Security Bites 115: Inside ID fraud's underground forums

This week Tom Rusin, president and chief executive officer of Affinion's North America operation, is Robert Vamosi's guest. His company monitors the criminal underground for several thousand banking institutions by lurking in carder chat rooms.

"Carders" are the people who buy, sell, and trade online the credit card data stolen from phishing sites or from large data breaches at retail stores. Affinion is global, with offices in more than a dozen countries. And over the years they have provided a wealth of information to the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI. A few weeks ago, Affinion identified .Mac users who found themselves victims of a phishing scam.

"Any piece of info is priceless to these people," says Rusin.

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[phoneybabe6661]

I just recently found out that I'm a victim of ifraud or identity theft. I found out because someone got a hold of my banking information and somwhow got a duplicate bank card made with my account number and pin number and withdrew $836.00. The bank reimbursed me, but their investigation took less than 2weeks at the most, and all they said was they're sorry. I called the credit bureaus to get copies of my report to just see what was going on and I find out that I have or had an apartment and Direct TV service in my name in New York. The direct tv came up on my report and of course I disputed it to no avail, the apartment also came up and I disputed that to the credit bureau, but so far nothing on that. I've been informed the direct tv debt will stay on my report till 2015. I've never lived in New York nor have I ever had Direct TV, but because whoever did this had all my personal information and I mean all, it seems now I'm responsible for this debt. I don't have the kind of money it takes to hire an attorney to help me clear my name of these debts, and i'm definetely not going to pay for something that's not mine. I'm at a loss as to what I can do now. I've lived in Maryland all my life. The worse part about this is that I had just got my credit score up to good and now it's gone down again because of this. I even pay monthly for ID Theft Protection, thru my credit cards, and Transunion, and I feel paying for all this, so called protection is really a waste, since noone can seem to help me. I actually had to have a new bank card issued and new credit card numbers. Where do I go from here?