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ID Fraud Continues Unabated In Arizona, Oregon
John Stith
Staff Writer
2005-11-10
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Both Arizona and Oregon both reported major identity fraud busts on Tuesday. The ID fraud included just about all the information one needs to complete the transaction. The arrests involved stolen credit and debit card info and social security numbers.
The Portland Tribune newspaper reported on Tuesday of a major drug bust. Confiscated during the arrests was a laptop computer loaded with hundreds of thousands of people. The Tribune pointed out much of the information was sold legally by the Oregon Dept. of Motor Vehicles until 1998. Other information was obtained from credit bureaus and they suggest that was probably illegal.
They found the laptop during a drug search and it had all this information, including the DMV records, credit information, false ID digital blanks and personal profiles of hundred of thousands of people.
Now let's head a bit south to Arizona. The problems there may be a bit more serious because G-men are on the scene. Members of the U.S. Secret Service indicted 17 Tucson-area residents according to the Arizona Daily Star.
The feds believe the group got credit card and other information from people outside the U.S. to make counterfeit bank and credit cards and split the money with the suppliers. Nearly all the people arrested were younger than 25 and almost 5,000 illegally obtained credit and debit card numbers according to federal agents. Twelve of the 17 were arrested with five still at large based on a statement from Paul Charlton, U.S. attorney for Arizona.
Most of the information was obtained through phishing scams. Apparently the people in question wired $300,000 to the suppliers after the money had been collected. The feds are figuring about $600,000 was scammed.
This is tragic information, but let's move on to something even bigger. TransUnion, one of the big three credit bureaus also had a slight security breach recently. They sent out 3623 notices to consumer alerting them their information had been compromised. They also offered free credit monitoring for a year. That's something I guess. Privacy Time reported this breach early in this week.
These are lots of names all over the country and with the credit bureau getting hit too. Who knows what could happen to personal information and the kind of damage that could be done?
So what can you do? Alert your credit bureaus? They look like they may be part of the problem, at least to the 3623 people they reported too. Right now, there are no federal rules on reporting this information so it may happen and you'll never know until that car payment comes in and you're scratching you're head because the car isn't parked in your drive way.
There are very few state rules as well. As a matter of fact, California is the only state with mandatory notification rules in cases like this. Fortunately, TransUnion took the time to notify people but the bigger problem is this: just about every day, there is some announcement of some company losing thousands of names because a laptop was stolen or tapes were compromised or something similar. When do these companies get the picture that their credibility is on the line too? They request all sorts of information from the average consumer to do business with them and they go to negligible lengths to protect it.
The electronic information age is wonderful to a point. While we can communicate with people all over the world, conduct our personal business in minutes, keep up with news, entertain ourselves, and all sorts of other activities, there is a price. We provide access to literally everything we own. We give access to our families, our financial records, our medical histories, and hordes of other information about us. We trust businesses to protect it, to keep it safe and they are incapable. We trust the government to do the same but they won't or can't. The case in Oregon was luck. It was originally just a minor drug raid on some meth heads and it turned into a federal offense in a manner of minutes.
The private and government sectors must work harder to protect this information. Most of the time, a single password is all that is required of most places to access your information. According to recent studies, that password is probably your birthday. It may sound paranoid except that these information crimes occur all the time on grand scales. Consider this: Who are the suppliers the Arizona folks sent the $300,000 too? Let's assume this isn't an isolated incident. Assume these operations are going on elsewhere in the country and outside the country. And you wonder how the terrorists get their funding.
About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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