.
The company is one of the major pillars of the Internet, responsible for assuring the authenticity of all websites that end in .com, .gov and .net. VeriSign also processes up to 50 billion web queries a day, defends companies’ websites against cyber attacks, and tracks international hackers.
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Maybe you think you can spot scam emails by the broken English, the pleas to wire money via Western Union and the references to Nigerian princes. Think again. The latest phishing attacks are so well-crafted, they look exactly like emails you might receive from major banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America, says Ondrej Krehel, information security officer at , Credit.com’s sister company.
By Ondrej Krehel,
How do most corporate data breaches happen? Lost laptops and USB drives.
Now many businesses have some kind of security practice in place for lost corporate computers, whether it’s encrypted drives with remote wipe, or a call lost-and-reporting procedure. But how many have USB drive best practices on the books? Not many.