Identity thieves can get your personal and financial information in a variety of ways, some simple and some very sophisticated.  This is why you need to be on your toes when it comes to protecting your information at all times.  There is one bizarre way that identity thieves will use to obtain personal and financial information that not too many people would thing they would use.  That bizarre way is to steal personal information from the dead.

Yes, the dead.  This does not mean that they go to the cemetery and take names off the headstones and apply for a driver’s license and Social Security card in a deceased person’s name that has been dead for many years.  No, they do it with a more modern twist.  The identity thieves scour the newspapers to see who has died and makes a list of them and their address.  They then go over to the home and grab any mail that is still in the mail box that no one has gotten around to getting or else they go through the garbage.  They are looking for any type of credit card receipts, utility bills, credit card statements, etc.  This may take several days or even up to a month to get these types of things.

Many times the relatives of the one who just died is still traumatized by the death and do not think about stopping the mail, picking it up, or even contacting the credit card companies and asking them to stop sending out the statement or closing the accounts because of death.

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Every year investigations by the Better Business Bureau uncover many scams.  The scams range from schemes that have been around for many years new gimmicks.   Many of the older scams are just recycled with different words or current issues are used to make them some newer. The top scam of the year, according to the Better Business Bureau, was a Phishing email claiming it was from them.  It was about a complaint, which could download malicious software.  This malicious software could mine financial accounts.

Here is an in depth look at the top scams of 2011 according to the Better Business Bureau.

• Job scams—every year the BBB sees many working from home and secret shopper scams but they cannot only kill your hopes of making money but also steal your personal information.  The websites, online applications, and scam emails look professional but how they get your personal information is to as you to fill out a report to check your credit or else a form to direct deposit your money to provide some bank information.  These forms are just a way for the identity thief to capture your sensitive personal information that can be used like your bank account number, Social Security numbers, etc.
• Lottery and sweepstakes scams–the top scam was the email that stated it was from the founder of Facebook telling you that you had won one million dollars from Facebook. Read the rest of this entry »

The transition to electronic medical records is now in full swing but they may be overlooking potential risks to patient’s safety.  The idea of using computerized medical records was sold as being a powerful tool to improve a patient’s safety in many different ways.  One way was by alerting the physician automatically if they were going to prescribe a medication the patient was allergic to.  Unfortunately these benefits should not be taken for granted because there are also identity theft risks that go along with these benefits.

If these computerized medical records are not designed and applied appropriately, it can lead to adverse consequences.  Some of the complications can range from quirky systems, medication dosing errors can happen if the technology does not communicate with a rival company’s version, computer crashes, delays in needed treatment, or overlooking signs of a fatal illness.  Due to medical errors in hospitals, there are an estimated forty-four thousand to ninety-eight thousand patient deaths a year.

Yes, hospitals have improved safety by going electronic but there is not much evidence that such improvements are being made on the heath care system as a whole.  President Obama’s administration wants most of the doctors and hospitals to switch to computerized records by the year 2015.  For the purchase of the new systems that will be needed, they are investing as much as twenty-seven billion dollars over ten years as incentive payments for them to do so.

No one is immune from falling for a scam.  They can happen to any one of any age and at any stage in their life.  To help protect you from becoming a victim of a scam there are some things that you need to remember.  The best thing that you can do is remember that if sounds too good to be true it probably is and it is most likely a scam.

Protect Yourself

There are two identity theft protection ways that you can protect yourself from becoming a victim of a scam.  One of the most important things that you can do is making sure that you read the fine print not only at the bottom of the paper but anywhere that there appears to be small fine print.  In addition to the small print you should read the contract or agreement entirely before you sign it.  Scammers may use small print, sophisticated language, or asterisks to either confuse or hide the true meaning of what you are signing your name to.

You should also make sure that you guard all your personal information.  Make sure that you verify their identity if anyone asks for your personal information.  Make sure that you ask for their name, the name of their organization, the address, and the phone number.  You need to make sure that you verify this information through an outside source such as the telephone directory or their website.
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It seems that every day you read on the news about someone being the victim of identity theft or a data breach.  It is affecting everyone from individuals to corporations to law enforcement to government agencies.  There seems to be no end in sight and it appears that there is a very obvious need to improve the methods that are currently being used to combat this every growing epidemic.

To help jumpstart the investments that are needed to make consumers more aware of this problem, better technologies, and better monitoring of consumer accounts the National Institute of Standards and Technology has just offered ten million dollars worth of grants to organizations and commercial companies for research on improved technologies for identity security,  The agency is going to sponsor a competition that supports a pilot project which will feature improved systems that go past the simple use of passwords and users ID.  They want the systems to include trusted, interoperable online credentials.

This competition is going to be handled by the office of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC).  This office is a White House initiative that will work with public and private sector agencies, advocacy groups, and other groups to help improve the convenience, privacy, and security of transactions done online.  They are figuring that they can fund five to eight projects for as long as two years with each project receiving approximately one point twenty-five to two million dollars per project.  March 7, 2012 is the deadline for submitting the initial proposal.  For any prospective applicants there will be an information meeting on February 15, 2012 but you do not have to attend this meeting to have your project selected.

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