The firm that may have profited the most from consumer fears over identity theft has run into serious trouble with the Federal Trade Commission for the second time. LifeLock, which rose to prominence in the 1990s when its founder plastered his Social Security number across billboards in a marketing stunt, [Keep reading]
Ryan Benharris had $200 stolen from his debit card after his Starbucks account was hijacked recently, but that’s not why he was furious at the firm. He was angry about what happened next. “I had to beg and plead to get my money back,” he said. “They lied to me…I’m [Keep reading]
BOBSULLIVAN.NET EXCLUSIVE: Credit card hackers are targeting Starbucks gift card and mobile payment users around the country – and stealing from consumers’ credit cards — with a new scam so ingenious they don’t even need to know the account number of the card they are hacking. Criminals are using Starbucks [Keep reading]
Legislation that would establish new nationwide privacy protections for American consumers was introduced by a group of high-profile Democratic senators on Thursday, including Pat Leahy (Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts). The Consumer Privacy Protection Act would establish federal standards for notification of consumers when their data is lost or stolen, [Keep reading]
Victims of tax-refund identity theft have a nightmare on their hands — a long-term nightmare. A government audit found that it takes an average of 278 days for the IRS to resolve ID theft complaints and issue tax refunds. And that’s an improvement over the 312 days it took the [Keep reading]
I’ve received a couple of emails recently that made their way into my inbox (and away from my spam folder) that I think are troubling. They are well-drafted attacks designed to convince the recipient that their Gmail or YouTube account is about to be deleted unless he or she clicks [Keep reading]
Just how bad is the tax ID theft problem? About half of all filers seeking refunds in the state of Ohio now must answer a series of challenge questions just to prove they are who they say they are. Ohio has already intercepted nearly 60,000 returns seeking an astonishing $250 [Keep reading]
Tax ID theft is reaching epidemic proportions. Well, it did last year when the IRS issued seemingly endless warnings about it. That wasn’t enough to get state taxation agencies to fix their systems, apparently, as TurboTax announced it has taken the extraordinary step of “pausing” state tax return filings for [Keep reading]
There’s a simple way to end the theft of millions of credit card numbers from merchants like Target or Home Depot: Stop giving merchants credit card numbers in the first place. One way to do that is to replace credit card account numbers with “token” data that merely represents the [Keep reading]
Digital criminals inventing and exploiting identities out of thin air, rather than impersonating real consumers, are a fast-growing menace, according to a new report from fraud-fighting firm ID Analytics. This relatively new form of identity fraud, called synthetic identity fraud, involves criminals using random Social Security numbers, mismatched names and [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan