Scam of the day – May 18, 2013 – Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts hacked

May 18, 2013 Posted by Steven Weisman, Esq.

In just the latest installment of a state or federal agency having its records hacked, the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts recently disclosed that months earlier its website was hacked and that as many as 160,000 Social Security numbers and a million driver’s license numbers may have been stolen.  Although the hacking occurred in the Fall of 2012 and the Winter of 2013, the breach of data security was only confirmed by state officials in April.  The breach was traced, as it often is, to a software flaw.  In this case the flaw was with and Adobe software system called ColdFusion.  Adobe has created a security patch to resolve the problem, but for the victims of the hacking, this is of little consolation.

TIPS

If you have had any dealings with the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts, you should contact them to see if your information may have been among the information stolen.  If so, you should put a credit freeze on your credit report to stop access to your credit report without your expressed direction.  You can find information about how to put on a credit freeze in the list of scam topics on Scamicide as well as in the archives of Scamicide.  You should also monitor all your financial accounts closely for early indications of identity theft.  You can get additional information as to how to protect yourself from identity theft in my book “50 Ways to Protect Your Identity in a Digital Age” which can be ordered from Amazon at a great price by clicking on the picture of the book on the right hand side of the front page of this blog.

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Scam of the day – May 17, 2013 – Facebook romance blackmail scam

May 17, 2013 Posted by Steven Weisman, Esq.

Recently a 21 year old college student in France accepted a  Facebook “friend request” by a beautiful, young woman or at least he thought the friend request came from a beautiful, young woman.  Their relationship blossomed on line with frequent messages and photographs that they sent to each other for weeks.  The tenor of the message became increasingly romantic and even erotic until finally, the college student agreed to his “friend’s” suggestion that they do stripteases for each other using their webcams.  She suggested that he go first which he willingly did.  She did not reciprocate. Instead, she, if indeed she was even a she, blackmailed him by sending him emails demanding payment of ransom or else the blackmailer would post the video taken of the striptease online as well as send it to the young man’s friends and family.  The frightened victim paid three payments before he stopped and alerted the authorities who through their investigation believe that the blackmail scam is the work of scammers located in the Ivory Coast.

TIPS

One would hope that the risk of “relationships” totally on line and even then without the use of Skype or webcams to see who you are really communicating with would have become more apparent after the embarrassing Manti Teo scam in which he was led to believe he had a relationship with a woman who he never met and he later found out never existed.  Transmitting an erotic video is a dangerous thing to do even if you know the person to whom you are sending the video.  The risk of it becoming public is great, which can occur merely by your lover being hacked.  However, sending such a video to someone you have never met or even seen except in a photograph that you cannot verify is accurate is definitely risky business.  This also serves as a reminder that accumulating as friends large numbers of people about whom you know nothing is dangerous.  Be selective in friending people on Facebook.

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Scam of the day – May 16, 2013 – Medical identity theft update

May 15, 2013 Posted by Steven Weisman, Esq.

In my book “50 Ways to Protect Your Identity in a Digital Age” and in a number of Scamicide “scams of the day” I have warned you about the dangers of medical identity theft which was again in the news recently with the indictment of an Ohio man who is charged with stealing the identity of a South Carolina man and using his identity and his insurance to obtain more than $300,000 of medical services at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.  It has been estimated that medical identity theft by which someone’s medical insurance is accessed by an identity thief costs health care providers up to 7 billion dollars a year.  However, the cost to someone who is a victim of medical identity can be much worse than just lost money.   The medical identity thief’s medical information, such as blood type and other information gets mixed into the medical records of the medical identity theft victim thereby leaving the medical identity theft victim facing the possibility of receiving improper treatment based on false information in his or her tainted medical file.  This is potentially life threatening.  Often medical identity theft is an inside job where rogue employees of a medical facility sell the medical insurance information of their patients to identity thieves.

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The medical industry has a long way to go to insulate patients’ insurance and medical information from the prying eyes of identity thieves.  However, one promising step that is starting to be used is biometrics such as iris scanners to make sure that the person using medical information is the real insured.  I discuss this in detail in “50 Ways to Protect Your Identity in a Digital Age.”  With medical identity theft at epidemic proportions, it is important for the medical industry to take greater steps to reduce or eliminate medical identity theft. We can do our part by asking our medical care providers what they are doing to prevent medical identity theft and to encourage them to use iometric identifiers such as iris scans as a part of that effort.

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Scam of the day – May 14, 2013 – 9/11 charity scam

May 14, 2013 Posted by Steven Weisman, Esq.

Recently the New Jersey Attorney General announced charges of theft by deception and conspiracy against two men who claimed to be firefighters who were working at a firehouse close to the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11 when they were hit by the terrorist flown airplanes.  The charges relate to sales by the men of 9/11 memorial T-shirts which they sold for $20 each and represented that all of the proceeds went to the families of the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center.  The men sold the T-shirts from a truck painted with the names of police and firefighters who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks.  The truth is that the men who are not New York firefighters pocketed all of the money they received from the sale of the T-shirts and the families of the police and firefighters who died on 9/11 received nothing.  Phony charities set up by scammers to take advantage of the public’s generosity and willingness to help those in need following a tragedy such as the Newtown Connecticut school shooting or the Boston Marathon bombing has become a common  reprehensible scam tactic. TIPS Unfortunately, my motto “trust me, you can’t trust anyone” is too often correct.  When it comes to charitable donations, you can never be sure that a particular charity is legitimate until you have checked them out.  The website www.charitynavigator.org is a great and free resource which can help you to identify not only whether or not a charity is legitimate, but also how much of what is collected by a “legitimate” charity goes toward paying its own salaries and administrative expenses.  Some “legitimate” charities appear to exist primarily for their own well being rather than that of the people whom they say they are helping.  If you are contacted by a charity by phone, email or letter, even if the name of the charity is a legitimate one, you cannot be sure that the communication is not a forgery or a scam.  The best thing to do if you are interested in giving to a particular charity is to check out the charity’s real website for instructions as to how to contribute.

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Scam of the day – May 13, 2013 – FTC refunding 1.7 million dollars to victims of government grant scam

May 13, 2013 Posted by Steven Weisman, Esq.

Unfortunately, it is not very often that I get an opportunity to tell victims of a scam that they can get some of their money back, but today is one of those happy exceptions.  In 2009 the Federal Trade Commission first took action against a number of phony websites that promised that they could provide the consumer with tools to be able to easily locate fifteen billion dollars worth of free grant money and to qualify for those grants.  The websites looked official with pictures of President Obama and Vice President Biden.  The one-time charge was indicated to be between 99 cents and $2.78, however people signing on for the service actually ended up being charged monthly fees of $70 per month for unrelated services.  To make things worse, the information provided about obtaining grants was misleading, false or useless.

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Under a settlement with some of the scammers and court orders regarding the others by which the scammers approximately 1.7 million dollars is being paid to the FTC to be paid back to 22,764 victimized consumers.  The money is being administered by Gillardi & Co. a third-party refund administrator.  Checks are being sent now and must be cashed within 60 days of receipt.  It is expected that victims can expect to receive about 80% of the money they paid for the worthless service.  If you have been victimized by this scam and have not been contacted by the FTC, you should contact them at 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357) or go to the FTC’s website at www.ftc.gov.

In the future, you should always be skeptical of any service that sounds too good to be true.  Scammers sometimes say that they are from the Federal Grants Administration, but in truth, there is no such entity.  Government grants are not easy to get and if you have to pay money to obtain a free grant, it isn’t free.  The government does not charge for lists of grant providers.  If you are truly interested in information about federal grants, the only place to go is the federal government’s grant website of www.grants.gov.

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Scam of the day – May 12, 2013 – Bank text message scam

May 12, 2013 Posted by Steven Weisman, Esq.

Everyone texts including scammers and identity thieves.  A recent text message scam that has resurfaced involves a text message from “Credit Card Services Alert” and it informs you that your debit card has been deactivated.  The text message provides you with a telephone number to contact.  If you respond by calling the number, you will reach an automated service informing you that you have reached the card activation center.  It then asks you for you credit card number, expiration date and security code.  Anyone providing this information is sure to become a victim of identity theft.  Your bank or credit card issuer will not contact you in regard to problems by a text message so if you do receive such a text message, you should immediately delete it.

TIPS

Whenever you receive a text message, email, letter or telephone call, you can never be sure of who is communicating with you.  If you have even the slightest thought that the message may be real, you should not respond to the text, email, or caller directly, but rather contact the bank or other organization that they pretend to represent at a telephone number that you know is accurate in order to inquire about the legitimacy of the communication, whereupon you will promptly be informed that it was a scam.  Remember, texts and email messages or phone calls can appear to come from legitimate companies, but that does not mean that it is not a fake.  I received a very real looking email message about a problem with my bank account, however, there was only one problem.  I didn’t have an account at that bank so I merely deleted the email.  You should too.

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Scam of the day – May 11, 2013 – 45 million dollar ATM scam busted – what it means to you

May 11, 2013 Posted by Steven Weisman, Esq.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn announced two days ago indictments against eight people for a hacking scheme that provided them with 45 million dollars from the accounts of innocent victims accessed through ATMs around the world.  The plot began with the hacking into an Indian credit card processing company that handles prepaid debit cards of Visa and Mastercard.  As I warned you about more than a year ago in my “scam of the day” for March 31, 2012 credit card processing companies are a weak link in the credit card system.  Their security standards have not been strong and they have been exploited by hackers and identity thieves consistently since at least 2008.  In this instance, what was unique, however, was that once the accounts were hacked, the hackers used sophisticated techniques to raise the withdrawal limits on the accounts thereby permitting the hackers to get much greater access to the accounts of the hacked victims.  The data obtained through the hacking was used to make counterfeit ATM cards which were then used in a coordinated effort around the world to drain their victims accounts.  In New York City alone, they were able to steal approximately 2.4 million dollars while in Japan the amount was an even higher approximately 10 million dollars aided by Japanese banking rules which permit withdrawals of as much as $10,000 from a single ATM.  All of this was done in a few hours as the hackers knew the banks would discover the losses quickly.

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So what does this mean to you.  As I have told you many times before, you are only as safe as the company with the weakest security with which you do business.  In this case, the credit card processing industry remains a lucrative target that has not yet taken the necessary steps to protect the information it holds.  Although you will not be responsible for the loss of funds from your account that was illegally accessed in this manner, it is important to constantly monitor your accounts for breaches of security so that you can remedy the situation as quickly as possible.

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Scam of the day – May 10, 2013 – Hackers attack on banks and credit unions fails – this time

May 10, 2013 Posted by Steven Weisman, Esq.

The hacking group Anonymous had reportedly targeted 130 banks and credit unions for a disruptive Distributed Denial of Service  (DDoS) attack on Tuesday, May 7th, but the attack failed to substantially materialize.  In a DDoS attack, large numbers of computers, remotely controlled by hackers as a BotNet, flood the websites of particular businesses or governmental agencies and shut them down because the websites are unable to handle the huge number of hits on the website.  Tuesday’s attack pretty much failed to materialize.  Although approximately 600 sites were shut down, few of these were inside the United States and if such an attack was indeed made against American governmental agencies, banks and credit unions, the attack was successfully defended.  But this is not to say that business and government have found a way to stop hacking into their computers.  In fact, the attack may not have occurred at all.  It may have merely been a subterfuge to see what the response would be by governmental agencies and businesses.  Additionally, although DDoS attacks are a nuisance, they are rarely more than that, however, larger more insidious attacks may occur while efforts are being focused against repelling the DDoS attack.

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Large and small businesses are and will continue to be targets for hackers.  If you operate such a business you must take necessary security steps to protect your business from hackers.  As for we, the public, we should do what we can to protect ourselves.  Limit the information available about you at companies with which you do business so if they are hacked, you are not in danger of having your personal information used to make you a victim of identity theft.  Also make sure that you have backup records for all financial dealings and accounts that you have with companies with which you do business so that if an attack either accesses your account or deletes data, you have records that show what you have.  For more information about how to protect yourself, I urge you to consider purchasing my book “50 Ways to Protect Your Identity in a Digital Age” which you can get from Amazon at a reduced price merely by clicking on the link of the book on the right hand side of the front page of Scamicide.

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Scam of the day – May 9, 2013 – Latest Nigerian letter scam

May 9, 2013 Posted by Steven Weisman, Esq.

I want to share with you as today’s “scam of the day” a scam email that was sent to me a couple of days ago.  It is the latest variation of the Nigerian letter scam.  We are all familiar with the Nigerian letter scam in which under various pretexts you are told that you can receive a large sum of money without any risk and without having to do anything of substance.  It may appeal to our greed and desire for easy riches, but it also should make alarms go off in our heads that this offer is obviously bogus and too good to be true.  This particular incarnation of the letter has a number of red flags that should make you skeptical of similar letters that you may receive.  First is the poor grammar.   Many of these emails originate in foreign countries such as Nigeria where English is a second language, but where official letters still should contain better grammar.  This particular letter never indicates why I should be receiving funds from a murdered family in Syria.   Also interesting is the asking about my profession, particularly because one would think that there would be a screening process for any legitimate offer.    As with all of these types of scams, if you respond, you will be told that some funds are needed for administrative costs, legal fees, bribes or whatever and the amount keeps increasing once you pay them anything.  Ultimately, you receive nothing and lose any money you send to the scammer.  These Nigerian letters still are common because they still work. Don’t be one of their victims.

Here is a copy of the email I received.

 ”VERY URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL

 
Date :mardi 07 mai 2013
20h00 – 21h00 (GMT+00:00)
De :ibrahimzongo21@yahoo.frMail :From Mr.Ibrahim Zongo.
The Head of File and Auditing Department.
United Bank of Africa (U.B.A).
In West Africa Country
Email:ibrahimzongo21@yahoo.fr
Email:ibrahimzongo21@aol.frTOP SECRET
REMITTANCE OF US$15,200,000.00 CONFIDENTIAL IS THE CASE.This message might meet you in utmost surprise; however, it’s just my Urgent need for foreign partner that made me to contact you for this transaction. I am a banker by profession from West Africa and currently holding the post of director Auditing and accounting unit of the bank.I have the opportunity of transferring the left over Funds ($15.2 million) of one of our bank clients who murdered with his entire family in Syria. Hence; I am inviting you for a business deal where this money can be shared between us in the ratio of 60/40. I will like to inform you that this transaction is 100% risk free, while further details of the transfer will be forwarded to you as soon as I receive your return mail. Your Urgent response is needed for immediate transfer of this fund into your account.what is your profession? send your mobile number for discuss.Note that this transaction will never in any way harm or foiled your good post or reputation in your country, because everything will follow legal process.I am looking forward to hear from you soonest.Yours faithfully,

Mr.Ibrahim Zongo

 
 
TIPS
 
Never respond to such an email.  Outside of the initial skepticism that should have you remembering that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is, you should also be skeptical of any such ridiculously easy way to get money.  You also should wonder as to why you were chosen to receive such an email.  Although all of these emails are scams, if you want confirmation you can contact me here at Scamicide with a copy of any such email you receive and I can definitively tell you whether the email is a scam.  You also can check with your local police, State Attorney General or the Federal Trade Commission
 
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