Friday, February 16, 2018
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.
Monday, February 12, 2018
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.
Tuesday, February 06, 2018
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.
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