Total Identity Protection

Phishing e-mails and e-mails scams aren’t new. Unfortunately, they are getting even more sophisticated and successful. Why? Despite the growing awareness of phishing scams and computer viruses from e-mails that link to malware, scammers are becoming even better salesmen.

The first phishing scams that circulated were really just too good (or too bizarre) to be true for most readers. You remember the e-mail hoaxes that involved an African prince who wanted to share his great wealth with you if only… you would send your banking account numbers. Art Manion, a top vulnerability analyst for CERT, a Carnegie Mellon University internet emergency response group, scammer’s tactics are just getting better. Manion says, “Today, the e-mail looks like it’s from my bank or my company, with better grammar, more believable stories, and better URLs.” The more recent and well-publicized e-mail phishing hoaxes involved Pay Pal, the Better Business Bureau and e-bay. Now the FBI is involved.

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Medical identity theft can make you sick. When I was asked by the reporter on the CBS Early Show, “If medical identity theft happens to you”…and I eloquently responded “You’re screwed”, and amazingly it made the edits to air. Because in sum, it’s true.

Medical identity theft occurs when someone uses a person’s name and sometimes other parts of their identity-such as insurance information-without the person’s knowledge or consent to obtain medical services or goods, or uses the person’s identity information to make false claims for medical services or goods. Medical identity theft frequently results in erroneous entries being put into existing medical records, and can involve the creation of fictitious medical records in the victim’s name.

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“It lies at the core of a great deal of what we do protecting our financial security, our personal security, and our reputational security,” Chertoff said. “And what I’m referring to is how we manage and protect our personal identities because I’m going to submit to you that in the 21st Century, the most important asset that we have to protect as individuals and as part of our nation is the control of our identity, who we are, how we identify ourselves, whether other people are permitted to masquerade and pretend to be us, and thereby damage our livelihood, damage our assets, damage our reputation, damage our standing in our community.”               – Michael Chertoff

Lisa is the victim of fraud. Credit card fraud claimed her life. Did the crime take place through Internet scams? Did a thief break into her home and steal her identity? Was her identity stolen through insurance fraud or consumer fraud? No. Lisa is the victim of fraud committed by her boyfriend of 4 years. How could this happen?

Credit card fraud

Lisa’s problems began when her boyfriend began using her personal information and took out credit cards in her name – 8 to be exact. He maxed out all eight credit cards for a total of $15,000, made no payments, and left with another women. Of course, he says he will pay them back…

According to the Committee on Ways and Means, 50% of identity theft and fraud is committed by someone the victim knows. 33% percent of all fraud is credit card fraud. When a boyfriend, girlfriend, or family member steals your identity, many victims feel they can’t report it as fraud. Wrong.

When this happens, it is identity theft — report it.

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In recent months, with the continued growth in highly public data breach incidents, we began looking at how organizations assess their level of exposure to data breach risk. I suspect if you ask the CEO of most public companies or public sector organizations about their level of risk, that they would tell you that they are “highly secure” and maintain excellent practices to prevent the misappropriation of personal information of their customers, patients, employees, students and other affiliates.

For many firms, they have to meet security and compliance requirements that are necessities in their industry, such as PCI for those that handle credit card information and HIPAA for healthcare organizations. Historically I think that they felt such rigorous compliance requirements could ensure their safety from the risks of data breach.

However, the recent past demonstrates that no organization is really immune to a potential data breach incident.

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We are obsessed with finding and leveraging our strengths, and it makes us boring.

For example, Marcus Buckingham, an intelligent, dynamic and well-spoken best selling author (with a lot of strengths), tells us to Go Put our Strengths to Work. One of his premises, as discussed in his article What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differntly, is Imbalance. In discussing why more women are less happy than ever, he says it’s because they are too focused on balance:

… when you are balanced, you are stationary, holding your breath, trying not to let any sudden twitch or jerk pull you too far one way of the other. You are at a standstill. Balance is the wrong life goal. Instead, do as these women [the self-proclaimed “happiest” ones in his survey) did, and strive for imbalance.

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