Entries from December 2006

You already know that identity theft can wreck your life.

But what if someone stole your identity and killed you off? Could you prove you were still alive?

October 29, 2006, Gary Gagnon died. Or did he?

“There is a death certificate out there with my name on it, and I am not dead,” Gagnon told WTOC Friday morning. “No. I am not dead.”

Gagnon found out about his death when he was pulled over by the police. He thought it was a joke. It wasn’t. Social security papers listed him as deceased, along with his bank, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and his insurance companies.

Someone got a hold of Gagnon’s identity, and reported him dead.

Gagnon believes an ex flame virtually did him in, and he’s having a heck of a time proving otherwise to countless databases and authorities. Meanwhile he’s gone deeply in debt and cannot get credit of any kind.

All it took was his social security number in the wrong hands.

Via WTOC TV.

Did you hear the one about the fire marshal who installed smoke detectors containing surveillance cameras to keep an eye on his wife’s activities after he moved out of the house?

You don’t have to be a fire fighting professional to gain access to these fake smoke detectors… they are available at any spy shop.

Kari Odermann said she believed the recording devices were hidden in smoke detectors installed throughout the house, including the bathroom. Frank Odermann denied that a camera had been placed in the bathroom, but he admitted during the course of the lawsuit that he had installed recording devices without Kari Odermann’s knowledge.

“We now know that Frank recorded from at least three cameras within the residence, one of which was located in the master bedroom,” O’Connor said in a court document filed recently.

Fire Marshal Frank has agreed to settle the lawsuit his wife brought against him for $50,000 just before it went to trial.

To combat these type of hidden surveillance cameras, use camera detection technology.

The cost to encrypt data on the average laptop is about $40, and is likely even less for you.

The value of the data on your laptop to a thief could be much more than you might imagine.

From the Privacy and Law Blog:

81% of U.S. businesses surveyed this year reported that, in the previous 12 months, at least one of their laptops or other portable electronic devices had been lost or stolen. U.S. Survey: Confidential Data at Risk, 5 Privacy & Security Law Report 1162 (2006). When a laptop is lost or stolen, unencrypted data on the computer can easily be accessed. Even if a user name and password are needed to sign on to the laptop, the hard drive can be removed in a few seconds and all data on the hard drive can be copied to another computer or to a storage device in minutes.

Despite the high risk sensitive data may be obtained from lost or stolen laptops, many businesses continue to allow employees to store such information on laptops and to take the laptops home, on business trips, and on vacations. Business managers should consider whether their current laptop security practices are sufficient. If a business’ trade secrets, attorney-client privileged information, customer lists, or financial information are obtained from a lost or stolen laptop, affected shareholders, employees, or business partners may argue that the business failed to take adequate steps to safeguard the data.

Failing to encrypt data on a mobile device “borders on negligence” according to Avivah Litan of the Gartner Group.

I agree.

Information is the gold of the new millennium. If you feel your business intelligence is not worth guarding, do you really have a valuable business?

Here’s the latest low-cost way for just about anyone to surreptitiously record video of you doing just about anything. This type of technology is the reason why tiny counter-surveillance tools will be as common as the cell phone in the decades to come.

Got someone you want to keep track of via video but you don’t want them to know you’re keeping track of them? With a mini spy cam like this one, you could tuck it just about anywhere and record everyone and everything that’s going on around you. Now you can have that James Bond feeling yourself. Offered by UK site Spymaster, the camera “weighs only 10 grams and will send quality color images to any video device, up to 100 metres/300ft away.”

Fight back with camera detection technology.

Via Home Security Gadgets and Reviews.

ComScore Networks is a huge marketing research firm that recruits silly people who care nothing for their privacy in order to take virtual photos of every Web page viewed by those 1 million participants.

Unfortunately, you may be one of those “participants” without your consent or knowledge.

“[The] software is sneaking onto users’ computers without the user agreeing to receive it,” says Harvard University researcher Ben Edelman, who documented at least ten unauthorized comScore downloads. Eric Howes, director of malware research at antivirus company Sunbelt Software, and his researchers separately observed hundreds of unauthorized comScore downloads in a three-month period this fall.

Apparently ComScore is the only online marketing research firm that partners with “third parties,” which often becomes a euphemism for “slime-ball spyware dealers.” It pays to stay out of the bad neighborhoods, kids.

The rest of the story is at Forbes.