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November 6,2007
October 24, 2007
Tuesday's Court Filings in the U.S. District in Boston which represented banks that have sued TJX and Cincinnati's Fifth Third Bancorp, who processed some of the credit card transactions for TJX. Plaintiffs for this court case include many major banks and financial institutions mainly located in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Alabama and Maryland. The filings in the case indicated losses due to a fraud-related nature, Visa cards alone estimated from $68 to $83 Million, involving 13 countries. Originally this breach was reported at nearly half this amount. Sensationally at least 94 Million credit card accounts from both Visa and MasterCard may have been exposed with this breach. Joseph Majka, vice president of investigations and fraud management of Visa USA, was quoted in court "You know, these are going to be sold off for a period of time in the future, so it's going to continue for some time out there". In June according to Majka, Visa had alerted card-issuing banks and other institutions about 65 million visa cards that may be compromised! He said "I'm not sure if this is, in fact, the final number". Sherry Lang, spokeswoman for TJX would not release any comments at this time. Security official, Neil Maguire at MasterCard believed that it had "roughly 29 Million" potentially exposed cards. This was stated in the September deposition. There have been 10 Individuals convicted in Florida this year for their roles in using the stolen TJX customer data information. Still no arrests regarding the involvement of the theft relating to the data breach.
October 17, 2007
October 15, 2007
October 10, 2007
October 4,2007
Jurors in Duluth, Minnesota,
agreed with the record companies, Sony BMG,Arista Records
LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Recors
Inc., and Warner Bros. Records Inc., that Jammie Thomas,
mother of 2, was fined 222,000$ for downloading music on the
Internet. According to testimony, Thomas had 1702 files on
her hard drive stored in her computer, from such artists as
Journey, Greenday and Aerosmith. She was uploading and
downloading through Kazaa with the user name "Tereastarr".
She denies that she is the user listed on Kazaa despite the
fact that her ip address and cable modem identified to be
belonging to her. U.S. District Judge Micheal Davis awarded
for the music industry. The settlement was for $9250.00 per
song, only 24 songs to the 6 record companies listed have
been fined, could have been a lot worse. Since 2003 record
companies have filed 26,000 law suits for piracy breaching.
RIAA {The Record Industry Association of America} was
extremely happy with the verdict and feels this is just the
beginning of the fines, and maybe this will stop people from
pirating the music and buy the c-d album versions,
increasing sales and revenue for the artists and
associations alike. September 3, 2007
August 22, 2007
June 15, 2007
Co-Founder Robert Maynard Jr, of LifeLock, a preventive service business for Identity Theft was forced to resign his position. After two bankruptcies, along with a failed business in which Maynard`s credit -repair company was closed down due to false advertising and deceptive business practices. He had been banned from the credit repair business for Life! Nevertheless Lifelock was started and was reported to be worth at least 14$ Million in venture capital and seed funding. Maynard Jr, still owns 10% of LifeLock, however is no longer an executive or officer of the company. There were accusations of fraud, suggesting that Maynard Jr, used his father's Identity with American Express to obtain a credit card. On another occasion it was also reported that Todd Davis CEO, LifeLock, was himself a victim of Identity Theft when an individual was able to get a $500 loan at a check-cashing company in Ft. Worth. Davis himself, as a marketing tool; displays his personal Social Security Number all over America suggesting that LifeLock can prevent not only him but others from being victimized through identity theft. As a result of this advertising method a person using Davis's social security number and his wife's cellular number obtained the loan. Mike Prusinski, spokesman for LifeLock, replied " It`s a loophole," followed by "We tell people that you can't stop every form of identity theft."
May 1, 2007
April
24, 2007
April 18, 2007
April 12, 2007
April 11, 2007
April 5, 2007
March 28, 2007
February 28, 2007
February 23, 2007
February 7, 2007
February
3, 2007
January
30, 2007
January
27, 2007
Approximately 5,000
financial aid students were alerted when their Names,
addresses, drivers license, and dates of birth were stolen
from 2 computers in the universities financial aid office. January 25, 2007
January
25, 2007
Former and current
clients to the tune of approximately 11,000 have had their
personal information including Names, addresses and SSN`s
stolen by an agency employee. The employee has since
victimized three of these clients through crimes of fraud
and identity theft.
January
19, 2007
Talvest Mutual Funds
clients estimated at nearly half a million {470,000} are in
jeopardy since CIBC claims to have lost a back-up computer
file containing names, addresses, signatures, dates of
birth, bank account numbers, beneficiary information and
SSN`s.
January
18, 2007 T.J Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, and A.J Wright stores in the Unites States and Puerto Rico, Winners and Home Sense stores in Canada, as well as T.K Maxx in the United Kingdom and Ireland were affected said parent TJX Companies. Bob Stores could have been involved. Law enforcement agencies globally are still investigating. The company is aware that hackers took the credit card and debit information of a “limited number” of customers.
Hackers had access to the
information during 2003 and Mid-May through December 2006.
TJX has hired IBM and General Dynamics when this was
discovered and security has since been improved. TJX
operates more than 2500 clothing stores in the U.S, U.K. and
Canada. In 2005 DSW Shoe Warehouse reported a loss of
customer credit card information. Ben Cammarata, founder and
acting CEO of TJX said “We were extremely disappointed when
we determined that we have suffered an unauthorized
intrusion into our computer system.”
January
14, 2007
Regretfully announced
that an employee of the NC Department of Revenue has stolen
a laptop and compromised about 30,000 tax-payers. Their
private information such as declared revenue, addresses,
names, SSN`s were obtained.
January
12, 2007
MoneyGram International
has estimated that 79,000 people have been involved in a
breach via the Internet. The clients personal information
detailing Names, telephone numbers, address and in a few
cases bank accounts were illegally accessed. Investigation
is still ongoing.
January
11, 2007
When 3 computers were
stolen 70,000 alumni, donors, staff, and the students of the
University were exposed. The names, addresses, SSN`s and
personal information were included in those units.
December
22, 2006
Tax forms were
accidentally mailed out with approximately 170,000 peoples
SSN`s printed on the outside of the envelopes. Those filing
that used Form 1 to file their taxes were affected in 2005.
September
2, 2006 V-Angels, a Delhi-based call center has British and American companies in a frenzy. V-Angels handles customer care issues for telecom businesses` located in the U.S. and U.K. They reported that employees of the call center had been stealing the information of clients they were contracted to aid. It was discovered that the employees now have access to customer confidential data that should not have been exposed.
September
14, 2006
A former employee of The
Venetian Casino Resort was found to be uploading personal
information and credit card details of clients staying at
the resort .14 New Hampshire residents are believed to be
targeted and The Venetian Casino Resort have not released
how many are potentially in question.
September
14, 2006
Personal information of at
least 3,000 subscribers of a magazine published by Nikon was
exposed on the Internet Website before the breach was
discovered. There was a 9 hour period when clients of Nikon
World magazine’s credit card details, addresses, and names
were accessible. Nikon is stating that only a few new
subscribers had access to the information.
September
8, 2006
Announced that the
personal information of almost 25,000 gun permit holders
were exploited on the Internet, due to a contractor
developing a Web based computer records program. The
information consisted of Names, addresses, and SSN`s.
September
7, 2006 2.6 Million past & current Circuit City cardholders had their accounts compromised. Chase Card Services mistakenly discarded 5 computer data tapes which lead to this 2.6 Million past & current Circuit City cardholders to have their accounts compromised.
September
7, 2006 A Large penalty was rendered against Xanga.com, and its principals, Marc Ginsburg and John Hiler, as well as the networking website operators. Childrens`s Online Privacy Protection Act {COPPA} announced the settlement after Xanga.com was found guilty of disclosing, collecting, and using personal information of minors under the age of 13 without parental consent. The judgment stated that Xanga.com was to pay $1 Million in fines.
August
31, 2006
Wells Fargo sent a
letter to its employees that a computer and data disk was
stolen from the car of a contractor hired to review Wells
Fargo`s health and welfare plan. The information taken
included SSN`s, addresses, prescription drugs, and other
personal identification. No news was released on the number
of people impacted.
August
30, 2006
Hackers accessed the
AT&T online web store, almost 19,000 customers` information
including personal data and credit card numbers were
penetrated . AT&T has been receiving a lot of flack
regarding data breaching and security privacy.
August 20, 2006
Reporting has been
focused on HSBC and its customers who have had their online
bank accounts exposed on the Web due to a defect in how
customers log-in to their accounts. HSBC invited the
expertise of the individuals whom could prove the flaw. The statement provided by
HSBC said it would be “interested to hear any expert
commentary on the security of its personal Internet banking
service.” “It is an extremely sophisticated attack that
would require a particular and time-consuming focus on one
individual victim. It is therefore not likely to be a
profitable way for criminals to behave.”
July 28,
2006
Media Company Time
Warner had to announce that due to a loss of data tapes
their Employees {estimated 600,000 peoples} current and past
were at risk as their personal information was located in
the tapes. Time Warner was shipping the tapes for storage to
an off-site facility managed by Iron Mountain Inc, when they
were lost. No customers of Time Warner were affected only
the employee’s personal secured information such as family
members, dependants, and beneficiaries were involved.
May 24,
2006 Red Cross donors in Missouri-Illinois blood services region of the American Red Cross to the tune of about 1 million were affected when a former employee stole information on the donors. The former employee, 20-year old Lonnetta Shanell Medcalf of St.Louis was employed in October 2005 and was fired March 2, 2006. She had access to 8,000 donor contacts and allegedly opened credit card accounts at several stores in the names of the donors. She will be going to trial. The Red Cross sent written letters to the 8,000 donors who may have been victimized just to alert them to put measures into place. The agency is also covering any cost or fees involved in this breach of their donors. They have changed database software this week and have more strict access limits on sensitive information of donors for employees. The Red Cross apologized for the incident and is working to improve security. Jim Williams, spokesman for the Red Cross, was quoted “We feel like victims here as well, but the ultimate victims here are our donors.”
May 3rd, 2006
Today it was announced that 243,000 customers of
Hotels.com may be at risk for Identity Theft when a
laptop was reported stolen from a vehicle in February 2006,
of an auditor under the employ of Ernst & Young Global Ltd.
The laptop contained most transactions from 2004, as well a
small portion from 2003& 2002, these payment transactions
had data consisting of names , address, credit card numbers
and land & cellular numbers of the clients who had placed
reservations through
Hotels.com {subsidiary of
Expedia.com} Both parties involved mailed letters to
potential victims apologizing and advising of the
data breach. Spokesman, Paul Kranhold,
Hotels.com made a statement stipulating " As a result of
our ongoing communication with law enforcement , we don't
have any indication that any credit cards have been used for
fraudulent activity," continued with "It appears that the
laptop was not the target of the break-in." Disclaimer
Accuracy of Information |
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