Thirty-three year old Kristina Louise Smith of Oregon is now in jail again. She has been arrested for allegedly stealing checks from different women’s purses in the Rogue Valley Mall changing rooms. She then cashes them at various places around the county after making the check out to herself and cashing at the local bank. Sometimes she will use the name of a friend.

During the last three years she has been arrested for various felony crimes that include identity theft, theft, and forgery. Often times she uses Pinner instead of Smith as her last name. Pinner is the last name that she used in her latest scam that involved taking the checks from different purses that had been left in the changing rooms and stealing mail from a neighbor.

In the changing room incident, Kristina would wait in a changing room while women tried clothes on in other changing rooms. When they left to look at different clothes she would sneak into their changing room and take a check from their purse. Usually she would take the check from the back so the person would not realize immediately that a check had been stolen. Another time she stole a neighbor’s checkbook in Eagle point. Kristina cashed the checks around town with one being made out for one thousand eight hundred dollars.

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On April 12, 2012, lawmakers in Maryland have given their approval for a one-a-kind measure that will give parents steps that they can take to protect their children from becoming victims of identity theft. Yes, children under eighteen are having their credit ratings damaged before they are even old enough to apply for credit. According to the “ID Analytics Consumer Notification Serve” study that they released in 2011, there have been approximately one hundred forty thousand identity frauds committed against minors every year.

Researchers from “Carnegie Mellon University” and a company who provides protection against identity theft worked together and during their research they found that out of the forty two thousand records of children that they went through, more than ten percent had some signs of some type of fraud or identity theft. With children, they do not usually know that they are victims until they are over the age of eighteen and apply for credit only to be turned down because of a bad credit report.

Under the current law in Maryland, all credit agencies now have to put on a security freeze for everyone’s credit, regardless of age, who asks for it. Unfortunately, they can also refuse to put a lock on the credit of anyone who does not already have a credit report which can spell trouble for children. The only way a minor would have any type of credit report is if they were an identity theft and/or fraud victim.

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It has been reported that large United States banks and four big card-payment processors that issue credit and debit cards have been hit by a data-security breach. This was reported by Global Payments, Inc, a third-party services provider who is considered a middleman between card processors and merchants, when they discovered their systems had been compromised by access that was not authorized.

This security data breach has affected the following card-payment processors:
o    Visa Inc.
o    American Express Company
o    MasterCard Inc.
o    Discover Financial Services
o    Banks and other franchises that issue debit or credit cards that carry the above company’s logos.

Investigating this security data breach are the Secret Service and the United States law enforcement.  An independent data-security organization has been hired by MasterCard Inc to also look into the incident.  Global Payments is based in Atlanta.  After dropping more than nine percent after the news of the security data breach broke, Global Payment shares were halted Friday afternoon. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday offices in Illinois and Pennsylvania were raided by United States marshals and Microsoft cyber investigators.  They disrupted a network of more than thirteen million computers that were infected.  These infected computers in the past 5 years, helped identity thieves steal one hundred million dollars.  The two centers that were raided were in Lombard, Illinois, and Scranton, Pennsylvania.  According to the cyber investigators and United States marshals, they were their most complex efforts yet for botnet disruption.

For people who are not technically savvy, botnets are networks of computers that are infected from around the world. These infected computers are what allow identity thieves the ability to steal financial data from consumers.  The botnets will increase in size as the users of the computers click on a file or link that is malicious accidentally.  When this happens their personal computers begin to perform tasks automatically that help them commit identity theft.

According to Microsoft, they allege that these bonnets were infected with the Zeus malware which can record the users’ computer keystrokes in order to steal their passwords and username that are linked to bank accounts online.  In addition to getting all that money these operators of botnets have also sold versions of Zeus for seven to fifteen hundred dollars.  How much the version would costs would depend on the level of sophistication.
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In 2011 there were approximately twelve million people in the United States that were victims of identity theft/fraud, which is an increase of thirteen percent from 2010.  The increase in identity fraud has been fueled by incautious consumers using social media and smartphones.  In addition, there were several large data breaches in 2011.

Because there are more sophisticated policing by credit card companies and a rise in credit card monitoring, identity thieves are having to resort to methods of stealing personal information where people are less cautious, which are the social media and smartphones.  Since 2011 the number of people who has had their information stolen or accessed in a data breach has increased by sixty-seven percent.  This is partly because of some very high profile data breaches such as with Sony Corp’s PlayStation network in April 2011.

If you are a victim of having your personal information taken in any data breach you are nine and a half times more likely to become a victim of identity theft/fraud.  The only finding that did not really change and stayed stable was the dollar losses by consumers in spite of fact that the number of victims increased.

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