Uncooperative Radio: identity theft

Showing posts with label identity theft. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Show Notes 07/13/2014

Sunday Show 7/13/14

15 year old whose 6 family members were killed is recovering

A 15-year-old girl who survived being shot by her uncle in an attack that left her parents and four younger siblings dead said Saturday that she was on the road to recovery.

An identity theft ring in Washington was running a real Mickey Mouse operation

Police in Bellevue, Wash., were investigating stolen construction signs last week when they stumbled upon an identity theft operation, KIRO-TV reported.

Liberty Bell tolls to announce Declaration Of Independence

On this day in 1776, a 2,000-pound copper-and-tin bell now known as the “Liberty Bell” rings out from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, summoning citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Arkansas family and school district spar over cost of service dog for epileptic boy

Majesty, a two-year-old Golden retriever and service dog, is essential to 7-year-old Zachary Sorrells' life, accompanying the Arkansas boy with cerebral palsy and epilepsy at his public elementary school and preventing life-threatening seizures by signaling an alert in advance, his family says.

Army to replace pistol MM pistol with more reliable gun packing better knock down

The Army wants to retire its supply of 9mm handguns and replace it with a more accurate and user-friendly model that also will provide soldiers with more “knock-down” power.

Pentagon gives pink slips to hundreds of soldiers including active duty officers

The Pentagon is laying off thousands of military officers, including those serving or who have recently served in Afghanistan. Defense Department officials said the reductions are the result of mandatory spending cuts imposed by sequestration and are part of their larger plan to reduce the number of U.S. soldiers from 520,000 to 450,000.

Are these natrual sweeteners good for you?

With regular sugar taking a nutritional beating and artificial sweeteners unable to shake their sketchy made-in-the-lab connotations and unpleasant aftertaste, it's no wonder newcomers like stevia and agave are conquering our morning coffee (and the world of packaged foods).

Virginia County takes on Federal government that refuses to do its job

This week, the Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted 5-1 to file a request under the Freedom of Information Act demanding to know the whereabouts of the roughly 7,000 illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, been arrested by county police and been placed in the hands of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement since 2008.

Workers told to pay back salary raise by Florida County

County government officials in Florida are taking back pay raises from 25 government workers, saying the recent salary boosts were a mistake. Officials in Manatee County tell My Fox Orlando that it wouldn’t be fair to ask taxpayers to pay for their goof, which totals some $12,000.

Passport cards called security vulnerability

I thought we killed the RFID...

From The Washington Times:

The State Department will soon begin production of an electronic passport card that security specialists and members of Congress fear will be vulnerable to alteration or counterfeiting.

The agency has contracted with L-1 Identity Solutions Inc. to produce electronic-passport cards as a substitute for booklet passports for use by Americans who travel frequently by road or sea to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.

About the size of a credit card, the electronic-passport card displays a photo of the user and a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip containing data about the user. The State Department announced recently that it will begin producing the cards next month and issue the first ones in July.

RFID means radio frequency identification and that means it transmits your information. this is asking for identity theft to occur. Anyone with the right information could access the persons personal information. This is not something I am comfortable with having.

Security specialists told The Washington Times that the electronic-passport card can be copied or altered easily by removing the photograph with solvent and replacing it with one from an unauthorized user.

James Hesse, former chief intelligence officer for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Forensic Document Laboratory, which monitors fraudulent government documents, said the card should have been designed with a special optical security strip to make it secure and prevent counterfeiting. The selection of a card with an RFID chip is "an extremely risky decision," Mr. Hesse said in an interview.

"The optical strip has never been compromised," he said. "It's the most secure medium out there to store data."

Joel Lisker, a former FBI agent who spent 18 years countering credit-card fraud at MasterCard, said the new cards pose a serious threat to U.S. security. "There really is no security with these cards," he said.

Hmm, so why are they going with a less secure option?

The State Department rejected a more secure card because it is "surrendering to speed over security, essentially creating new vulnerabilities. ... It will not take long for the bad guys to figure out which ports have readability and which do not," he said.

Ther it is speed over safety, our government at work...
Technorati Tags: news, politics, RFID passports, Travel Canada, travel Mexico, Identity Theft

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

The Uncooperative Radio Show Recording March 30, 2007

The Armed Citizen Report. The Illegal Alien weekly roundup. Selling our secrets, everyone is doing it.

Subjects: The Armed Citizen report with the Uncooperative Radio show hosts’ take on Webb’s right to carry a concealed weapon. Yes as always; it’s the time for the Illegal Alien weekly roundup.

Sources:

Friday, March 30, 2007

Corporate Owner of T.J. Maxx, Marshall's Says Information for 45.7 Million Cardholders Stolen

I keep warning about the threat of identity theft...

From FNC:

More than two months after first disclosing that hackers accessed customers' financial data from its computers, discount retailer TJX Cos. (TJX) has revealed that information from at least 45.7 million credit and debit cards was stolen over an 18-month period.

In a regulatory filing that gives the first detailed account of the breach initially disclosed in January, the owner of T.J. Maxx, Marshall's and other stores in North America and the United Kingdom also said another 455,000 customers who returned merchandise without receipts had their personal data stolen, including driver's license numbers.

Click here to visit FOXBusiness.com's Identity Theft Center.

The data that was stolen covers transactions dating as far back as December 2002, TJX said in the filing Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

TJX spokeswoman Sherry Lang did not immediately return a telephone message from The Associated Press seeking comment late Wednesday.

But Lang told The Boston Globe, which first reported the filing Wednesday night, that about 75 percent of the compromised cards either were expired or had data from their magnetic stripes masked, meaning the data was stored as asterisks, rather than numbers.

Lang said the extent of the damage may never be known because of the methods used by the intruder. Much of the transaction data was deleted by TJX in the normal course of business between the time of the thefts and the time they were discovered, the filing said, making it impossible to know how many card numbers were obtained.

"There's a lot we may never know and it's one of the difficulties of this investigation," Lang said. "It's why this has taken this long and why it's been so tedious. It's painstaking."[snip]

This was obviously done over a long period of time, in many locations," she said. "It's done considerable damage."

Police charged six people in Florida last week with using credit card numbers stolen from a TJX database to buy about $1 million in merchandise with gift cards.

In Wednesday's filing, TJX said for the first time that Dec. 18, 2006, was the date it first learned that there was suspicious software on its computer system.

TJX said it believes hackers invaded its systems in July 2005, on later dates in 2005 and also from mid-May 2006 to mid-January 2007. The company said no customer information was stolen after Dec. 18, one day before it hired General Dynamics Corp. and IBM Corp. (IBM) to investigate. By Dec. 21, those investigators determined that the computer systems had been breached and that an intruder remained on the systems.

TJX said it notified federal authorities Dec. 22, and on Jan. 3, TJX officials and Secret Service agents met with banks and payment card and check processing companies to discuss the computer intrusion.[snip]

Framingham-based TJX is facing an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and lawsuits from individuals and banks accusing it of failing to do enough to safeguard private data and of delaying disclosure of the problem.

What can you do to protect yourself or recover from identity theft?

Federal Trade Commission Identity theft page
DOJ Identity theft page

Remember, it is very difficult and time consuming to recover from identity theft, so it is better to protect yourself from in advance.

Paid Services:

Intelius
Identity Guard
Trusted ID

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