Identity Thieves are Now Becoming Scapegoats

It is a sign that something is becoming mainstream when identity thieves start taking the blame for committing an offense probably not worth their time or effort.

Recently a woman was sued by and went to trail against the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and lost. The RIAA is the trade group turned watchdog group whose members are recoding artists. They are the group that is fighting illegal P2P (peer 2 peer) downloading among mainly younger computer users.

The judgment came in the form of a fine of over $250,000. She was offered an out of court settlement and turned it down. Most if not all individuals offered this option are accepting it since they are liable for much more that the industry is requesting. They (RIAA) are really getting a pittance compared to the industry losses and the legal costs of suing young individuals is surely more then they are getting in return. But they are setting a great example. Until now.

This woman refused to settle because she is claiming an identity thief stole her web identity to file share on P2P. Is this idea original, probably not. There have likely been many users claiming they didn’t do. They claim it was someone else using their computer, hijacked their account etc. But I believe it is the first time it has been used in court when defending a suit filed by the RIAA. Is this defense possible? Anything is possible, but the court did not buy it and ruled against her.

Is this realistic? With so much to gain financially doing other misdeeds, would identity thieves go to this length to file share a few songs? Put in another light, if you are an identity thief, you obviously have little regard for the law, so worrying about file sharing, not even on the bottom of any list. But because the thieves are becoming so commonplace, the public has now decided that they could be a good scapegoat. And why not, since there are plenty of them lurking in every corner of the planet.

In retrospect, the RIAA should spend some of that recovered money educating parents on how identity thieves really use P2P networks to actually steal identities. Maybe if they got the attention of more adults they would have a much better army of soldiers to combat their problem of lost revenue, while at the same time educating individuals, college students and moms and dads, of the other unseen peril of illegal downloading, identity theft.

Ohio’s state government places a value on personal information

The latest in the string of embarrassing data breaches involves the state of Ohio whose officials allowed a storage device to be stolen from a car.

This story keeps getting worse as at first it was thought that only 64,000 state employees personal information was on the device, but now they are realizing that a few hundred thousand Ohioan’s information was also on the device. Depending on the source the number varies from 200k to 500k. No matter what it ends up being it is a PR nightmare for the state government and elected officials.

At to add more embarrassment to the situation the person who had it stolen was an intern.
To me an intern is a student or a recently graduated individual who is now working for the state government as an apprentice to learn the ropes, the rules, gain exposure, acquire experience, and even earn college credits. In other words, a rookie.

So with all of the people that work in the state government, an intern is chosen to carry the storage device as a security measure to have copies of data in case something terrible happens. It just didn’t cross anyone’s mind that they were not paying attention to the security of the data at both ends. And something did happen, just not at the end they were expecting.

So with all of the concern about protecting this information they hand it over to an intern who leaves it in a car (by some accounts unlocked) and it disappears. Did the intern even know what they were taking home? Did anyone bother to tell the intern? What was the value of that information on the device if it could be handed over for safekeeping to an intern? The state must have felt it was very little since they gave it to the lowest person on the ladder. But now the value is starting to mount as the state is already spending hundreds of thousands on services to protect individuals and that is just the start.

If whoever took that device does crack into it successfully and spreads the wealth of information all over the internet, you can be assured that institutions that will start to bear the brunt of costs associated with this will surely look to the state for restitution.

Ohio is now falling into the same path as millions of Americans who do not bother to take pro-active steps, but then spend millions on reactions once a breach occurs.

Identity Theft with Obsolete Computers

We are coming to a point in time when many people are replacing their computers with a new faster and sleeker versions that will do just about everything they need to keep up with the multi-media world we now live in.

Judging by the age of the internet going mainstream, it will likely be your 3rd replacement with the last two really being used with much of your personal information embedded somewhere on the hard drive. Ten years ago you thought nothing of donating it to a school, or giving it to another family member or even the local Salvation Army.

If you still think that way today about disposing of that old PC, don’t! Yes you want to do the right thing, help out, be conscious of the environment, or any other good reason you may come up with for not just discarding it. But before you take that step, think about identity theft first. Your personal information from the last few years is somewhere on that hard drive. Sure you deleted it, formatted it, cleaned it, but to a persistent thief, they can dig up anything with a little effort, and they do.

Thieves pick them up on auction sites, at garage sales, in used shops, flea markets, all loaded with personal information.

There are software products in the market ranging from $30-$60 that guarantee you that they will wipe that hard drive clean to department of defense standards. I am not denying the validity of these nor endorsing them, but there are other surefire alternatives.


1)Remove the hard drive before giving the PC to anyone, a replacement will cost very little to the recipient verses buying a new PC.

2)Replace the hard drive and designate that PC as a “kids only” PC, let them download all the spyware and viruses while they fileshare using P2P networks. The keylogger they pick up will find nothing good on Disney.com.

3)Replace the hard drive yourself then donate it or give it away.

4)Recycle the entire PC, but remove the hard drive first. Call your local waste management office to find out how, many designate special days for these items.

5)Keep the PC forever and never let it leave the house (some are sentimental about everything)


So what do you do with that old hard drive that you removed? Just pick your weapon of choice and destroy it. Toss it on the grill for a half hour, smash it with a baseball bat, drill a half dozen holes in it, place it in your tool box and use it when you can’t find that hammer.

All this may seem extreme and time consuming, but the hassle of identity theft is much worse.