Dale Penn | Accelerating Improvement

3 Reasons To Care About CISPA

CapitolDome Any current legislation being debated in Congress which affects the handling of our private information, deserves attention.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has recently passed the House and now awaits Senate approval. Under the provisions of CISPA, U.S. companies could hand over all of your private data to the government, all in the name of national defense.

This information sharing would be done in the interest of “national security” and the justification for CISPA, is to help our government fight back against foreign hackers like China and Iran.

According to US News and World Report:

“A very long list of major companies – including AT&T, Verizon, Intel, HP, Time Warner Cable, IBM, Comcast, McAfee, Oracle, Google and Facebook – like CISPA because it lets them off the hook. So when Anonymous called for a blackout to protest CISPA, it fell on deaf ears to the big tech, Internet and cable companies responsible for vast swaths of the Internet.”

Three reasons you should care: Continue Reading…

May 8, 2013 in Cybersecurity, Cyberwar, Federal Government, Identity Theft Speaker, Privacy

What Can Cops Extract From Your Smartphone?

Are you one of those vulnerable souls who refuses to believe that your every move and word can be traced and tracked? Think again!

At a recent speaking event, the presenter who took the stage before me was a forensic computer analyst for a local law enforcement agency. The irony is that I was at the event to share my “Identity Theft Secrets” about clever ways to safeguard private information.

My warm-up speaker was there to let the audience know that “resistance is futile” because law enforcement routinely extracts details that help them make a case or solve a crime.

Talk about taking the wind out of my sails!

The Toronto Star recently reported on a Michigan search warrant that revealed all the details which police were able to extract from a seized iPhone. A civil liberties technologist was quoted in the article as saying: Continue Reading…

March 10, 2013 in Data security, Identity Theft Secrets, Identity Theft Speaker, Mobile Devices, Privacy, Smartphones, Uncategorized

New Study Verifies Uptick In ID Theft

For those who continue to ignore the threat of identity theft, listen up. It’s getting serious. Really!

Not only is financial crime growing by leaps and bounds, but we are entering a new age of breaches, hacks, mischief-ware (great new word) and privacy vulnerability.

The once encouraging two-year downward trend has now dramatically reversed itself and is headed into dangerous new territory according to the folks at Javelin Strategy and Research.

An unnerving 12.6 million Americans were victimized by ID Theft in 2012, up dramatically from 2011. New account fraud made up the largest percentage of reported crimes, by targeting the personal information of victims and opening new credit cards and other kinds of loans. Continue Reading…

February 21, 2013 in Data Breaches, Financial Crime, Fraud, Identity Theft, Identity Theft Secrets, Identity Theft Speaker, Mobile Devices, Privacy, Smartphones, Social Media

5 Tips To Avoid Tax Scammers in 2013

Tax time us upon us once again, and the tax scammers are out in force!

This is certainly the season to be on the lookout for scams and schemes which offer to help you reduce or eliminate your tax debt.

Many consumers are unaware that the IRS has a division called the Taxpayer Advocate Service. This is a division within the IRS that is designed to assist consumers who have trouble getting certain tax issues resolved with the IRS. One of the tough issues that could complicate your relationship with the IRS is tax-fraud.

Tax related identity theft places an unusual burden on both the taxpayer and the IRS:

According to the IRS’s Taxpayer Advocate Service:

“Resource constraints also are limiting the IRS’s ability to assist victims of tax-related identity theft. Tax-related identity theft typically arises when an identity thief uses the Social Security number of another person to file a false tax return with the intent of obtaining an improper refund. Identity theft can impose a significant burden on its victims, whose legitimate refund claims are blocked and who often must spend months or longer trying to convince the IRS that they are, in fact, victims and then working with the IRS to untangle their account problems.”

Here are 5 scams to watch out for this tax season. Continue Reading…

January 23, 2013 in Federal Government, Financial Crime, Fraud, Identity Theft, Identity Theft Speaker, Phishing, Protect Your Credit, Scams & Phishing

A Few Privacy Protection Tips For 2013

As we roll into 2013, the world continues to look and feel like a potentially dangerous place to live.

This sense of danger applies not only to the real-world of evil and senseless violence, but the virtual-world of lurking cyber-thieves, electronic eavesdropping and privacy risks to both individuals and organizations.

Thanks to a few “clues” from an updated consumer awareness list published by the Federal Trade Commission, we can all start the new year with a focus on continuing to deter, detect and defend from what has become America’s fastest growing crime for 12 years in a row.

A Few Clues That Someone Has Stolen Your Information: Continue Reading…

December 22, 2012 in Financial Crime, Identity Theft

3 Cybersecurity Resources For Parents

My wife and have always looked for creative and effective ways to keep our family safe.

Although the internet offers a world of opportunities for people of all ages, it can be a very dangerous place for kids especially.

The following article includes three informative and relevant online resources for parents. This was originally written and posted by Nikki Junker at the Identity Theft Resource Center blog. It is reproduced here with permission.

There was a time when every parent knew what to tell their children to be safe. Children knew not to take candy from strangers, or go swimming right after eating. These days the rules have all changed and children have a new playground on which they must be trained in order to stay safe.

The cyberworld takes up a huge amount of children’s time and, unfortunately, is very dangerous. Sitting a child down and explaining to them about protecting their private information online or staying away from child predators is not easy. Here are some fun ways to teach your child cybersecurity. Continue Reading…

November 14, 2012 in Cyberbullying, Cybersecurity, Identity Theft, Parental Controls, Privacy

5 Smartphone Protection Tips To Execute Now

For years, we’ve heard the debate over which computing platform is safer, PC or Mac.

As the story goes, the more popular the platform, the more vulnerable it is to attack.

If you own a smartphone however, the debate is over and the jury is in. They’re all popular and they’re all vulnerable.

During a recent trip to Palm Springs, I was reminded that our daughter lost her iPhone there last year. She called the high-end resort where she left her device, only to be told it was not found by the housekeeping department.

Thanks to her enabled device, our daughter not only tracked it down within minutes, but got an apology from hotel management for the “oversight”!

In the world of cyber-security, user-initiated prevention and preparation planning is the most effective defense against the wide variety common threats lurking in our exploding mobile landscape.

Big data’s new promised land, “the cloud” isn’t the safety mecca it was initially thought to be either.

According to Kaspersky Labs:

“The continuing development of “cloud technologies” also contributes to potential data losses: there is now an extra target for the cybercriminals to attack, i.e. the data centers where various companies’ data are stored. Data leaks from cloud services could deal a serious blow to the perception of the technology itself and the idea of “cloud storage” that largely rely on users’ trust.”

Here are 5 smart tips to adopt now. Continue Reading…

October 17, 2012 in Data security, Financial Crime, Mobile Devices, Smartphones

4 Reasons Not To Stand In Line For An iPhone 5

Wonder why all those shoppers are standing (or in many cases camping) in those long lines outside various cell phone stores?

Apple’s highly touted and greatly anticipated iPhone 5 is set to go on sale on the 21st of this month and the buzz is deafening! Well….sort of.

Other buyers around the world will get to stand in line after the initial launch in the first five countries which include: the U.S., Japan, Germany, France and Britain.

Here are 4 reasons you don’t need to stand in line for this greatly improved Apple device. Continue Reading…

September 18, 2012 in Business Tips, Identity Theft Speaker, Privacy, Smartphones

ID Thieves Rob Treasury Blind

News flash…..Over five billion of our tax dollars are not hard at work, they’re missing!

Alarming details surfaced this week about a report from the Treasury Inspector General For Tax Administration involving massive tax-refund fraud. Watching a flurry of reports come across the newswires about this travesty has been dizzying and alarming. U.S. taxpayers have a right to expect our legislators to weigh in on this one.

It seems that the government is aware of certain mailing addresses in the U.S where billions of dollars (that’s billions with a “b”) worth of refund checks generated by fraudulent tax-returns have been mailed out. Sadly, many observers in the press are quietly reporting this story without the outrage and sense of personal and mutual financial loss that this debacle deserves. These are OUR tax dollars that have been stolen by modern day bank robbers/mail thieves.

We can only hope that the Feds throw as much energy and resources at bringing both current and future tax fraudsters to justice (and recovering OUR loot) as they do chasing the average Joe for his last hard-earned taxable dollar.

August 2, 2012 in Data security, Federal Government, Financial Crime, Fraud, Identity Theft, Identity Theft Speaker