Detecting and Protecting your Digital Footprint: ID Theft and You–Yes, You!
April 3, 2008 at 11:09 am Robert J. Lackie 3 comments
Back in December, I blogged about Making–and Protecting–your Digital Footprint: Do you Care? Even a Little Bit??, noting that even though I am online quite a bit, I still consider myself one of “The Concerned and Careful” type, especially concerning personal information available about myself and my family online and take steps to proactively limit and/or keep a watchful eye of our online data. As a previous victim of identity fraud, I must say that it changes your perspectives somewhat. Anyway, according to the very interesting and earlier-mentioned Pew Internet & American Life Project’s “Digital Footprints” report from last December, one in five online adults (21%) fall into this “Concerned and Careful” category, so I know that I am not standing alone.
Well, I said in my earlier post that I would return to this topic, and I do so today because of two reasons: one, I just read my fellow Library Garden blogger and friend Amy Kearns’ funny and enlightening Facebook post yesterday about our “digital” and “real” lives colliding, and about me stalking her in Princeton (OK, she was only joking about the stalking part–no really, she was joking). I have to say that, because since showing a journalist during an interview how easy I could find info on her, she quoted me in her US1 article when I jokingly said, “Now I can stalk you.” (note that the link to my Feb. 2008 website on this topic is included, but the article accidentally hyperlinked a period at the end of the sentence, so remove the period from the URL — it should be http://www.kn.sbc.com/wired/fil/pages/liststudentpe3.html (Personal Profiles and Other Publicly Available Information: An Internet Hotlist on Detecting and Protecting Your Digital Footprint)
Second reason to return to this topic: Rider University’s Center for Business Forensics hosted a free seminar focusing on the major issues surrounding identity theft and fraud, offering to the public insight into the widespread, varying, and serious nature of identity theft. It was well attended and there were a lot of questions, especially since the expert panel consisted of detectives, a VP in banking, and professor in health information management, and my good friend–and Rider’s very own web expert, blogger, and manager of information technology–John LeMasney, who, incidentally, already placed his April Google Docs presentation online for us (another detective also joined the panel not originally listed on the website advertisement, Detective Tracy McKeown, and Investigator Bethany Schussler was unable to make it). This seminar was led by Dr. J. Drew Procaccino, Associate Professor of Computer Information Systems, who has researched identity theft, biometrics and smart card technologies and co-authored an extensive survey of smart-card technologies published by Elsevier/Academic Press in 2004 (see Drew’s directory page above).
I could tell from the many questions asked of the excellent presenters that there is a lot of misinformation out there on the different types of identity theft, the scope of people who commit this type of theft, the trends, and what we can do about better detecting and preventing this theft. Three blogs mentioned in their handout to help us keep up with the latest and greatest scams, schemes, and trends related to ID theft are:
FightIdentityTheft Blog — http://fightidentitytheft.com/blog
Schneier On Security — http://schneier.com/blog
Identity Theft Blog by Truston — http://www.mytruston.com/blog
I would like to add three of my favorite sites (also briefly mentioned in their handout) that I regularly use and direct interested people to for great information, found on my previously mentioned workshop website along with other related information, such as notable social networking sites, personal information search engines, and other online identity and privacy info sites:
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse — http://www.privacyrights.org/
Fighting Back Against Identity Theft — http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/
Identity Theft Resource Center — http://www.idtheftcenter.org/
OK, still not sure if you should care, or if the whole thing is even worth considering? If that is true, then my guess is that you did not look at any of the blogs or sites mentioned above, yet. At least try doing this–take the ID theft test and/or the PC info safety quiz from the Identity Theft Resource Center.
If you are not happy with your scores, then, reread this post and follow the links when you have some time to do something to help yourself and others. You will be glad that you did!
Remember, just as the experts will tell you, following your digital footprint and obtaining your personal info is easy to do if you are not aware, so easy even a caveman….well, you get the picture! 😉
-Robert Lackie
Technorati Tags: digital footprint, identity theft, online content, privacy conundrum, Library Garden
Entry filed under: Privacy. Tags: digital footprint, identity theft, online content, privacy conundrum.
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Anonymous | April 4, 2008 at 1:08 am
Massive increase in fraud crimes should make the government and banks realise that their data protection and Chip and PIN systems are diverting rather than deterring fraud crimes.
This shows that fraud will continue to grow until they exploit KEY and PIN system described on website http://www.xwave.co.uk which will deter BOTH identity and card fraud fraud by making signature and PIN systems reliable and foolproof.
Fake documents have made our signature system unreliable while skimmers and pin-hole cameras etc. have made PIN system unreliable. We have option to make signatures reliable by personalising them with ID stickers and option to use Card Key Code to make PIN system reliable to make use of stolen and skimmed cards meaningless. By ignoring to exploit this system banks are only letting fraud crimes grow.
ID KEY system will eliminate the need for us to protect our personal and card details since fraudsters will be deterred from misusing these stolen details.
Proposed ID KEY can be treated as a reliable international ID card because it will personalise signature and PIN number to only the right individuals in any country.
We hope that the government and banks will appreciate these details and exploit KEY and PIN system before it is too late to stop a fraud boom.
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Amy Kearns | April 4, 2008 at 7:41 am
Robert, great post. I think this is an important topic and one I may want to try to get some additional workshops/programs on for the region since, as you say, there seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding the issue.
I consider myself to NOT be in that ‘careful and cautious’ group. I am all over the place online and figure that a lot of info is pretty much readily available and so I am one to err toward the side of convenience and openness on the web versus protection. I always say that nothing has happened so far, and that I “don’t care” about this – and then add that probably someday I will be sorry as a result!
I am going to check out everything you have mentioned here! Thanks!
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lemasney | April 14, 2008 at 9:06 am
Great Post, Robert – I had a great time at the Presentation Panel, and was very glad to see you there and hang out after.
j.