http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=3136
Bernanke Victimized by Identity Fraud Ring
August 25, 2009 by Dissent Filed under Breaches, U.S.
If ever there were living proof that identity theft can strike the mighty and powerful as well as hapless consumers, look no further than the nation’s chief banker: Ben Bernanke. The Federal Reserve Board chairman was one of hundreds of victims of an elaborate identity-fraud ring, headed by a convicted scam artist known as “Big Head,” that stole more than $2.1 million from unsuspecting consumers and at least 10 financial institutions around the country, according to recently filed court records reviewed by NEWSWEEK.
Read more in Newsweek
Small businesses have little leverage with the banks. Perhaps a Class Action to require the banks to extend the same level of security the give to individuals?
Banks Urge Businesses To Lock Down Online Banking
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 25, @08:14PM from the no-social-no-engineering dept.
tsu doh nimh writes
"Organized cyber-gangs in Eastern Europe are increasingly preying on small and mid-size companies in the US, setting off a multimillion-dollar online crime wave that has begun to worry the nation's largest financial institutions, The Washington Post's Security Fix blog reports: '"In the past six months, financial institutions, security companies, the media and law enforcement agencies are all reporting a significant increase in funds transfer fraud involving the exploitation of valid banking credentials belonging to small and medium sized businesses," reads a confidential alert issued by the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group created to share data about critical threats to the financial sector.' The banking group is urging that commercial bank customers 'carry out all online banking activity from a standalone, hardened, and locked-down computer from which e-mail and Web browsing is not possible.' The story includes interviews with several victim businesses, and explains that in each case, the fraudsters — thought to reside in Eastern Europe — are using "'money mules,' unwitting or willing accomplices in the US hired via Internet job boards. The blog has more stories and details about these crimes."
[From the first article:
According to the latest estimates by anti-virus maker Trend Micro, at least 253 million systems were infected with malware last year, the majority of which were the result of software lying in wait on hacked or malicious Web sites.
[From the second article:
"All of the people who have called us are very angry with their respective banks," Slack said. "Most have retained attorneys and I think they are afraid of publicity."
[From a related story at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082402272.html
In many cases, the advisory warned, the scammers infiltrate companies in a similar fashion: They send a targeted e-mail to the company's controller or treasurer, a message that contains either a virus-laden attachment or a link that -- when opened -- surreptitiously installs malicious software designed to steal passwords. Armed with those credentials, the crooks then initiate a series of wire transfers, usually in increments of less than $10,000 to avoid banks' anti-money-laundering reporting requirements.
… Businesses do not enjoy the same legal protections as consumers when banking online. Consumers typically have up to 60 days from the receipt of a monthly statement to dispute any unauthorized charges.
In contrast, companies that bank online are regulated under the Uniform Commercial Code, which holds that commercial banking customers have roughly two business days to spot and dispute unauthorized activity if they want to hold out any hope of recovering unauthorized transfers from their accounts.
Avivah Litan, a fraud analyst with Gartner Inc., said few commercial banks have invested in back-end technologies that can detect fraudulent or unusual transaction patterns for businesses.
"The banks spend a lot of money on protecting consumer customers because they owe money if the consumer loses money," Litan said. "But the banks don't spend the same resources on the corporate accounts because they don't have to refund the corporate losses."
Something wrong when violations of citizen privacy is punished by taking citizen tax moneys and ignoring the bad actors.
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=3134
Tentative settlement between govt and FL on sale of DMV records
August 25, 2009 by Dissent Filed under Breaches, Govt, U.S.
The Associated Press is reporting that Florida Governor Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet have agreed to pay the federal government $1.5 million to settle charges that the state violated motorists’ privacy by selling their personal information in motor vehicle records to businesses during the period June 1, 2000 to September 30, 2004. The legislature still has to approve the deal.
Tools & Techniques Privacy enabling tool?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/25/use-twitter-anonymously-this-will-not-end-well/
Use Twitter Anonymously. This Will Not End Well.
by MG Siegler on August 25, 2009
… a new service (which is really two new services) wants to make anonymous tweeting easy: Tweet From Above and Tweet From Below.
As their names imply, one of these services is meant to be used for good, while the other is meant for evil. Both allow you to use a third-party Twitter account to send out messages. While you might think that’s pointless, if you use it to @reply someone, they will obviously see the tweet, without knowing exactly who it is from.
This could be huge! (If they define neutrality the way geeks do)
FCC Declares Intention To Enforce Net Neutrality
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 25, @05:38PM from the play-nice-now dept.
Unequivocal writes
"The FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, told Congress today that the 'Federal Communications Commission plans to keep the Internet free of increased user fees based on heavy Web traffic and slow downloads. ...Genachowski... told The Hill that his agency will support "net neutrality" and go after anyone who violates its tenets. "One thing I would say so that there is no confusion out there is that this FCC will support net neutrality and will enforce any violation of net neutrality principles," Genachowski said when asked what he could do in his position to keep the Internet fair, free and open to all Americans. The statement by Genachowski comes as the commission remains locked in litigation with Comcast. The cable provider is appealing a court decision by challenging the FCC's authority to penalize the company for limiting Web traffic to its consumers.' It looks like the good guys are winning, unless the appeals court rules against the FCC."
(Related) ...and while we're on the subject... You can zoom the map to County and Zip Code level. Also contains a “Test your speed” widget.
http://www.speedmatters.org/content/2009report/
2009 Report on Internet Speeds in All 50 States
[Or just Colorado:
Business opportunity
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/the-craigslist-credo-bad-advice-for-newspapers
The Craigslist Credo: Bad Advice for Newspapers
By Gary Wolf Email Author August 25, 2009 3:30 pm
Here is a question I took away from my reporting on craigslist: Why, given the site’s notorious shortcomings, has nobody ever succeeded in taking business away from it?
The business we should have started in the DotCom era?
Betfair Growing 30%, Easing over the Pond, and Hiring 50 Valley Engineers
by Sarah Lacy on August 25, 2009
Most Web sites started in the late 1990s have either gone public, been acquired or are defunct. Wired has a rather harsh cover story on one of the most famous ones that isn’t, Craigslist. But there’s another one that could rile up even more attorneys generals and socially conservative figureheads: Betfair.
The London-based online gambling company is seldom written about or mentioned in the U.S. despite its gargantuan size. It employs 1,800 people around the world, generates more than $500 million in annual revenues and is profitable. Oh, and those revenues have grown nearly 30% in the last year. What world-wide recession?
… The company is well aware that legislation is making the rounds that could legalize online poker, and while it doesn’t want to be one of those lobbying for changes, be sure the company will be ready to throw a ton of money at the U.S. should the laws change.
Something for the Forensic toolkit
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/022148.html
August 25, 2009
NIST Guidelines recommends best practices for next generation of portable biometric acquisition devices
"A new publication that recommends best practices for the next generation of portable biometric acquisition devices—Mobile ID—has been published by Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Devices that gather, process and transmit an individual’s biometric data—fingerprints, facial and iris images—for identification are proliferating. Previous work on standards for these biometric devices has focused primarily on getting different stationary and desktop systems with hard-wired processing pathways to work together in an interoperable manner. But a new generation of small, portable and versatile biometric devices are raising new issues for interoperability."
Tools & Techniques For when you don't want to re-type a document.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-free-ocr-software-tools-to-convert-your-images-into-text-nb/
Top 5 Free OCR Software Tools To Convert Images Into Text
Aug. 25th, 2009 By Saikat Basu
… Ah, modern technology is wonderful; take a scanned image (or take a snap using a mobile camera/Digicam) and presto – OCR software extracts all the information from the image into easily editable text format.
Tools & Techniques For the multi-tasker
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-officetab-to-give-microsoft-office-applications-firefox-like-tabs/
Use OfficeTab To Give Microsoft Office Firefox-Like Tabs
Aug. 26th, 2009 By Karl L. Gechlik
I got a hot tip today on a piece of Chinese software that will make my life MUCH easier by adding Microsoft Office tabs to your installed MS applications. Have you heard of OfficeTab?
… Feel free to download OfficeTab from this link. BUT WAIT – the catch is that the site is NOT in English.
So the direct download link lives here which, if you scroll down to the bottom of the product page, is the only link there. So no need for Google Translations today. The actual application IS multilingual so there are no issues there.
Global Warming! Global Warming! Will this make Al Gore a monkey?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08/26/0117230/Global-Warming-To-Be-Put-On-Trial?from=rss
Global Warming To Be Put On Trial?
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday August 26, @08:23AM from the break-out-the-popcorn dept.
Mr_Blank writes to mention that the United States' largest business lobby is pushing for a public trial to examine the evidence of global warming and have a judge make a ruling on whether human beings are warming the planet to dangerous effect.
"The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court. The EPA is having none of it, calling a hearing a 'waste of time' and saying that a threatened lawsuit by the chamber would be 'frivolous.' [...] Environmentalists say the chamber's strategy is an attempt to sow political discord by challenging settled science — and note that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a courtroom battle over a Tennessee science teacher accused of teaching evolution illegally, the scientists won in the end."
A couple for my fellow teachers...
http://teachingcollegemath.com/?p=1254
Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age
http://teachingcollegemath.com/?p=1248
Mindmaps for Learning
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