Most identity theft victims will never know how it happened. The results of the “the analysis of information remaining on disks offered for sale on the second-had market” study might provide some insight, if not comfort.

To put it briefly, what this international study found was that 2 out of 3 second-hand computers are sold with data remaining on their hard drives. As is that weren’t alarming enough, that’s a significant decline from last year’s finding that 45 of all computers examined were wiped clean before being sold. Read the rest of this entry »

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Express Scripts has gone public today with information that they were contacted early in October by extortionists who threatened to disclose personal and medical information on millions of the company’s customers if Express Scripts doesn’t meet their ransom demands.

The ransom request was sent by mail and accompanied by the names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, prescription details, of 75 of the firm’s 50 million customers.

George Paz, Express Scripts’ chief executive, said the company will not pay the ransom, but declined to say how much money the extortionists demanded. Read the rest of this entry »

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Much of the information that makes up the outline of our personal histories exists digitally. We have records, medical charts, college transcripts, military records, county clerk’s files, credit scores, and personnel records. And we’re learning the hard way that we can’t necessarily trust the accidental archivists with our information. Read the rest of this entry »

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A Denver grand jury indicted five defendants last week in an identity theft crime ring. Shadwick Weaver, the ringleader, is in custody and being held on $500,000 bond. Weaver has been indicted on 65 counts. Three of the others indicted by the grand jury are also in custody; a fifth defendant is at large.

During a joint investigation by the economic crimes units of the Aurora Police Department and the Denver District Attorney’s office, detectives discovered almost 300 fraudulent IDs, employee IDs, and counterfeit checks and credit cards. Read the rest of this entry »

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There’s been yet another data breach in yet another public school district. This most recent security lapse revealed the personal information of approximately 5,000 employees of the Seattle School District in Seattle, WA.

The information was accidentally given to the local unions that represent many of the district’s employees, including those whose information was exposed. The 5,000 workers involved make up more than half of the school district’s total employees. Read the rest of this entry »

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The RSA FraudAction Research Lab announced on Friday it had discovered a digital cache of more than a half million stolen online bank logins, passwords and credit card account numbers, and speculated that a Russian identity theft ring stole the information.

A computer virus called the Sinowal Trojan Horse is to blame for the massive theft, and has been collecting the data since 2006. Read the rest of this entry »

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Identity theft experts agree: It’s no longer a matter of if your personal and financial information will be exposed in a data breach, it’s just a question of when.

Data breaches were up 69% in the first half of 2008. Millions of Americans have been thrown into a state of panic when they received the dreaded data breach letter in the mail. But the 1.5 million Americans who have LifeLock protection know their credit is still safe, even after a data breach. Read the rest of this entry »

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Joe Wurzelbacher initially shied away from the glare of celebrity, but soon his name was in all the major newspapers and on the lips of every TV broadcaster. Now most Americans know him better as “Joe the Plumber” and he seems to welcome the spotlight.

The problem with fame, though, is that soon people want to know even more about you. That must have been the motivation behind all the illegal searches of Joe’s Ohio state government records.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol is conducting an investigation into illegal searches involving Wurzelbacher’s records with the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency, the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services and the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Read the rest of this entry »

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Just a piece of general advice to identity thieves: If you’re going to steal toy-drive donor checks, photocopy them, and use the information for your own purposes, don’t sort out the checks from the cops and target them. If only someone had given Phelecia Williams the same good advice.

Internships are meant to create career opportunities for young people, and apparently Williams saw that opportunity while she was interning in the Oakland mayor’s office. Read the rest of this entry »

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Last week Florida’s attorney general Bill McCollum alerted parents to the widespread theft of children’s identities. He cited an estimate that 500,000 children a year fall victim to identity theft, but added that he suspected there were far more victims of child identity theft.

A recent study by Javelin Strategy and Research proves him right.

Incredibly, their study shows 5% of children have at least one credit report linked to their Social Security number, indicating that someone has applied for credit using their information. That’s at least one child in every school classroom. Read the rest of this entry »

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