Posted on July - 27 - 2010
Welcome to the “Best Person of the Week” post from the ITAC blog. As our ever faithful readers know, we like to shine a light on the identity theft “heroes” who are fighting the most noble battle against identity theft. And, our readers know that we like to mix things up a bit, which is what we are doing with this week’s “Best Person” post. How are we mixing things up? We are focusing on a victim who needs all the publicity he can get to clear his good name.
Here’s the gist of it. When Dan Wheeler’s wallet got stolen from his truck 15 years ago, he had no idea that a simple theft would lead to a lifetime of costly and embarrassing misunderstandings. But because the m
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Posted on July - 25 - 2010
Q: What does FICO mean?
A: FICO is the brand name of a credit score calculation created by Fair Issac & Co way back in 1956. A “FICO score” indicates that a credit score has been calculated using the (top secret) mathematical formula Fair Issac developed.
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Posted on July - 23 - 2010
Some things are irrational to fear, such as monsters under the bed or your inlaws coming for a visit. But some things that we fear are perfectly reasonable, like the Internal Revenue Service and identity thieves. In fact, a study taken by Unisys, an information technology consulting service, asserts that more Americans fear having their information stolen online than getting mugged or robbed in person.
Perhaps the reason for this is twofold. First of all, when you submit your information online you like to think that it is safe. Knowing that someone can hack in and find it can make a person feel vulnerable. The second big problem with this type of identity theft is that it can occur without your knowing about it.
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Posted on July - 22 - 2010
Bringing down an identity theft ring is no easy thing. Law enforcement often has to go undercover for months at a time, get involved with the criminals — and actually do illegal transactions with money being swapped. This is a very risky proposition that FBI Special Agent Waldo J. Longa, and his team, had no problem with getting down and dirty to stop an identity theft ring in Palm Beach County, Florida.
Between June and July, the ring, comprised of seven low lifes, made 32 separate fake IDs using information stolen from people in Florida, California and other states and showed FBI agents a list of 110 real identities to choose from. A
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Posted on July - 21 - 2010
Today through August 1st, you can sign up and communicate on eHarmony.com for free! This is the longest free promotion we have heard of them offering, and if you start today you’ll get the biggest bang for your (totally free) buck. Just click the link in this post, and start signing up. And it really is free – you don’t even need to enter your credit card information to enjoy this special.
Posted on July - 19 - 2010
ID Experts today announced RADAR (HITECH Risk Assessment, Documentation and Reporting), the industry’s first expert software tool to measure a data breach incident’s risk index (IRI) by combining the severity of the episode and the sensitivity of the exposed data to quantify the incident’s overall harm threshold. Designed for healthcare providers, HIPAA covered entities, and their business associates, RADAR was developed to efficiently and consistently meet all of the requirements for complying with the HITECH Act data breach notification provisions for security and privacy breach incident harm threshold assessment, documentation and reporting.
Security breaches are now remarkably commonplace in healthcare; more than 55 were reported to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the first six months of 2010. In fact, healthcare is the second most breached industry, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. And security breaches, whether digital- or paper-based, can happen at any given moment—physical theft of a laptop from an employee’s car, deliberate abuse of system access, misdirected faxes and emails, malware attacks, unintentional human error, unauthorized access, a lost backup drive. Additionally, the future of healthcare dictates the use of electronic medical records, raising fresh concerns of protecting patient privacy, PHI threats and medical identity theft.
Dr. Larry Ponemon
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