Information Protection and Security

 Most of it begins with email...

FTC, BBB officials say that sites promising a piece of the stimulus action are misleading at best, and may charge big bucks to provide information you could get for free.

Social engineering is the attempt to manipulate or trick a person into providing information or access to a system's information, by bypassing network security. A social engineering compromise can provide information on background, credit rating, medical history, and driving record, most of which is confidential. Colleges and universities are sometimes targeted for social engineering compromises due to inexperience of large numbers of students serving as part-time employees.

Phishing is the new word in consumer online security fraud for convincing the consumer to provide confidential information through a website or email. The information may be used for fraud, identity theft, or other compromise. The university community has recently seen emails falsely labeled from a variety of financial institutions and others, including Rutgers attempting to convince the user to surrender private information.

Identity theft is a federal crime in which an imposter obtains information by false pretenses for personal gain.

A new report released today by Gartner sheds light on the financial impact of fraud on consumers: Last year, 7.5 percent of U.S. adults lost money to financial fraud -- most of them due to data breaches. Identity theft rose 20 percent from 2007 to 2008, according to the FTC and remains the No. 1 type of fraud affecting consumers.
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E-mails attempt to lure victims to dummy e-commerce sites in hopes of gleaning credit card numbers and passwords, the FBI says. By mimicking legitimate sites, they lull unsuspecting shoppers into giving up the information as they make what they think are legitimate purchases.
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E-mails attempt to lure victims to dummy e-commerce sites in hopes of gleaning credit card numbers and passwords, the FBI says. By mimicking legitimate sites, they lull unsuspecting shoppers into giving up the information as they make what they think are legitimate purchases.
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