Published: May 26, 2011Tags: Familial DNA, Grim Sleeper
Along with your neighborhood watch program and wireless home alarm system you should be comforted to know that there are technologies out there being put to use that help catch the bad guy.
Many of us by now know that a sample of Osama bin Laden’s DNA was used to effectively identify him. But how? They didn’t have his original DNA until his death, but they did have samples from bin Laden’s family members, and scientists were able to match them up and determine they had their man.
This is called Familial DNA.
In Las Angeles police captured a serial killer dubbed “Grim Sleeper”, based on pulling his sons DNA. Prior to the Grim Sleepers arrest, his son was arrested for an unrelated charge. From that arrest they pulled his DNA, and it was a partial match to the DNA found at the crime scenes of his father decades ago. This is c
Today we have two random identity theft protection tips for you on pickpocketing and smishing, yes smishing.
1. Smishing People are always coming up with clever names to give to types of identity theft. First there was phishing, then there was vishing and now there is the newest incarnation: smishing. Smishing stands for phishing via SMS, or short message service, which you probably refer to as text messaging. With this scam, potential victims get a text message that instructs them to dial a toll-free phone number to solve a mishap with their financial institution. A lot of people will follow this instruction out of legitimate worry, and some will do the same simply out of curiosity.
When they do dial the number, they will find that it’s answered by a voice response system that instructs them to type in account information. After they type in the information, the thief’s system records the keystrokes. In
Sony estimates the massive data breach affecting 100 million PlayStation Network, Qriocity, and Sony Online Entertainment customers have cost $171 million so far. However, lawsuits and regulatory fines could push that figure much higher.
The money has been spent on providing identity theft protection to affected customers, costs from welcome back programs that offer services for free, customer support costs, network security enhancement costs, legal and consulting costs, as well as lost revenue, Sony said.
Sony stressed that it has not received “any confirmed reports of customer identity theft issues, nor any confirmed misuse of credit cards” from the data breaches.
The company acknowledged that class action lawsuits have been filed against the company and some of its subsidiaries and regulatory inquiries have been initiated. These could significantly increase the costs from the data breaches. “Thos
Reed College’s entire website was recently copied and replicated, but with the fictitious name “University of Redwood.” The Wall Street Journal
May
The professional services firm BDO recently announced the results of its 2011 BDO RiskFactor Report for Technology, which found that found that data security and breach prevention have become increasing concerns for technology companies relative to last years findings. Read more…
Ok, we usually don’t write blog posts on identity theft crimes as we like to hold ourselves to a higher standard and provide great content and quite frankly that would have us posting multiple times every day and would just make the important content hard to find. This one, however, caught our eye and just goes to show you that identity thieves don’t care at all about the victim of their crimes.
Normally, when you think of individuals who an identity thief might target, it’s unlikely for your first guess would be a centenarian. It’s a little difficult to pass for someone that age, and the real person’s photograph may show up on Al Roker’s televised birth announcements on the morning news. If they do decide to target someone of a certain age, they should probably not choose Josephine McBride, the oldest graduate from Norfolk, Virginia’s citizen police academy.
The accused identity thief is Mark Hillard, who allegedly forged checks, used them to make purchases at local retail stores and then returned the items that he purchased for cash on a later date and at different establishments. Ironically, H