Prime Time Crime
e-mail Scams & Identity theft
Man charged with possession of Ontario holograph
OTTAWA - A 56-year-old Ottawa man is facing counterfeit-related charges after sheets with Ontario's holographic design were found at Ottawa's airport. The holographs are used on Ontario driver's licences and health cards and can be used to create fake ID cards. Tadeusz Lakomy has been charged with possessing the tools to forge credit cards and create counterfeit identification cards. (CP) PREVIOUS: Province improves licence security
The e-mail message addressed to a Booz Allen Hamilton executive was mundane - a shopping list sent over by the Pentagon of weaponry India wanted to buy. But the missive turned out to be a brilliant fake. Lurking beneath the description of aircraft, engines, and radar equipment was an insidious piece of computer code known as "Poison Ivy" designed to suck sensitive data out of the $4 billion consulting firm's computer network. (Business Week)
1M Canadians victims of mass-marketing fraudsters
A stunning 15 million Canadians were repeatedly targeted by mass-marketing fraudsters in the past year and one million were victims, a major study commissioned by Competition Bureau Canada has found. (Ottawa Citizen)
MONTREAL - Now the really hard part begins for the Sûreté du Québec and crown prosecutors. They'll try to nail down some landmark criminal convictions and stiff penalties after smashing what they described as the largest and most damaging computer-hacking network ever uncovered in Canada. (Montreal Gazette) MORE: Ring invaded computers in 100 countries
VANCOUVER - Police seized computers and electronic storage equipment after executing a search warrant Thursday afternoon at a Port Coquitlam home rented by Joshua Trousdale, the man behind an elaborate Internet operation that claims to have taken orders for 12,000 iPhones. (Vancouver Sun) PREVIOUS: Buying an unlocked iPhone from iPhoneNow.ca
Monster.com took a portion of its Web site offline Monday as researchers reported that it had been compromised by an IFrame attack and was being used to infect visitors with a multi-exploit attack kit. According to Internet records, the Russian Business Network (RBN) hacker network may be involved. (Computerworld) PREVIOUS: Hunt for Russia's web criminals
Hackers assault epilepsy patients
Internet griefers descended on an Epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users. The nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation, which runs the forum, briefly closed the site to purge the offending messages and to boost security. (Wired)
Cyber attack hits bank websites
VANCOUVER - Dubbed the "Silentbanker," the virus is a Trojan horse computer users may unknowingly download by simply browsing the Internet. The first sign it's at work may be a bank notification warning their client has been a victim of fraud. (Vancouver Sun)
Lost data discs 'endanger protected witnesses'
LONDON - Hundreds of people in police witness protection programmes have been put at risk by the loss of millions of child benefit records. The missing data discs are understood to contain both the real names and the new identities of up to 350 people who have had their identities changed after giving evidence against major criminals. (Telegraph UK) PREVIOUS: Data on 25M lost in post
Social networking site Facebook has announced it will increase its use of personal information to target advertising to individual members, despite privacy concerns among its 39 million users. (Telegraph UK) RELATED: Companies' online reputations scrubbed clean
KELOWNA - When Todd Merenick of Kelowna first received an e-mail from two medical doctors in Nigeria offering him $1.8 million to help transfer $9 million out of their country, he immediately saw red flags and heard alarm bells. (Vancouver Province)
NEW YORK - A Russian con artist posing as presidential pal Charles J. Wyly Jr. ordered a new checkbook from the Texas billionaire's bank account and wrote a $7 million check for a pile of gold, US authorities said Thursday. (AP) MORE: Government bust identity theft right that targeted Forbes 400 richest Identity thieves target President of credit company
ROMANIA - Albena Spasova works for EBay Inc. No one, it turns out, does Internet auction fraud like the Romanians. (LA Times) RELATED: Cybercrime trends of 2007
SEATTLE - On just two groups of servers, in just a few months, federal investigators found more than 200 million spam messages linked to 27-year-old Robert Alan Soloway. (Seattle PI) PREVIOUS: Man's arrest could reduce spam Vancouver man who 'owns the Internet'
WASHINGTON - AOL believes a renegade Internet spammer buried gold and platinum on his parents' property in Massachusetts and wants to bring in bulldozers to search for the treasure and satisfy a $12.8 million judgment it won in federal court. (CBS/AP) PREVIOUS: Return of the 'Kosher Nazi'
Hackers declare war on Scientologists
On one side is the Church of Scientology, freshly boosted by a $10m donation from the actor Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson. On the other is what the self-styled church has dismissed as a "pathetic" collection of "computer geeks": a maverick band of hackers who have launched an online war against the organization. (Guardian UK) PREVIOUS: L. Ron Hubbard A. E. van Vogt Non-Aristotelian logic
The Scientology cult, of which Hollywood actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta are the most familiar public followers, has threatened transparency group Wikileaks, demanding that it remove "unpublished, copyrighted" Scientology documents. The Scientology documents, which were released by Wikileaks last month, are restricted from the public and low ranking cult members. (Wikileaks) MORE: Operating Thetan documents Office of Special Affairs
SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. yanked paid advertisements linked to some 20 search terms that online criminals had hijacked to steal banking and other personal information from Web surfers looking for the Better Business Bureau and other sites. (AP) MORE: Hackers hijack Google Adwords
They have infected perhaps 100 million computers with viruses, turning the PCs around the world into an army of willing criminal assistants known as “bots.” (MSNBC) PREVIOUS: Virus gang warfare spills onto the Net Is your computer a criminal?
Watchdog group releases software report
A corporate-backed watchdog group that monitors software for deceptive and abusive practices on Wednesday named a widely used file-sharing program and three other applications as violators of its guidelines. (CTV) REPORT: Stop Bad Ware
Voice mail hacking warning issued by Telus
A sudden surge in voice mail hacking is prompting Telus to warn customers that it can be as simple as dialing 1-2-3-4 for a hacker to hijack a business voice mailbox, just by guessing a simple password. (Vancouver Sun)
Police bust telemarketing fraud ring
MONTREAL - Police have dismantled an international telemarketing fraud ring that allegedly targeted thousands of seniors, mostly in the US but also in Canada. (CTV)
www.reddotcampaign.ca spells out a simple two-step process to block junk mail
The Bi-national Working Group on Cross-Border Mass Marketing Fraud in its report on Identity Theft identifies the following means of theft:
Physical Methods
Mail Theft
Theft from Residences and Personal Spaces
Electronic Methods
Misuse Of Personal Data in Business Transactions
Phishing, Spoofing and Pretexting
Theft from Company or Government Databases
The report also deals with the scope of Identity Theft:
In the United States, identity theft-related complaints reported to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) increased from 86,212 in 2001, to 161,836 in 2002, to 214,905 in 2003 -- an increase of nearly 250 percent. In the first two quarters of 2004, the FTC received an additional 130,217 identity theft complaints. This means that the average number of complaints that the FTC received per week has consistently increased: more than 1600 per week in 2001, more than 3100 per week in 2002, more than 4100 per week in 2003 and more than 5000 per week in the first half of 2004.
In Canada, the PhoneBusters National Call Centre received 7629 identity theft complaints in 2002 from Canadians reporting total losses of more than CAN$8.5 million. In 2003, PhoneBusters received 14,526 identity theft-related complaints from Canadians, reflecting reported losses of more than CAN$21.8 million.
Statistics gathered by PhoneBusters in 2003 and the first half of 2004 indicate the largest number of complaints surrounding identity theft relate to credit cards or false application for a credit card (32 percent) and cell phones or false application for a cell phone (10-12 percent). Similarly, the FTC reports that in 2003, 33 percent of identity theft victims reported that their identifying information was used for credit card fraud and 16 percent of victims reported that their identifying information was used for fraud in ordering phone service. Cell phones accounted for 10.4 percent of this total while landline phones accounted for 5.6 percent. Due to challenges categorizing the statistical information, law enforcement in both countries has reason to believe that actual instances, particularly of credit card "takeover", may actually be much higher.
More Information on Identity Theft
MONTREAL - RCMP announced the arrest of eight people and charged five with fraud in the most high-tech debit card fraud ring in Canada. RCMP Inspector Stéphane Bonin said fraudsters looked out for vulnerable pin pads that weren't bolted to counters, and then unhooked their wires, and replaced them with phony ones. (Montreal Gazette)
Ottawa missed chance to deport criminal
Data theft worse than first reported
'Good guys' show how easy it is to steal ID
Credit card leaks continue at furious pace
New scam uses counterfeit checks
Scam artists target online checks
BC a global centre for fake ID
Tens of thousands of identities stolen
Thieves after more than your credit card
Trio linked to debit-card scams
How credit-card data went out wireless door
Thousands affected by BC debit card scam
Shocked retailers tighten up on debit card use
Report: ChoicePoint previous identity theft
Bank of America Security Lapse
Keep thieves out of your bank account
California sets fines for spyware
The makers of computer programs that secretly spy on what people do with their home PCs could face hefty fines in California. From 1 January, a new law is being introduced to protect computer users from software known as spyware. (BBC)
If you have not installed Spybot or AdAware think about doing so. It’s free. – Chris
Digital crooks hone craft of 'phishing'
Anti-spam plan overwhelms sites
Spoofing' a growing fraud problem
Mounties charge teenage virus suspect
International police nab virus suspects
'Sasser' teen released other worms
Teen 'confesses' to Sasser worm
Man sentenced to 14 years for ID theft
150 cyber criminals caught in web snare
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