12 May
Posted by Alexis Demaine as Identity Theft Advice
Vanessa here with AllClear ID. In Rhode Island, driver licenses aren’t just sitting in people’s pockets; they’re also stored in a computer system that’s used to combat identity theft.
A news report by the NBC station Channel 10 in Providence reports that the Department of Motor Vehicles in Rhode Island is using a facial recognition-based system in its license and ID card issuance programs in an effort to curb identity fraud.
The system can compare all the photos taken for state-issued ID cards and run them through the face-recognition software to check if an individual has more than one license under different names. It can also be used to help police track down suspects.
Sounds like a good crime-fighting tool, right? The American Civil Liberties Union isn’t so positive. It’s worr
On March 13th it was discovered that three University of Tampa data files were accidentally made accessible to the public putting students and faculty at risk.
The files included personal information, including Social Security numbers and photos of over 36,000 past and present students and faculty members.
One files contained 6,818 records of Fall 2011 students. The other two files contained information about nearly 29,540 faculty, staff, and students from January of 2000 through July 2011.
University of Tampa says there is no evidence of any fraud at this time. They have decided to pay for each potentially impacted individual to sign up, if they desire, for fraud alert services with a national identity protection service. T
By the AllClearID Team
Juan here from the AllClear ID investigation team. We’ve talked about how college students are at a high risk for identity theft, but for-profit schools seem to have an unusual amount of student loan fraud. People who have attended for-profit schools have noticed that they have student loans in default or in collections that supposedly went to their school. Kaplan University is a big perpetrator. In fact, it has been linked to a federal investigation, and many state Attorney General offices have been filing complaints or investigation requests for it.
The fraud cases don’t have a specific geographic center, though I have noticed more cases in California, Nevada, and Arizona. FAFSA student aid can be applied for and accepted online very easily. From the people I’ve spoken with the fraudulent loans seem to have all stemmed from online applications. FAFSA only requires one to create a four-digit PIN to access applications and accept offers from its site. Read t
A data breach at a payments processing firm has potentially compromised credit and debit card information from all of the major card brands, representatives from MasterCard and Visa said on Friday.
MasterCard said it has alerted payment card issuers “regarding certain MasterCard accounts that are potentially at risk.”
The company also said the breach is the subject of an ongoing forensic review by an independent data security organization.
Visa released a statement saying it too has provided card issuers with notifications about accounts that could be affected. The