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Who would have thought that a big company like SuperValu would be susceptible to an e-mail scam and almost lose $10 million?! Well, it happened just a few months ago. In February they received e-mails supposedly from American Greetings Corp. and Frito-Lay indicating new bank accounts had been set up and payments should be wired to these new accounts.
Has anyone at SuperValu ever read about "phishing' or other email scams? I guess not...
Without making any inquiries with the two companies about the change in accounts, SuperValu just started sending payments to the accounts indicated in the e-mail. After a week, nine payments and $6.5 million later, it was discovered that the new account with American Greetings was fraudulent. Meanwhile, another $3.6 million was being sent to the fraudulent Frito-Lay account. Luckily, for SuperValu, the FBI was able to get right on it and recover the money before it disappeared.
“SuperValu was the target of attempted financial fraud,” company spokeswoman Haley Meyer wrote in a prepared statement. “We were able to quickly discover and report this to the FBI. As a result of the quick work of the Boise FBI Office and the U.S. Attorney, any funds lost are minimal.”
Fortunate as it may seem, it’s not quite time to break out the bubbly. American Greetings and Frito-Lay are demanding that they get paid – and rightly so. But the matter has been turned over to a judge to decide how the money is going to be allocated. It’s a shame that such fairy-tale endings don’t happen for most individuals who fall victim to e-mail scams. Here's the link the the whole tale from the Idaho Statesman.
Have you seen ads like this on the internet and wondered if they're for real?
Well, they're for real, but I don't advise signing up for this kind of deal. Here's why...
When you see any "free" offer, you should be very careful. Very few things are really free. You should ask yourself these kinds of questions:
Question:
An ipod costs $69 to $399 dollars. How are they paying for it if they're giving it to me for free?
Answer: You have to give them something of value.
Question:
What do I have that's valuable to them?
Answer: A lot.
- Your personal information - you have to give them your name, email, home address, gender, date of birth, and phone number. They use this information to send offers to your email account, to your home via direct mail, and to your phone with telemarketers.
- Your credit card - you also are required to sign up for one of the offers they present to you. All of these offers will involve giving them your credit card number. The offers are things like a Blockbuster online rental membership, DVD and music clubs, credit card offers, ringtones & horoscopes. They are paid a bounty from these companies when you sign up. Companies will pay anywhere from $10 - $70 per sign up.
- Your friends and family - in order to qualify for the free item you have to get 5 friends or family members to sign up AND request one of their offers.
See how the money is now adding up? The company will receive possibly $40 per sign up which equals $240 (6 users x $40).
Were you worried they weren't going to make any money on this deal? Don't worry, they will still make more.
In fact, Eliot Spitzer, the fireball New York Attorney General has recently filed suit against Gratis Internet, the parent company of sites Freeipods.com, FreeCDs.com, FreeDVDs.com, and FreeVideoGames.com (just an aside - "gratis" means "free" in Spanish).
The suit alleges that Gratis:
"... sold personal information obtained from millions of consumers under a strict promise of confidentiality.
From 2000 through 2004 Gratis made numerous explicit promises to the users of its web sites about protecting personal information. Among the promises the company made were:
'We will never give out, sell or lend your name or information to anyone';
'We will never lend, sell or give out for any reason your email address or personal information';
'We at [Gratis web site] respect your privacy and do not sell, rent or loan any personally identifiable information regarding our customers to any third party'; and
'Please note that we do not provide your E-mail address to our business partners.'
Even on its sign-up pages, Gratis promised consumers that it 'does not . . . sell/rent emails.'
However, the Attorney General’s investigation confirmed that Gratis’s owners, Peter Martin and Robert Jewell, repeatedly violated these promises during 2004 and 2005 by selling access to lists of millions of Gratis’s customers to three independent email marketers. The marketers then sent hundreds of millions of email solicitations to those users, on behalf of their own customers. In each of these deals, Gratis wrongfully shared between one and seven million confidential user records.
This is believed to be the largest deliberate breach of a privacy policy ever discovered by U.S. law enforcement.
Need another reason to avoid offers like these?
Here's a good one - if you jump through all their hoops and qualify for your free ipod, you'll have to send them an IRS W-9 form, since the iPod's value will have to be counted as revenue.
What information is provided on a W9? Oh, only your name, address, and Social Security Number. Is that the kind of information you want in the hands of these people? I don't think so.
Save your pennies and buy your own stinking iPod. That's what I recommend.
As cities work to scrape up every little bit of revenue, they're now going after library fines and overdue parking tickets.
How are they going after this money? With collection agencies.
Is it working? The Wall Street Journal says yes:
A handful of cities, including San Diego and Chicago, have worked with collection agencies since the late 1990s. But the trend is spreading rapidly around the country as strapped local governments look for creative ways to boost revenue without raising taxes and fees. Over the past few years, local governments in places including Seattle; Anchorage, Alaska; Austin, Texas; and Florida's Miami-Dade County have contracted with private agencies to collect late parking tickets and court fees. In New York City, Baltimore and Dallas, libraries use private collection firms to recover fines. New York state recently hired a collection company to pursue overdue E-ZPass toll bills.
While shaking down citizens over small debts might sound petty, hundreds of cities around the country are owed millions of dollars in unpaid fines. Since 1997, when Chicago began using a collection agency to track down unpaid parking fines, ticket revenue has more than doubled, rising from $68 million to $154 million last year. (The total number of parking tickets issued has dropped slightly over the period.) Since the Omaha, Neb., public-library system hired a private collection company in March, it has collected more than $40,000 in fines and recovered about $75,000 worth of overdue books and materials.
Yep, they're bringing in the big boys in order to collect on millions of dollars of small fines that many of you have ignored... until now. If you decide to ignore a collection agency, that $20 library fine could show up as a collection account on your credit report.
How will will single collection account for a stupid small overdue fine affect your credit score? It could lower it by as much as 100 points. Ouch! That's gonna hurt.
It appears that Equifax is the sole credit bureau that feels this may be a bit of overkill. Also from the Wall Street Journal:
Equifax Inc., the third credit bureau, makes an effort to weed out small charges like library books and parking violations from credit files. The company says it is not fair to include them in credit reports since municipal fines are reported unevenly around the country.
Well, that won't help too much because you never know which bureau a potential creditor will use to look at your credit.
So what should you do?
- Pay your fines, no matter how small
Your city could start using a collection agency at any time. Your fines - even years old - could then be sent to collections. - Call and negotiate
If you do get a collection notice, call and negotiate with the agency. Make sure they agree that if you pay the fine they will remove the collection from your credit file. - Review your credit
Make sure you review your credit report from all three bureaus months before you apply for a car or home loan. You want to have time to resolve issues like this before applying.
It's our favorite time of year here in the U.S. - TAX TIME!
Along with tax season comes the predictable onslaught of IRS scam emails. No, these don't come from the IRS. They are from the same old bad guys trying to separate you from your money.
Here's an email that just arrived today:
They're only offering a refund of $63.80??? Those crooks!
I would have thought a higher amount, like $630.80 would better peak our interest in recovering the money. Oh well, I'm sure they do extensive testing to determine the cash amount that draws the most clicks...
Once you click the link you'll see a beautiful reproduction of the IRS site along with a form asking for your:
- SSN
- Credit card number
- Credit card expiration date
- Credit card CVV security code from the back of the card
- Credit card ATM PIN
This looks like a clear credit card fraud attempt. With this information they can purchase items over the internet or withdraw cash from your account.
What should you do if you receive an email like this?
The IRS, unfortunately, doesn't currently have an easy way to report these emails. The best you can do right now is call 800-366-4484 to report it, but the number was busy each time I tried to call. Not good.
The IRS has placed this kind of phishing scam in their "Dirty Dozen" tax scams for 2006. Here's what they had to say:
Phishing. Phishing is a technique used by identity thieves to acquire personal financial data in order to gain access to the financial accounts of unsuspecting consumers, run up charges on their credit cards or apply for new loans in their names. These Internet-based criminals pose as representatives of a financial institution and send out fictitious e-mail correspondence in an attempt to trick consumers into disclosing private information.
Sometimes scammers pose as the IRS itself. In recent months, some taxpayers have received e-mails that appear to come from the IRS. A typical e-mail notifies a taxpayer of an outstanding refund and urges the taxpayer to click on a hyperlink and visit an official-looking Web site. The Web site then solicits a social security and credit card number.
In a variation of this scheme, criminals have used e-mail to announce to unsuspecting taxpayers they are “under audit” and could make things right by divulging selected private financial information. Taxpayers should take note:
The IRS does not use e-mail to initiate contact with taxpayers about issues related to their accounts. If a taxpayer has any doubt whether a contact from the IRS is authentic, the taxpayer should call 1-800-829-1040 to confirm it."
Since the IRS is so lame in trying to shut down sites, I thought I'd do something.
It appears the servers are based in Korea and I've emailed the ISPs that manage the IP involved, but I'm not holding my breath.
The last word... enjoy tax season, just don't try to claim an early refund from scammers.
I've seen a number of stories, most recently in yesterday's Times Online, that describe surprise and fear over what Google knows about its users.
This is silly, in my opinion.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page - Founders of Google
The Times Online headline is "Big Google is Watching You" and the article states:
"Google has an extraordinary amount of information about its users. It logs all the searches made on it and stores this information indefinitely. Because every computer has a unique IP (internet protocol) address, every visit to every website can be traced back to the computer making it — a fact which is well known in geek circles but remarkably under-publicised outside them."
and
"Users of Google’s Gmail service, who are already having their e-mails scanned to place targeted ads, have given the company their identity, a full record of all their searches and copies of all their e-mails, stored indefinitely. Users of Google’s Toolbar are inadvertently giving the company a list of not just all their searches but also of every single website they visit. And, as the lawsuit makes clear, all this information is potentially vulnerable to subpoena."
Maybe I'm one of those geeks that realizes that this happens on virtually EVERY web site you visit.
What's a Log File and What Does it Look Like?
When you visit a web site, most will keep a log of what information is requested along with the IP address of who requested it. What does the log file look like? Here's a real sample from the Fight Identity Theft site:
192.168.1.100 - - [29/Sep/2005:09:56:28 -0400] "GET /how-to-report-scams.html HTTP/1.1" 200 22806 " http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=how+to+report+a+scam" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"
So here's what this glob of code shows...
- First is the person's IP address (I changed it to protect the visitor's privacy)
- The date and time of the request
- What was requested (in this case, our "How to Report Scams" page)
- The referring web site (in this case, the person did a Yahoo search for "how to report a scam")
- The type of browser being used (Microsoft Internet Explorer 6)
- And the operating system (Windows NT 5.0 = Windows 2000)
This is how web sites work. They collect data and log the data for later analysis (e.g. "How many people visit my homepage?" "What did a person search for to find my web site?", etc.)
What Information Are You Sharing and Can You Hide It?
So what information are you sharing as you browse the web? ShowIpAddress.com is one of many sites that will show you what a log file can capture about you. The only personally identifiable piece of information is your IP address. That number is assigned to you by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). One way or another that number can be traced back to you as an individual, even if you are surfing during work at a Fortune 500 company or other large organization.
Does that make you scared, angry, or just plain nervous? Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn't. In either case, you can browse anonymously if you choose.
There are many products and services that allow you to web surf anonymously. Most will route your requests through their servers, thus hiding your IP address. Anonymizer.com has been around for a long time and they provide a service where you can use their site to browse anonymously for free.
But, back to Google...
Are they evil because they log this information? Powerful, yes, because so many people use their services, but I wouldn't say evil.
When I choose to sign up for a service like Gmail, I know that they will be reading my email content so they can serve up related ads. That's how they make money. That's how I can have a 2.5 gigs of free storage for my messages. Yahoo has a similar policy. Same with MSN Hotmail.
When I choose to use Google search I have to know that they log what I'm searching for and analyze it to spot user patterns. The same thing happens at Yahoo and MSN.
I have to realize that sites, like Google, store this information and will use it to improve their product and to make money. I also have to realize that it could be handed over to the government.
This is all part of the trade-off we make every day between security/privacy and convenience. If you are extremely concerned with privacy you probably shouldn't be using the internet and you certainly shouldn't sign up for a service that clearly states it will read and store your email messages. If you're concerned that your search history or email messages could be revealed at a later date you should consider using a product that protects your anonymity, like Anonymizer.
Here's the bottom line...
When information is aggregated, abuses, information leaks, subpoenas, and profiteering can occur. When it does occur it should be exposed and fought. I just don't see where Google has done anything evil or different than any other web site on the internet.
Feel differently? Then please append a comment to this story.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission reported earlier today that they received more than 255,000 complaints regarding identity theft in 2005. That's up from 247,000 reported in 2004. Total fraud reports topped 686,000.
So what trends show up in the report? Well, here are a few:
- Identity theft again was the top vote-getter with 37% of all fraud complaints. No surprise there.
- More fraud involving wire transfers. The percentage of Internet-related fraud complaints with “wire transfer” as the reported payment method more than tripled between calendar years 2003 and 2005, increasing by 12 percentage points. Be careful before wiring money to anyone! Most lottery scams and Nigerian email scams usually involve wiring money to people. Don't do it!
- Geographic areas with the highest per-capita problems with identity theft? Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ; Las Vegas-Paradise, NV; and Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA.
- Number of complaints where no money was lost went up from 24% in 2003 to 32% in 2005. Some of you are getting smarter!
- Email is increasing as a means to scam you. It is the #1 method to reach victims and has increased from 26% to 35% in the past 2 years.
The complete report can be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat format from the FTC web site.
See the actual scammy W-9095 tax form.
This scam has been around for a while, but always seems to resurface, especially around tax time.
The scam involves fake IRS forms, usually titled W-9095 or W-8888. It begins with a letter in the mail requesting that you fill out the fake form and then fax it back to the given fax number. If you don’t fill out the form and return it in seven days, they say you’ll lose an important tax exemption.
The form itself doesn’t miss any of the juicy tidbits of your financial life. It asks for:
- Name
- Address
- SSN
- Mothers Maiden Name
- Date of Birth
- Bank Address, Account Number, and PIN
They don’t miss anything, do they?
Be smart and keep your eyes open for this scam as you scurry to finalize your taxes this year.
You're on this web site trying to learn how to protect your identity. One trick we suggest is to say, "put me on your do not call list" when telemarketers call during dinner. Federal law requires telemarketers to keep track of people who don't want to be called. Now, scammers and thieves are taking advantage of what you've learned.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is warning consumers that identity thieves, masquerading as federal employees, are calling people and asking them to confirm that they've requested to be put on a "do not call list." In order to make sure they have the "right person", they are asking the victims to provide social security, bank account, or credit card numbers.
Here's where common sense comes into play. The FTC does not have the time or the money to call every person in the United States asking if they want to be put on a "do not call list." Plus, the telemarketing companies would probably sue the government if they tried it.
The bottom line for avoiding scams: If it sounds fishy, it probably is fishy. Just hang up.
Getting scammed is a bummer. You beat yourself up wondering why you weren't smart enough to see through their tricks. Getting scammed twice has got to feel a lot worse.
Some telemarketing scam artists apparently have created a list of previous fraud victims and are trying to scam them again. Their pitch is that they can recover the money that was stolen in the first fraud, if they sign up for the Teleguard service and pay a fee. They try to create an air of authenticy by stating that they're working with the Better Business Bureau or a state Attorney General's office.
So how can you tell if the people who call you are legit or not?
USE YOUR BRAIN!
Listen how Robert Kenesky, 81, of Sanborn, NY used his brain to fight fraud. The scammers tried to prove they were legitmate by putting him on hold for a few moments and then connecting him with someone who said they were from the New York Attorney General's office. His response?
“This guy rattled on for a while, and then I said, ‘Now wait a minute. If this is the attorney general’s office, I know it takes longer than 1 minute to get through to you people.”
Then he hung up the phone. Very smart.
The U.S. government seems to be finally paying attention to identity theft. John Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General and Senator Diane Feinstein of California held a press conference pushing for Congress to pass legislation that would increase the punishment for identity theft offenders. The pending legislation would increase prison time for convicted offenders and make it a crime to be in possession of someone else's ID info with the intent to commit a felony.
How are thieves punished today? The median time served in prison for people convicted of identity theft in 2001 was:
- 13 months for cases investigated by the Secret Service
- 7 months for cases handled by the FBI.
- About a third of those convicted were not sent to prison.
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