Tag archive: Identity Theft

Taken into custody earlier today, 35-year-old Christopher Chaney of Jacksonville, Florida was arrested for hacking into the email account of Scarlett Johansson and distributing nude photos that the actress had taken of herself. The FBI was called into investigate this crime in September 2011. This arrest was related to an 11-month investigation that the FBI are calling ”Operation Hackerazzi”. Federal authorities also identified… Read More

More likely to be found in science fiction movies than real life, the NYU Medical Center is utilizing palm scanners for accessing patient information and medical records. Designed to reduce paperwork, speed up wait times and eliminate identify theft, a biometric identification system reads vein patterns of a patient with infrared light. The device is created by a company called PatientSecure and is approximately 100 times more unique than… Read More

Minnesota hacker Barry Ardolf was sentenced to an 18-year term in a federal prison this Tuesday. Ardolf had terrorized a neighboring family for two years through a carefully planned campaign involving a hijacked Wi-Fi network to harass, frame and embarrass the next-door neighbors in every facet of their lives. Ardolf's obsessive passive-aggression was apparently ignited in late 2008 when his neighbors, Matt and Bethany Kostolnik, filed a… Read More

Sony pledged after April's network breach to provide affected customers with one year's worth of free identity theft protection, a promise it is now making good on. An enrollment page has launched on the company's website which offers a simple a simple, one-step process to get the ball rolling. Simply enter the e-mail address tied to your Sony account into the two text boxes on the page and click submit. Then, sometime in the… Read More

Sony has now restored its PlayStation Network for most users around the world — but not in the company's home country, Japan. Due to lingering security concerns, the Japanese government has so far refused to allow Sony to turn the PSN back on, reports Dow Jones. Kazushige Nobutani, an official with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said that the Japanese government was still waiting for Sony to provide addition details about the… Read More

Hackers responsible for the massive security breach of Sony's PlayStation Network that left as much as 100 million users at risk of identity theft used an Amazon-run server to launch the attack, according to “a person with knowledge of the matter,” reports Bloomberg. Rather than hijack Amazon's server, the hackers allegedly used an alias to sign up for an account through Amazon's EC2 service, and waged their cyber… Read More

In an attempt to better fortify the security of online transactions, the Obama administration today revealed a new online security strategy that will provide individuals with a single, more reliable online identification. The White House hopes the plan will bolster Americans' confidence in doing business online, and provide a boost to the country's e-commerce economy. “By making online transactions more trustworthy and better… Read More

The Detroit Free Press is reporting that a Michigan resident could face five years in prison for reading his wife’s e-mail. 33 year old computer technician Leon Walker had been snooping through wife Clara Walker’s Gmail account after finding her password written in a book next to their shared laptop, and by doing so discovered that she had been having an affair with an ex-husband. In response, Clara filed for divorce and had her now ex-husband… Read More

A new study from Internet security giant Symantec shows cybercrime affects everyone everywhere, and US Internet users are particularly vulnerable. Almost three-quarters of US Internet users are cybercrime victims, and the US ranks third on the list of countries attacked the most. When looked at globally, the number is still eye-opening, affecting about two-thirds of Internet users. Cybercrime includes computer viruses, online credit card fraud,… Read More

Albert Gonzales has plead guilty to the theft of more than 170 million credit and debit card numbers from major U.S. retailers, in the last of three cases brought against him by federal prosecutors. Gonzales now faces up to 25 years in prison under the terms of previous plea agreements, and is scheduled to be sentences in March. A 28-year-old college drop-out—and one-time federal informant—Gonzales was the orchestrator of the largest identity… Read More

Scam, cons, rip-offs, stings, and outright theft, not to mention the fiendish swine that perpetrate them, have been with us since man first learned to speak – and likely before that. But in the veil of anonymity that is the Internet, conmen and swindlers have a powerful new ally that shields them like never before and lends a certain air of authority and credibility to their nasty plans. If you can honestly say you've never been duped,… Read More