An 'Ethical Hacker' On Protecting Your Identity

qwqwss writes "Canada.com is running an article by Terry Cutler, a 'certified Ethical Hacker', who wants to get the word out to people on protecting their identities from a growing number of risks. The piece covers shopping online, keeping your personal information contained, and avenues of inquiry if your identity is stolen."

Comments

Hiding your credit report

[Riding Spinners]

1-888-567-8688

Call this one number to opt out of all three bureaus. You can protect yourself from identity theft by taking your name off of the credit bureaus mailing lists. The credit bureaus are one of the biggest offender when it comes to selling your name and information to the credit card companies who in turn send you all those pre-approved applications. One call to the Opt Out Request Line (for Equifax, TransUnion, Experian and Consumer Credit Associates) is all it takes to permanently remove your name from all marketing lists that the credit agencies supply to direct marketers. You can also opt for a two-year period, renewing your request at any time in the future.

Identity theft certainly happens on the Internet, but it's the old-fashioned cons that usually get your SSN and such. Put your paranoia in the right place. Please.

Re:Hiding your credit report

[stefanlasiewski]

That number will allow you to opt out of pre-approved offers of credit who follow the rules of the big credit bureaus (worked great for me).

However, it will not prevent the credit bureaus from selling your name and information to other companies for other reasons, and it will not hide your credit report from anyone.

Also, some credit companies don't use the big credit bureaus, and will instead compile information from other sources. If you have a home loan for example; your name, address and value of the loan are available at some county and state offices.

Re:Hiding your credit report

[mls]

Sign up for the Direct Marketing Association's (DMA), "Mail Preference Service" (MPS), it will reduce the amount of unwanted mail coming to you, including credit card offers, and it really works. Use option 2, and print and mail your form, it only costs the price of a stamp. Don't pay to do so online, it takes time to process anyhow.

However, a few notes on the service:
1) It can easily take 6 months for a mailing list to be updated removing your address from it. This has to do with the frequency that marketers update and certify their lists for the USPS.
2) Some of those catalogs that you have been getting for no apparent reason that you like getting, they may stop. If you are an existing customer of a company, or have specifically requested to get a certain mailing, then you may still get that mailing.
3) If there are multiple last names in your household, you may need to submit the form multiple times with those combinations (there are some stupid list maintainers out there).

This article is too Canada-centric

[Neil Blender]

Here in the backwater US, you can get your credit report for free three times a year at http://annualcreditreport.com/ - Check it every four months.

This is pretty much what I do

[WillAffleckUW]

Minor methods like:

a. shredding the account numbers and names/address on your bills or mail.

b. taking out the recycling only on recycle day, and making sure none of it contains identifying materials, but that all those are shredded and then mixed.

c. not taking too much ID with you.

And realizing that you're being phished. I learned a lot of techniques in the Canadian Armed Forces, when they would try to get information out of our systems by trying to pretend they were from someplace that just needed info, or wanted to verify something.

Never trust email, don't trust phoners, and never action things that you didn't originate.

And keep your hand over the other one (shading it) when entering your PIN.

Canada.com is a website for daily newspapers in Canada, FYI. Always right-click to inspect any links and ensure they go to the correct location before clicking them - and always use URLs you made yourself to access your banking and credit info.

Now, I've got an underwater tunnel to sell you if you don't want to follow that advice, and I'm sure other people will tell you about all the lotteries you've won, and how a rich religious minister left you money in [NAME OF COUNTRY] ...

Re:Buy a shredder

[Incadenza]

Just don't ever allow your kids to shred anything, even once. If you do, you may find yourself re-filling your taxes, one piece of sellotape at a time.

Or have a bunch of fanatic Iranian students do it for you. I have a copy of Documents From the US Espionage Den, volume 5 [6 MB PDF] that is a quite good illustration of why US embassies have been incinerating and not shredding their paper waste since 1979.

Re:I don't want to be a killjoy, but...

[ericlondaits]

Here in Argentina ATM fraud is common.

Saboteurs install a small keycard reader right next to the keycard reader at the ATM's door, so when you slide your car to enter, both readers get it. Recommendation: open the door with any other card, since the reader only checks for a magnetic strip and not for a valid card.

As for keypads, they usually install a different keypad over the regular one, which logs key presses and also activates the regular keys, so you notice nothing. The newspaper once showed one of this keyloggers, which had some sort of memory (flash perhaps) and ran on batteries.

Re:Annual Credit Report

[Neil Blender]

How does one get it every 4 months for free

One per year per agency. Get one from one agency every four months. If anything major happens, you can bet on it being in all three. Minor stuff, like addresses, etc are most likely what will differ from one agency to another and are not so urgent to get fixed.

Re:Use Virtual Credit Card Numbers

[holdenholden]

I have been using such a service for about 3 years. Works great. One caveat though: the actual limit on the virtual card may be 10% higher than the one that you request. My bank adds it because it thinks that I will forget to add the shipping charge and the number will "bounce". Just something to keep in mind. I am not sure if all banks do it.

Re:Online identity theft = FUD?

[EtherMonkey]

I do security and compliance for a big corporation (100k+ employees). I am not aware of even one case of identity theft via the Internet. I am aware of many cases of fraud via the Internet, where a persons' credit card or bank account number was stolen and/or misused. I suspect that, as pointed out elsewhere, statistics for fraud and identity theft together. This may be because of legislative constraints that includes, and rightfully so, credit card account information as protected personal/financial information. But there's also no doubt that higher numbers makes for more sensational news stories and more compelling selling points for those $10/month protection services.

100% of the identity theft cases and about 30% of the fraud cases I've helped out with or heard of were not due to any use of the Internet (even though many of the unapproved charges were made to Internet resellers). Disgruntled/dishonest employees, ex-spouses and boyfriends/girlfriends, and neighbors/acquaintances are, in my experience, the top three perpetrators of identity theft. Then there are the randoms: the car salesman that puts through auto loans in other customers' names; the 'crew' that dumpster-dives tax preparation offices and then sells the identities to illegal immigrants.

If you are reasonably careful and avoid 'risky behavior' on the Internet you are fairly safe from fraud and identity theft. Never give your SSN or birthdate to anyone over the phone, and only the bare minimum as absolutely required on a face-to-face basis (i.e. banks, financial institutions, employers, medical as needed for insurance processing). For anyone else, just make up a SSN and birthdate: there's no point in arguing with people too stupid to understand that there's no legitimate use for that information.

Never pay for anything by check. ACH fraud is trivial and is probably the most common scam because of the lack of controls and authentication. It can also be the most damaging because, unlike credit-card fraud, the money is gone from your account and you have to convince the bank to put it back. Any organization with either an ACH merchant account with a bank or via one of hundreds of ACH 3rd-party processors can take money from any US bank account with nothing more than your bank's routing number (public information) and your account number (printed on every check). I have been hit with ACH fraud a few times and now order only a one-year supply of checks and then open a new account when the checks run out.

When paying on-line or over the phone always use your credit card company's 'temporary account number' service. These are time-limited and, optionally, amount-limited account numbers that do not reveal your permanent credit card number. You can set limits for how long they are valid (from one month to one year) and how much total can be charged. Most MasterCard and Visa providers offer this service. You have to be Internet-connected to generate a new number. (American Express pioneered this service but then discontinued it shortly before introducing their enhanced security service, for an extra fee). An added benefit is if someone does make fraudulent use of the temporary account number you know who is at fault for leaking your information.

If you have the ability, use a separate e-mail address for each financial institution and each vendor you use. If you have your own domain name you can usually configure "catch-all" email forwarding so any incoming email without a matching mailbox gets forwarded to a specific address. This helps identify phishing attempts because you will see email supposedly from, e.g., Citibank Security come into your "ebay@example.com" address instead of the proper "citibank@example.com" address. An added benefit here is being able to identify who is selling your email address (surprisingly, very few).

And if you deal with illegal, semi-legal, illicit or other fringe sites (porno, high-yield investing, paid-to-surf/email, Ponzi, pirate software/music/video/games, or an