Identity

Complaints of Internet-based crimes up 33 percent

Correction 2:19 p.m. PDT: An earlier version of this story and its headline significantly mischaracterized a key metric used in the IC3 report. The overall finding of the report was that complaints regarding Internet-related crimes rose 33 percent in 2008.

Complaints of Internet-related crimes soared 33 percent last year, countering two years of consecutive declines, according to a report released Monday by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

The IC3 Web site received 275,284 complaints last year, up from 206,884 the previous year. The organization referred 72,940 of those 2008 complaints to federal, state, and … Read more

In .tel domain ramp-up, Telnic links with MySpace

Identity management service Telnic, which runs the .tel domain, announced on Tuesday that registering for a .tel domain has gone from its initial "land rush" phase into general availability.

Tens of thousands of domains have been sold so far, communications director Justin Hayward told CNET News, and the company will be having a launch event on Tuesday evening in New York to start spreading the word.

Telnic is sort of hoping that a .tel URL will become the online equivalent of a business card or, as Hayward put it, "one permanent point of contact, a bit like … Read more

Report: ID fraud malware infecting PCs at increasing rates

More than 10 million Internet users worldwide were hit with identity fraud-related malware last year, according to a new estimate from Panda Security.

The number of computers infected with active programs designed to steal personally identifiable or financial information that can be used for identity fraud, such as banker Trojans for stealing bank account information, rose by 800 percent from the first half of the year to the second half, the study found.

Of the 67 million computers that PandaLabs analyzed in 2008 for the study, 35 percent of those infected had up-to-date antivirus software installed. The number of users … Read more

Gartner: Financial fraud hits 7.5 percent of U.S. adults

About 7.5 percent of U.S. adults lost money as a result of financial fraud last year, mostly due to data breaches, according to a new Gartner study to be released on Tuesday night.

In the survey of nearly 5,000 consumers, 70 percent said they had never been a victim of identity theft fraud. Meanwhile 14 percent said they had had their credit card information used to charge purchases or get money, 7 percent said their debit card was used, 6 percent said a new account had been opened in their name, 5 percent had money transferred out … Read more

Podcast: MySpace promotes OpenID

At a Tuesday afternoon panel at the Demo conference, representatives of MySpace, Google, Facebook, and Plaxo explained how they are working to create a more open environment so that people can take their identity with them as they migrate from one social-networking site to another.

While we're not yet about to see Facebook let people log on to its site with their MySpace ID, or vice versa, we are starting to see more cooperation among sites. MySpace ID product lead Max Engel speaks with Larry Magid about MySpace's efforts, including collaboration with AOL.

ID theft up, and 20-somethings suffer most

Update at 9:30 a.m. PST: A new chart has been added to the end of the article.

This was originally published in ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Identity theft cases surged in 2008, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Last year, ID theft was by far the biggest complaint to the FTC, representing 26 percent of total problems reported. The next biggest one--third-party and creditor debt collection scams--represented only 9 percent of complaints.

The FTC's annual Consumer Sentinel Network report (PDF), released Thursday, details that ID theft complaints totaled nearly 314,000 in 2008, up from about … Read more

Novell: More than just a SUSE face

Novell primarily gets public credit (or recrimination) for its Linux business, but on Thursday Novell reminded the world that it's more than just a Linux vendor, acquiring the assets of technology assets of Fortefi Ltd. and a perpetual source code license to ActivIdentity's single sign-on solution.

Both moves strengthen Novell's position in the Identity Management market.

Linux serves as the beachhead for Novell into enterprises that may have lost interest in the former NetWare giant. CIOs that are interested in Linux will consider SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and then, hopefully, give the Novell sales executive time to … Read more

FAA reports breach that puts employee data at risk

A server at the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration was illegally accessed online and personal identity information of employees was stolen, the agency said.

Two of the nearly 50 files on the breached computer had personal data about more than 45,000 FAA employees and retirees who were on the FAA rolls as of three years ago, the FAA said in a statement released on Monday.

The server that was breached was not connected to the air traffic control system or other operational systems, according to the statement.

The agency is notifying all affected employees by mail and is investigating … Read more

ID fraud up, but low-tech methods still prevalent

Identity fraud rose 22 percent in 2008 from the year before, reaching the highest level since 2004, according to a report released on Monday by Javelin Research.

Of nearly 4,800 U.S. adults who were surveyed over the telephone, 482 said they had been victims of identity fraud, the report found.

"Almost 10 million Americans learned they were victims of identity fraud in 2008, up from 8.1 million victims in 2007," the report overview said. "More consumers are becoming victimized by this serious crime, reversing a previous trend in which identity fraud had been gradually … Read more