Russian election hack may have used synthetic ID theft of real US persons

It appears that some of the fake Facebook and other social media accounts involved with the 13-point Mueller indictment today may have been created as synthetic fake people with info stolen about real US persons, as in this Wired story. 

  

It does not appear that there was widespread direct harm to the persons stolen (credit scores, false prosecutions)

A fake profile of me was created on Facebook in early 2016, caught by a friend, and removed by Facebook before I knew about it.  It has no content.  But it is conceivable that this could have been Russian activity.

  

A detailed story in the Washington Post about the indictment by Rosalind S. Heldeman and others appears here.

  

Apparently some real US citizens joined fake groups not knowing these were Russian.

Here is a Scribd pdf text of the US Attorney in Washington DC (37 pages).  It is said to read like a spy novella. 

  

It is not clear how easily individuals named could be extradited and prosecuted.

    

The story could turn out be relevant to “fake business scams” currently discussed on my IT jobs blog.

Equifax hack even worse than previously thought; DL info could be exposed

The Equifax hack was worse than we thought.  Maybe it is “so bad”.

It looks like it compromised names, social security numbers, tax id’s, and driver’s license, for up to 143 million people. DL exposure could complicate TSA security. 

  

Tech Republic has a current story and video by Allison DeNisco Rayonne, here. 

  

The company that I worked for in Dallas in the 1980s, Chilton, was very nearly bought by Equifax in 1988 before TRW made a better offer (now it’s Experian).

But all my work there in the 1980s was on a mainframe, on member billing systems, with little interface with consumer records.

  

There is unusual attention this year to the possibility of IRS W-2 fraud, which could be related to Equifax.

Experian lists 20 kinds of identity theft

Today Experian (aka TRW, Chilton, and Pinger) offered a missive “20 Types of Identity Theft and Fraud,” the long list here.

Some are surprising.  One is driver’s license ID theft, very common, and it gets around the picture. Another is Biometric.  Still another is if a criminal gives your identity to police when arrested, which can make the police come after you, although it’s hard to see how a police department doesn’t catch it.

   

But one possibility would be to get into someone else’s Internet accounts, social media or domain, and place illegal content there or distribute from it, framing the other person.  This hasn’t happened as much as one might fear it could. Another is using someone’s wifi router for illegal purposes, causing that person to have his account canceled.