A few of these will be redundant, but the point remains; redundant or not. This will be a conglomerate of the most relevant tips I could find.

Online

On screen keyboards. Use these to combat key loggers.

Data separation. Whether you use another computer without internet access to keep your books and hold your personal information or you use a external hard drive while the internet connection is temporarily downed, data separation is a good first line of defense.

No more SSN at the doc. Get a medical ID card and leave the Social Security card at home.

No debit card online purchases. I don’t care where you are shopping. Don’t use your debit card to buy things online- EVER. Use credit cards or a PayPal account, both will not only stop transactions at a certain amount, their fraudulent policies only hold u responsible for a limited amount. Using the debit card could deplete your whole account.

Check your dang statements. It takes a few minutes every week and is a primary line of defense. Don’t be that lazy.

Order your credit reports. This means do it responsibly three times a year. It will help.

Offline

Shred it all. When in doubt, shred. The dumpster divers are legally allowed to sift through your trash. If you want to do it right, buy a shredder that puts the one from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to shame by cross-shredding everything.  If that doesn’t do it for you, burn it.

Bills go to the post office. If you have a open mailbox, don’t leave the  paid bills in the mailbox for the carrier to pick up.

Contact creditors first before a big move. You don’t want your statements and information going to a new resident.

When you can, go inside the bank. This will cut down on shoulder surfers, skimmers, and the absent minded leaving of a card at the machine.

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From Russia with Love. Good old Q would be very pleased with a Russian bank’s 007-worthy ATM technology. The bank is testing a new ATM that is fitted with a built-in lie detector, voice recognition software, electronic impression fingerprinting, and 3D scanning facial recognition.

Sberbank, whose majority holdings are Russian government, intends to install these new machines in the malls and all the bank branches across the country (though nothing has been scheduled).

With this ATM the bank can even take in credit card applications. Consumers that have no existing relationship with the bank can talk to the machine to submit their applications. The ATM asks questions like “Are you employed?” and “Do you have any outstanding loans?” While doing so, it uses a voice-analysis system to gauge the truthfulness of the responses. This particular in the ATM was developed by the Speech Technology Center, a company whose portfolio includes clients such as the Federal Security Service (the Russian domestic intelligence agency descended from the Soviet K.G.B.).

The prototype of the generation next machine is on display at Sberbank’s Branch of the Future laboratory in a common office building just above a Moscow subway station.

“We are not climbing into the client’s brain. We aren’t invading their personal lives. We are just trying to find out if they are telling the truth. I don’t see any reason to be alarmed,” said Mr. Orlovsky, a Sberbank executive.

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It is you verses the world. Keep this mentality. The fact is most people share information too freely. They do this for whatever reason, but even if you think you don’t you can still be at risk. Follow these rules and you can sleep a bit better at night.

1) Shut up. Think about your surroundings. It could be a conference, it could be a forum, or maybe its a contest form. Whatever the case may be, watch what you say! Take care not to talk about your SSN over cell phones, or send any account information over emails.

2) Don’t flaunt it. If you want to paint the bulls-eye on your back, talk about your investments, your assets, and your income. If you have a lot of money, its probably not the best idea to let everyone and their dog know it. Dress normal when overseas and limit your credit card usage or get a fixed amount cash card. If someone sees you as a cash cow, the credit card woes that follow could take months or even a year to sort out.

3) Shred everything. More specifically, cross-cut shred everything. If it doesn’t look like it should be tossed out as confetti at the Super Bowl, its not good enough. And when its really dangerously ultra-sensitive info, just burn it. It is actually completely legal to rummage through people’s curbside garbage. The Supreme Court ruled it so. Remember to include new credit card offers in the shredding process.

4) Encrypt and isolate. Almost everyone spends half their days connected to the internet. We practically live a separate digital version of our lives there.   So it makes sense to put your guards up. Disable whatever “cookies” you can.

To further protect yourself, keep your web browsing private, use an anonymous connection service, like Anonymizer Hushmail, Zero Knowledge Systems’ “Freedom”,  or Pretty Good Privacy, which all use a ultra-powerful 1024-bit encryption.

Also isolate your data on a external hard drive or a different computer. These would not be connected to the internet or to a computer that had internet access.

5) Get A Medical ID Card. Medical Identity theft is a spreading issue. Every time you go to a clinic, the doctor, or a hospital they demand your Social Security Number. They usually use this to file and locate your medical records. The alternative is to get a Medical photo ID from someone like ID Network that doesn’t require you to provide your SSN.

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People hop on social media sites like twitter all throughout the day. They consume and contribute and occasionally, they put something out into the Twittersphere that had no business being there. Often times it’s something silly: like live-tweeting a tv show, posting more than ten times a day, or bathroom habits. Occationally, and more often than you think, people post things which could get them fired, divorced/broken up with, and (in extreme cases) get their identity stolen.

People often forget that their services are integrated and that even though what they post on Facebook automatically posts to twitter, which is viewable to everyone as a default. This means that when you checked in at Pita Pit downtown, which is 45 minutes away from where you live, someone could have realized they had enough time to break into your house and physically steal from you or just rummage through your waste bins looking for personal identifiers.

Enjoying social media is a responsibility just as much as it is an entertainment. The next time you tell the world or just your FourSquare crew you are at Starbucks or that your party has been moved to your house at 5555 Mulberry Lane (and your profile already gives a ‘hometown’), consider the worst case consequences.

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I have done a number of posts on the growing threat of medical identity theft (Surgical Identity Theft & Yeah It’s Funny).  Well here is your follow up. Solutions have been found. I guess it was a grossly understated fact that this was a growing issue. The people over at PatientSecure decided to delve into some scifi tech and roll out the Biometric Patient Identification Management System. This scanner links the biometric palm vein pattern of the patient to their medical record in any HIS registration, EMPI or EMR system.

The healthcare technology company, HT Systems, has made PatientSecure available for medical institutions everywhere. No crystal balls here. The PatientSecure won’t foretell your future, but it does insure that your continue to get healthcare without having to worry about fraudsters doing the same under your identity. By taking a digital scan of your palm with a biometric reader that uses an infrared light to see the veins in your palm, the product will give many peace of mind.

For those of you that are thinking, why not just scan fingerprints, well, vein patterns are actually about 100 times more unique than a finger or thumb print.

Aside from this, diminishing the threat of ID theft that is, the device can  reducing errors caused by duplication of names in a healthcare database. This will also help with trauma patients who may be unable to answer the list of questions before being admitted or treated. Even if someone is not conscious, a palm can be read, instantly giving caregivers access to medical history.

Still, the best part: no SSN needed.

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Okay gamers, so in the wake of the PSN network hack, Sony is finally offering something to PlayStation Network and Qriocity account holders that makes sense.

The company promised to offer free identity theft protection, which would include a $1 million insurance policy. They promised this in a blog post a few weeks back. The good will gesture will probably not put a bunch of minds at ease, forgetting about the month-long repercussions of the PSN hack. Still, it’s much more appropriate and well-received than the lackluster apology package they were trying to quell the whole thing with.

“AllClear ID PLUS is a premium identity protection service that uses advanced technology to deliver alerts to help keep you safe. The service also provides identity theft insurance coverage and hands-on help from expert fraud investigators. Sony has arranged, at no charge to eligible PlayStationNetwork and Qriocity account holders, for twelve months of this service to be provided by Debix to those who choose to enroll.”

They say the service will offer monitoring of the internet to detect exposure of any AllClear ID Plus customer’s personal information. This couldn’t be any more counter-reactive since the private user data (including credit card numbers and account passwords) were stolen from The PSN’s systems.

It will remain to be seen whether this will gesture will be enough to repair Sony’s reputation with gamers.

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As many of my readers will know by now, the PlayStation Network has been rocked the past few weeks by a huge hack. Approximately 77 million users have been affected. The hack left the credit card information of the users open and at risk. More aptly they said “hackers now have access to customers’ vital information, including names, birthdates, physical and e-mail addresses, and PlayStation Network/Qriocity passwords, logins, handles and online IDs.”

So they shut the network down for a while. Thanks guys. Now In a letter to Sony, Sen. Richard Blumenthal called for the company to provide users of the networks with free financial data-security services, including two years of credit-reporting services.

Instead, the people of Sony are giving out apology packages. It is probably a identity protection system or a lump sum reimbursement promise or intricate financial recovery system right?

Nope.

It includes two free PS3 games from a choice of five Little Big Planet, Infamous, Wipeout HD/Fury, Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty and Dead Nation), and a month’s free membership to premium services. That is what trust in the PSN is worth these days. The obvious response has been mixed (Most of these games are old and have been long since beaten by the most loyal users).

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These days crooks are doing anything and everything to get your info, your money, and ultimately, your identity. Many people have opted for changing their lifestyles to crack down on the possibility of their becoming a victim. They carry cash, they order online under secure and trusted pretenses, and they ask questions as to why certain information is being requested. Some have even subscribed to ID protection services like LifeLock.

Some kinds of hacks and malware can still get at even the most cautious computer user. The program actually records your keystrokes, logging them on a third-party server. It is aptly named, a “keylogger“. To avoid this, you can use the on-screen keyboard provided by your OS or via internet download. If you are a PC, the steps are as follows:

->START -> Accessories->Accessibility->On-Screen Keyboard

Be sure to use this any time sensitive information needs to be entered into your machine ( i.e. banking, account numbers, social security numbers, PayPal, etc.).

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This is the world we live in. It sucks, but it happens. A story broken at Patch.com which brings the crime to a whole new level of disdain. Back on March 14^th, the police in Narragansett, RI got a report about a 45-year-old woman’s identity theft.

The punk actually robbed the woman and then sent a “Thank You” note after the deed was done.

According to the actual report, the woman’s Bank Of America account was curiously cancelled because of suspicious activity. $2,400 had been charged to the account fraudulently. The thief then arranged a bouquet of flowers and had then delivered to the woman’s residence. The flowers contained a card which read: “thnx for ur money.”

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“Basically what the app does is scans all the applications you have installed. It identifies what data the apps are requesting about your phone and sending. It then will “fix” the privacy issue by replacing that data inside the app with hard coded (bogus) data. So if an app is sending your phone number back to a server, Privacy Blocker will hard code your number as “55544433333″. You also have the option to override the default values and make it anything you want.

What it’s doing is pretty damn impressive to be honest. The app is very processor intensive when it’s “fixing” an app because it’s having to decompile, parse the source and then recompile the app on the phone. It’s especially processor intensive on large apps like games. The author is a custom ROM developer and a regular on droidforums.net. I’m not a member of droidforums.net and don’t know him. However I tracked this thread down when I was trying to validate the app and author for myself. All in all a pretty damn cool app. As a user who is sensitive to privacy this app has me extremely excited, damn near giddy.”

-Brook Jordan

The actual app can be found here.

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