Identity theft is one of the hardest-hitting crimes that consumers face, largely because it’s easy to pull off. Whether through old-fashioned means like dumpster-diving or stealing your driver’s license, or through more sophisticated cyber crimes like hacking into a university network, thieves can make off with your entire identity before you even know your information was compromised.

There are a lot of steps that college students can take to prevent this crime. Passcode and password locking their hardware, shredding those pesky pre-approved credit card offers, locking their dorm rooms … the list goes on. But what too many college students aren’t aware of is the wide variety of crimes that fall under identity theft.

Most individuals typically envision identity theft as someone using their credit card or opening a new account in their name. And that’s still a major threat, with the overwhelming majority of cases involving financial identity theft. But don’t be fooled into thinking your identity is safe just because your credit card hasn’t been compromised.

  • Criminal identity theft: College students are particularly susceptible to criminal identity theft, considering they live in near so many strangers. If someone in your dorm or apartment building uses your identity at the time of arrest—simply because they know your name, apartment number or other minor details—you could be left facing charges for the unresolved issue. If this person happens to have borrowed or stolen your driver’s license, perhaps because you’re old enough to purchase alcohol and they’re not, then they may even be able to provide your complete identity to the police. You never find out about the incident, and therefore you never resolve it until a warrant is issued for your arrest.
  • Medical identity theft: Much like criminal identity theft, college students have to safeguard their identities against people who want to use them to secure medical care. It might be something that seems harmless on the surface. Maybe, a girl in your building needs a way to access birth control without alerting her parents. But it can also be something very serious, such as someone stealing your identity in order to get a prescription for controlled substances. Not only can your medical record permanently reflect care that you never received, but you could find yourself involved in a crime if those prescriptions are then used for illegal distribution.
  • Internet takeover: One of the scariest identity theft crimes for young people to envision just might be internet takeover. While the other forms of the crime are alarming, they can more easily be resolved. But when someone takes over your technology or gains access to your accounts, the fear of long-term damage is very real. They may just lock you out of your accounts for the fun of it, but it could lead to expulsion and lost job opportunities if a hacker takes over your university account and deletes your work, or accesses your Facebook account and uses it to post hate speech, embarrassing photos, or other potentially harmful content.

So what are college students supposed to do to protect their identities? The first step is to understand the different ways identity theft can hurt you. From there, it’s important to safeguard your information, your documents, even your computer, and to keep others from nabbing your sensitive data. Never give out your university passwords, your account passwords, or even your personal documents. You can be implicated in any crimes that are committed under your identity, and you can face lifelong complications.

The article was contributed by Eva Velasquez, president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center.

 

Forbes.com 

The IRS has filed an amended statement on the ‘Get Transcript’ hack — which reports that 700,000 U.S. taxpayer accounts were accessed or targeted, and 47 million transcripts have been ordered to date.

In January 2014, Get Transcript launched on the IRS website. The application enabled taxpayers to view and download their transcript or order previous years of tax filing information.

On May 26, 2015, the IRS announced it had discovered that cyber criminals — using taxpayer information stolen elsewhere — accessed the Get Transcript application on IRS.gov. The IRS identified approximately 225,000 taxpayers whose transcripts had been accessed or targeted. In August 2015, the IRS announced it had identified approximately 390,000 additional taxpayer transcripts which had been access or targeted – which brought the total number of hacked accounts to 615,000.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration conducted a nine-month long investigation looking back to the launch of the application in January 2014 for additional suspicious activity – which led to the amended reporting of approximately 700,000 hacked accounts to date.

The IRS is notifying the hacked taxpayers by mail — informing that they have been victims and cyber thieves may have their personal information, and providing guidance.

“The IRS is committed to protecting taxpayers on multiple fronts against tax-related identity theft, and these mailings are part of that effort,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said. “We appreciate the work of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to identify these additional taxpayers whose accounts may have been accessed. We are moving quickly to help these taxpayers.”

The online viewing and download feature of “Get Transcript” has been suspended since May 2015. The IRS is working to restore that part of the service with enhanced security to protect taxpayer identities.

Post-hack reporting by the U.S. government usually gets worse over time. When OPM was hacked, the first reported numbers indicated four million people had their personal information exposed. The final tally was nearly 22 million.

The IRS has filed an amended statement on the ‘Get Transcript’ hack — which reports that 700,000 U.S. taxpayer accounts were accessed or targeted, and 47 million transcripts have been ordered to date.

In January 2014, Get Transcript launched on the IRS website. The application enabled taxpayers to view and download their transcript or order previous years of tax filing information.

On May 26, 2015, the IRS announced it had discovered that cyber criminals — using taxpayer information stolen elsewhere — accessed the Get Transcript application on IRS.gov. The IRS identified approximately 225,000 taxpayers whose transcripts had been accessed or targeted. In August 2015, the IRS announced it had identified approximately 390,000 additional taxpayer transcripts which had been access or targeted – which brought the total number of hacked accounts to 615,000.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration conducted a nine-month long investigation looking back to the launch of the application in January 2014 for additional suspicious activity – which led to the amended reporting of approximately 700,000 hacked accounts to date.

The IRS is notifying the hacked taxpayers by mail — informing that they have been victims and cyber thieves may have their personal information, and providing guidance.

“The IRS is committed to protecting taxpayers on multiple fronts against tax-related identity theft, and these mailings are part of that effort,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said. “We appreciate the work of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to identify these additional taxpayers whose accounts may have been accessed. We are moving quickly to help these taxpayers.”

The online viewing and download feature of “Get Transcript” has been suspended since May 2015. The IRS is working to restore that part of the service with enhanced security to protect taxpayer identities.

Post-hack reporting by the U.S. government usually gets worse over time. When OPM was hacked, the first reported numbers indicated four million people had their personal information exposed. The final tally was nearly 22 million.

Filers beware: There’s a good chance there’s a tax scam email in your inbox.

According to the Internal Revenue Service, there’s been an approximate 400% surge in phishing and malware incidents so far this tax season. In other words, plenty of thieves are currently sending out texts and emails under the guise of the IRS or other tax industry players this year. These messages are an attempt to steal personal information or data related to your tax refunds, filing status, transcripts and/or PIN information either directly or through malware that gets downloaded onto your computer when you click on infected links. The information can be used to file false tax returns.

“Watch out for fraudsters slipping these official-looking emails into inboxes, trying to confuse people at the very time they work on their taxes,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in a consumer alert re-issued earlier this week. “We urge people not to click on these emails.”

Tax Fraud on the Rise

The IRS’s findings aren’t exactly surprising. The agency announced earlier this year that it’s anticipating $21 billion in tax refund fraud this year. And, just this month, Intuit warned consumers that a fake TurboTax email was making the rounds. Still, the stats should inspire everyone to be a little more careful about what they click on this tax season. Per the agency’s latest consumer alert:

  • There were 1,026 incidents reported in January, up from 254 from a year earlier.
  • The trend continued in February, nearly doubling the reported number of incidents compared to a year ago. In all, 363 incidents were reported from Feb. 1 to Feb. 16, compared to the 201 incidents reported for the entire month of February 2015.
  • This year’s 1,389 incidents have already topped the 2014 yearly total of 1,361, and they are halfway to matching the 2015 total of 2,748.

How to Spot a Tax Scam Email

Fortunately, there are a few simple ways to spot a tax scam email. For starters, be extremely skeptical of any emails purportedly from the IRS. The agency says it generally does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email regarding personal or financial information. Be similarly wary of emails that ask you to update important tax information by clicking on a link. (Recent scam emails the IRS has come across included the subject lines referencing “Get my E-file Pin”, “Order a transcript” and “Get my IP Pin”.) And look for typos or misspellings in the body of the message — they’re a big sign something is amiss.

If you do receive a shady email, refrain from clicking on any line and, instead, forward it to phishing@irs.gov.

Remember, filing your taxes as early as possible is the best way to minimize the odds of falling victim to taxpayer identity theft. But, if you have reason to believe your personal information was compromised, you should keep an eye on your credit. A sudden drop in credit scores is a sign your identity has been stolen. You can monitor your standing by viewing your two free credit scores each month on Credit.com.

This article originally appeared on Credit.com.

 

By 

Published September 16, 2015

Courtesy of FoxNews.com

A private industry IT security firm tells Fox News that personal data stolen over the span of several high-profile U.S. cyber breaches is being indexed by China's intelligence service into a massive Facebook-like network.

According to CrowdStrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch, Chinese hackers are using information gained from the breaches of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as well as intrusions into the Anthem and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield health insurance networks, to build a complete profile of federal employees in what the company calls a "Facebook of Everything."

"That can now be used to embarrass you publicly and force you to work for the Chinese government," Alperovitch told Fox News. "It's, in effect, a private version of Facebook with much more detail about your life than even Facebook has that the Chinese now have access to." Current and former intelligence officials echoed the assessment.

As Fox News has reported, the most sensitive information stolen in the OPM breach was lifted from what is known as the Standard Form 86, or SF-86. The 127-page security clearance application is essentially a road map to your life. It contains highly detailed information on everything from where an applicant lived and worked, to personal references, family members, friends and associates, as well as drug history and intimate health information.

What's startling is the fact that virtually all government employees and contractors who hold the top echelon of U.S. security clearances were impacted by the OPM breach, even the Director of the FBI. James Comey joked at an intelligence and national security summit last week that had his SF-86 been stored in a strongly encrypted database "maybe someone wouldn't be reading it today."

According to a law enforcement source close to the OPM investigation, the scope of the data stolen in the breach makes this a "generational problem." Fox News is told that the big worry among those in the Intelligence Community is the possibility that applicants’ associates, friends and family will be impacted. Of particular concern, according to this source, is the likelihood that information on applicants’ children could be leveraged against them down the road.

Specifically, cybersecurity experts warn that this stolen information may be used for blackmailing and targeting of applicants’ children.

“To try to get them to reveal some information about their parent’s work and use that, eventually, for espionage activities,” Alperovitch explained to Fox News. “Information that has been collected about them may be used decades later.”

There is much concern among victims over the government’s response to the cyberattack, which left sensitive information on some 21.5 million individuals compromised. An intelligence source close to the OPM investigation tells Fox News that this is not an issue that can be fixed with merely a few years of credit monitoring – referring to the government’s current program that offers victims and their dependents credit and identity theft monitoring services free of charge.

While refusing to delve too far into specifics, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook on Tuesday acknowledged the severity of the lingering vulnerabilities associated with the breach and offered assurances that the government is working vigorously to mend the damage.

“This is going to be a wide-ranging effort on the part of the federal government to try and address this," Cook told reporters at a press briefing.

Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report

Matthew Dean (@MattFirewall) is Fox News' Department of Justice & Federal Law Enforcement producer. He is also the co-host of FoxBusiness.com's Firewall.

Column by  (@adam_k_levin

Identity theft was the number one consumer complaint at the Federal Trade Commission last year. So far in 2015, the data breach problem that drives so many identity-related crimes has gotten worse. The massive compromises at Anthem and Premera alone put a combined 91 million records in harm’s way.

With more information “out there” than we can possibly know, identity theft has become the third certainty in life, right behind death and taxes. And because so many major compromises include Social Security numbers — the skeleton key to not only your financial life, but also your health care and many other aspects of daily life—the damage can be life-changing.

The bottom line: Be afraid, be very afraid. 

1. A Billion Records Leaked

According to IBM, more than one billion records containing personally identifiable information were leaked in 2014 alone. An identity thief only needs a few data points like the kind found in many data breaches to tap into your financial life.

 
2. There is No Anonymity

Science Magazine reported that “anonymized meta data sets” containing product purchase information were re-identified with the people who made the purchases by looking at Instagram posts and tweets that matched the purchases.

You can do everything right and still get “got.” The fraudsters out there mining the veins of personal data for financial gain are good at what they do. However, if you assume you are going to get got and take some proactive steps – including monitoring your bank and credit accounts regularly for signs of fraud – in many cases you can have a head start when it actually happens. (Keeping a tight rein on your social media posts and making them private can also help give fraudsters less access to you.)

 
3. Your Medical History Can Be Compromised

With more than 2.32 million victims thus far — 500,000 last year alone — medical identity theft is a crime on the rise. It can cause medical histories to get changed, and benefits fraudulently used by others can bar a victim from getting medical treatments – making it a dangerous crime.

Your best bet is to check every statement that comes in, and make sure the treatments listed on your Explanation of Benefits summaries sent out by your insurer match the care you’ve received.

 
4. Your Tax Refund is Under Attack

Early in the 2015, Intuit, the company behind TurboTax, had to shut down e-filing in several states after the company noticed an uptick in what appeared to be fraudulent tax returns.

Tax-related identity theft is a big-money crime, and the statistics prove it. The IRS stopped 19 million suspicious tax returns last year, and stopped more than $63 billion in fraudulent refunds. A whopping $5.8 billion in tax refunds were paid out to fraudsters. In 2012, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration projected that fraudsters would net $26 billion into 2017.

For now, your best defense is to file your taxes as early as possible to avoid falling victim to tax-related fraud.

 
5. Kids Are At Risk.

It’s long been known that children in the foster care system were more likely to become the target of identity-related crimes. This was due to the fact that when children move in with a new foster family, their personally identifiable information moves with them.

A less well known fact is that more than 30 percent of identity theft victims are scammed by family and close friends of the family. The key in these crimes is of course access to the necessary data. No one knows this better than Axton Betz-Hamilton, whose mother defrauded the entire family — father, grandfather and herself — for almost 20 years.

There are services available that protect a child’s credit. It’s also a very nice graduation present to check your child’s credit, and make sure there isn’t a history there.

While it is impossible to avoid some of the fallout from identity theft after it’s detected, it’s not possible to prevent these crimes. If you detect fraud early, it can be contained. And if you follow the three Ms of identity theft management (note that I didn’t say prevention), you can at least have a little piece of mind during this historic crime spree. Minimize, Monitor and Manage. Check your bank and credit card statements every day online to look for fraudulent transactions. You can sign up for free transactional monitoring alerts from banks, credit unions and credit card companies to help in this. Check your credit reports regularly – you can get them for free annually on AnnualCreditReport.com, and you can get a free credit report summary every month on Credit.com – to look for unauthorized accounts or changes in existing account balances. File your taxes early, and keep an eagle eye on your medical insurance benefits. Report any suspicious activity immediately to the respective institution so that you can try to minimize the damage.

Make yourself a harder target and know what to do when you become one anyway.

Any opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author.

Adam Levin is chairman and co-founder of Credit.com and Identity Theft 911 (FreedomID's Services Provider Partner). His experience as former director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs gives him unique insight into consumer privacy, legislation and financial advocacy. He is a nationally recognized expert on identity theft and credit.

 

 

Contributed by Missouri Department of Insurance

Policyholder personal information compromised in cyberattack

Jefferson City, Mo. ­– The Missouri Department of Insurance says the personal information of policyholders from one of the largest health insurance carriers in the state was hacked. Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield reported to the department Wednesday evening that it had been a victim of a cyberattack and that the personal information of its policyholders had been compromised.

The breach is believed to have occurred in late January. An initial analysis conducted by Anthem showed the information that was accessed were member names, member health identification numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, employment information and income data.

"As Missouri’s insurance regulator, we take the issue of cybersecurity very seriously," said John M. Huff, Director of the Missouri Department of Insurance. "Unfortunately, this data breach affected an unknown number of Missourians as well as consumers throughout the country. As we continue to gather additional information from Anthem, we will ensure impacted Missourians receive all the resources they need to protect themselves against financial hardships as a result of the breach. Consumers should continue to watch their banking and other financial accounts for suspicious activity and contact Anthem if they need additional information."

Anthem said it is not aware of any fraudulent activity against policyholders that has occurred as a result of the breach. The insurer is taking immediate steps to notify affected individuals. Anthem will provide information to impacted policyholders on how to enroll in free credit-monitoring and identity-protection services.

Consumers who believe they may have been impacted by the security breach should call 877-263-7995, the toll-free number Anthem has established to assist consumers. Anthem has also set up a special website at www.anthemfacts.com to answer questions. Consumers may also contact the Department of Insurance Consumer Hotline at 800-726-7390.

About the Missouri Department of Insurance, Financial Institutions & Professional Registration

The Missouri Department of Insurance, Financial Institutions and Professional Registration (DIFP) is responsible for consumer protection through the regulation of financial industries and professionals. The department's seven divisions work to enforce state regulations both efficiently and effectively while encouraging a competitive environment for industries and professions to ensure consumers have access to quality products.

Contributed By Eva Velasquez of IDT911

The Digital Age has made filing taxes a whole lot easier. But with that convenience comes risk, thanks to scammers out to steal your identity or tax refund. With tax season right around the corner, it’s a good idea to make sure your taxpayer identity is protected.

Tax-related identity theft is one of the fastest growing forms of the crime, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. Many victims only discover a crime has been committed when they file their own return. Then they learn their refund has been stolen or that a return already has been filed under their Social Security number.

Here are a few easy ways to keep yourself safe:

  • File early. One of the best ways to be sure a thief can’t file a fraudulent return in your name and collect your refund is to file as early as you can. Now is the time to begin gathering your necessary paperwork and filing documents so that you can submit your return as soon as possible, beating a thief to the punch.

  • Only carry what you need. A lost or stolen purse or wallet can happen any time of the year, but no matter when the wallet went missing, a thief can wreak havoc all over again come tax time. Never carry your Social Security card in your wallet or purse, and never carry a document that contains that number.

  • Watch the mail. Stay one step ahead of a tax identity thief by watching your mail carefully for a Social Security statement from the government. These statements show how much taxpayers have contributed to Social Security, and far too many people just pitch them in the garbage. Instead, review your statement closely. If you notice too much in contributions or multiple contributions listed, it could mean that someone is using your Social Security number for employment. That means you’ll be taxed at a higher rate for having “earned” more income than you actually brought in, and it means that a thief already has the necessary pieces of the puzzle to file a return and nab your refund.

Finally, remember that it’s vital you contact the IRS if you feel there are any errors, areas of concern, or if you’ve previously been a victim of identity theft. The IRS now has entire fraud detection and prevention departments, and can get you on the right track towards receiving a refund that is legitimately due to you. Don’t wait until the last minute, especially if your identity has been compromised.