Attention grabbing survey sites could set the stage for ID theft

There are a number of sites that quiz you about yourself and then tell you something about yourself in return. Our site does that as well. We ask you information about your personal daily habits and use proprietary algorithms backed by research to gage your risk for ID theft with an output that is in an easy to understand ID Risk Level. No ads, no personal information requested, not even email.

Someone emailed me recently asking about other sites that have quizzes and pointed out a few in particular and asked me how safe they are even if just for fun.

Some sites, by piquing your interest in certain, even silly subjects, are looking for something. There are a number of sites that purport being able to tell you when you are going to die! Wonderful, that information will certainly come in handy. It makes my retirement investment planning so much easier.

Well, you’re not gullible, but you went there for fun, as a joke, just to see, etc. All in good fun as long as you are not giving them any personal information.

So what could a site like this really be after? Mainly ad revenue. By getting thousands of people to go through the site and take the “date of your death survey”, they land you in a seemingly never ending, page after page of offers for everything from free laptops to a cruise around the world to magazines and so on. The catch is you have to get past saying no to these or fill out a few with your personal information like name, address, phone number, email etc. and what seems to be fairly harmless information. Only, once you go past the myriad of ads asking you to fill in information will you get your “calculated” date with the grim reaper.

So I tried it at a site this person asked me about. I answered the few simple questions and then waited for my results, it had to be calculated, apparently they have a long connection to go through and the grim reaper’s WiFi was down. In the meantime, they graciously had me take review some of their fine offers and click “no” if not interested. I counted 97 (yes, I counted because I assumed it was going to be big) offers that I said “no” to and still was not given my much awaited date with death. I even filled in a few with some random misinformation thinking if they got me on one maybe they would cough up that date! Nothing. I literally gave up as it was appearing to be more and more of a perpetual scam. I guess I’ll need to keep my retirement plans in place for now.

Seriously though, what was really happening was a massive operation to get you to provide just the basics of personal information. Now the company that runs the site may only be a conduit and collecting ad dollars from the marketing agency who is the real culprit in this operation. Fill one out correctly with real information and you have just asked to receive a minimum of 100,000 emails with other exciting offers include. Hey, you asked!

That information may possibly be used by them directly for ID theft, Spamming, phishing, etc. They may sell it to others who will use it unscrupulously. Worse yet, you will be put on a sucker list. This is a list created about people who willingly provide information thinking they are going to win a prize. AKA in their business “a sucker”. ID thieves love suckers. They know they are the easiest of easy targets. The people who think they will really get something for nothing, the same people who ultimately will give the thieves the keys to their identity in much the same way. The thieves already know you are an optimists, and play that hand against you to the fullest.

So the next time you go to a site and think you are providing information that is harmless, looking for that humorous “date of your death” you may find out a new date, when your identity was stolen.

What’s missing from your mailbox today?

A habit that we are all used to doing since we had our first apartment, or first went away to college, is get the mail before we walk in the door. Every day we expect to get something when we open that box. Mail is a way of life in our society. It is woven into the thread of our daily lives.

Will physical mail ever go away? No, but it will evolve into a different service than what we see today. Email, estatements, online billpay, are all eroding at a service that has been in existence for ages. But what online taketh away, online giveth back in another form. Ecommerce has opened up the marketplace for any item you want with a click of a mouse.

So who still uses this age old system of antiquated origins? All of us do! There must be something about still receiving items in that box that keeps us attached to this extremely vulnerable system. Ever think about how vulnerable it is? Most don’t.

According to the US Postal Service they arrested 6000 people last year for mail theft! If it doesn’t sound like many, just think of how many they have not arrested. Then add in the ones who will start doing it. The number of mail thieves is growing as identity theft continues to grow year after year.

There is also the occurrence of “volume thefts”, that is prevalent in a number of states. The postal service does not specify what a “volume theft” is, but I would guess it is in the range of a bulk airline cargo hold shipment (ever look out the airplane window and see bulk bags of US mail being loaded with your luggage) to an entire truckload. I doubt they are looking for Ebay packages either. The thefts are occurring everywhere that mail is readily available, from collection boxes, apartment mailbox panels, postal trucks, your curbside box etc.

So what is missing from your mailbox today? A quick off the cuff answer is nothing, because you picked up your mail and it was there….so you thought. But were you there when it was delivered? Did it sit all day waiting for you to get it after work? And are those 2 credit card offers the only ones you received today or did the mailperson leave 4? You just don’t know what is missing from your mail because you never see it to start with.

You need to defend yourself from mail theft by eliminating the use of mail for all critical and essential information. Only use the mail for catalogs and advertisements and coupons, the thieves can have that.

The stolen laptop saga strikes yet again

Retailer Neiman Marcus had a pension company report a theft of a laptop with the records of 160,000 employees current and past.

These “data breaches” are almost starting to sound too common. Almost a yawner compared to TJ Maxx and the 45.7 million tidbits divulged. Neiman Marcus disclosed this breach because some of those employees are in states that have laws requiring disclosure when information is lost or stolen. Stolen laptops and data breaches are not new, but due to disclosure laws, we are hearing about it more often than ever before.

The thief who took the laptop did so because of opportunity. He was a petty thug who saw an opportunity. That opportunity kindly was provided by a person who set it down somewhere in public and walked away for a minute, most likely to get extra napkins for the latte that spilled a few drops on a table in a café. I’m making this up, but the real scenario was surely that simple. Most thieves are lazy and go for the low hanging fruit, the easy targets. The thief was not thinking about what information it could possibly have on the hard drive either.

Now the thief takes this laptop and turns it into cash quickly. After all he’s done his work for the day, now time to get paid. That laptop will end up changing hands a few times and it will be the random luck of the draw of who’s hands it passes through and who looks at the data stored on it. It will most likely end up in a pawnshop and eventually on an internet auction site.

This laptop theft like all others that have come to light recently will cost Neiman Marcus much more than they would have spent on the control of that information. They paid for credit monitoring for 160,000 people, and that was a nice tidy sum they did not have in this years budget.

It would have been cheaper and easier to have spent more money up front to control their corporate information, through data-protection policies and training that applies to anyplace that information is stored, including a laptop with a third party. They will now be spending money on that.

If that was an individual's laptop, not a corporate one, the same reaction would happen. A flurry of activity would occur to fortify and monitor to be sure there are no attacks. Not only was the loss of the device costly, you now have, monitoring, worrying, time, and effort etc, added to that unecessary event.

You normally don't leave a purse or wallet unsecured in public, even briefly, because there is a good chance it will be stolen. The same is true with a laptop.

These thieves are not smart, but we have to be, and take some extra steps to not become a piece of low hanging fruit.

National identity theft awareness week

While identity theft is a year round event, this coming week, could just qualify for National Identity Theft Awareness Week. The week could get this designation because it is becoming one of the more prevalent ones for identity theft due strictly to the time of year. No, there is no such week, but if there were any good time to raise awareness, this week is it.

We wouldn’t be human if we did not have some worry this time of year regarding filing our income taxes.

The forms, the documents, the receipts, the calculator, the room you barricade yourself in, and vow not to emerge until the deed is done. Those are all recurring items that we’ve been through before and will go through again, but we still feel anxiety regardless.

While getting your taxes done is paramount for this time of year, you need to be on alert for more than just an audit. The thieves and con artists go into overdrive this time of year. They feed on your sense of commitment and urgency to get that return done and in on time.

So what should you be concerned about? Here are my top 10 awareness items to think about this week for protecting yourself from an identity thief:

1) Shred all those printed copies that you found mistakes on, and had to reprint.

2) Keep your hard copy of your tax returns locked up.

3) If you use a tax preparer or a CPA, be sure they are securing your information, after you leave the office. Look around to see and verify that they use a shredder. Ask them how they secure your information when they are done for the night.

4) Give some consideration to where you are copying a tax return. It has recently come to light that copiers retain digital information of every copy they make, and some are not being properly erased.

5) If you used software at home on your own PC, save your tax returns to a disc and delete it from your hard drive. Keep in mind if you loose a laptop do you want your tax return available to anyone who acquires it?

6) Ignore and delete emails from the IRS. They don’t have your email address, do you remember providing it to them?

7) Only eFile through the links on the IRS website http://www.irs.gov/ . Recently thieves have been setting up fake eFile sites and collecting your information.

8) Don’t provide any information to any who calls claiming to be from the IRS.

9) Don’t leave your return in your mailbox. Take it to the post office directly.

10) Use a reputable tax preparer. Remember that you are handing them the keys to your identity, if you don’t know them, they may just drive off with it, or sell the information to a third party.

The IRS does not use email?

Around this time every year millions of emails arrive proclaiming the IRS needs you to verify your information, needs more information, has money to give back to you, and the list goes on and on. To conform, all you need to do is cough up some very valuable information.

They all invoke some type of high emotion, either fear or excitement. Both can cloud clear judgment, and reasoning. And it works, all too well.

Lets look at this from a logical and simple point of view. What is the main goal of the IRS? To collect tax revenue. What else do they do? Audit you to try and collect more tax revenue. Have you ever heard of them doing anything else?

Those two functions just about wrap it up.

So if we look at what they don’t do here is my simple list of 5 rules, and read rule #1 at least 50 times:

Rule 1)The IRS doesn’t ask for an email address on your 1040
Rule 2)The IRS doesn’t ask for missing information via email (See rule #1)
Rule 3)The IRS doesn’t ask for more information via email (See rule #1)
Rule 4)The IRS certainly doesn’t offer additional refund money via email (See rule #1)
Rule 5)The IRS absolutely doesn’t locate bonus or extra money just for you


Now go back and read rule #1 above again. If you can remember that, you can be assured that any message you get proclaiming anything from the IRS is a fake and a phishing scam.

So when you see the words IRS in an email for any reason instantly think of my IRS #1 rule and then hit the DELETE key.