Resources to Help You Protect Yourself and Your Family from Scammers in Particular and Cybercriminals in General

With the Holidays in full swing, what can you do to protect yourself and your family from cybercriminals? Educate yourself! After all, the scammers spend a great deal of their time learning ways and technology to effectively separate you from your money. Why shouldn't you learn how to protect yourself?

Here are some online resources that may be of help:

• If you have ever received emails asking for money for orphans or victims of hurricanes; informing you that you've won a foreign lottery, telling you that you've been contacted because you’re known to be of good integrity and could be trusted to bank $30 million in your savings account, for a generous fee of 10% of the sum, then you need to get Michael Berry’s anti-scammers book, "Greetings in Jesus Name! The Scambaiter Letters". Go to his Amazon site: www.Amazon.co.uk/GreetingsinJesusName

• Another scam-fighter has decided to fight back with what he calls “Scamorama”, those who are '419' scambaiters. (The '419' scam is a form of advance fee fraud.)

“Scambaiter”, as he calls them, are people who write back to '419' scammers just to yank their chains, waste their time, or as the British say, wind them up. Learn all about scams, scammers, and scambaiters at Yes, It Is a Scam. Go to: www.Scamorama.com/

• File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, the nation's consumer protection agency. It collects complaints about companies, business practices, and identity theft under the FTC Act and other laws we enforce or administer. Your complaints can helps the FTC detect patterns of wrong-doing, and lead to investigations and prosecutions. 


The FTC enters all complaints it receives into Consumer Sentinel, a secure online database that is used by thousands of civil and criminal law enforcement authorities worldwide. It does not resolve individual consumer complaints. Go to:  www.FTCComplaintAssistant.gov/

• To protect yourself from medical, health care product and service scams or simply to learn what's taking place, get free consumer information from the US Federal Trade Commission. Go to:    www.FTC.gov/

• Educate yourself about current and ongoing Internet trends and schemes identified by the Internet Crime Complaint Center along with its description. Go to: www.IC3.gov/

Protect Yourself From Email Phishing

A great way to stay safe and secure is to make sure you know who's asking for your personal info before sharing it with anyone. Safe and reputable companies and sites will never ask for anything like that by email or any other method. If you receive an email from your bank or business asking you to send them your updated email, it's a scam. 

In fact, if you see any suspicious online behavior, do your part to report it. There are a number of anti-phishing and law enforcement groups that can help in such cases: 

   1. You can send an email to the FTC in the United States; 

   2. file a report with the Anti-Phishing Working Group on their website or by email; 

   3. submit a report to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, co-sponsored by the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.

Has anyone approached you in a public area and offered FREE services, groceries, or other items in exchange for your Medicare number?

JUST WALK AWAY!

Has someone called you for a "health survey," then asked you to provide your Medicare number over the phone?

SIMPLY HANG UP THE PHONE!

Have you found suspicious charges such as high-priced medical services or diagnostic tests on your medical bills? These could be fraudulent charges.

Call 1-800-MEDICARE AND REPORT IT!

Have doctors, health care providers, or suppliers told you that the equipment or service is free, it won't cost you anything, and they only need your Medicare number for their records?

JUST SAY NO THANKS!

Guard your Medicare and Social Security Numbers. Report Fraud to the Office of the Inspector General.
1-800-HHS-TIPS
(1-800-447-8477)
HHSTips@oig.hhs.gov
More Info >

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October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. What Are You Planning to Do to Stay Safe?

 

National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), conducted every October since 2004, is an annual awareness-raising effort that seeks to encourage everyone to protect their networks and our nation’s critical cyber infrastructure. 

 Cyber security requires vigilance 365 days per year. However, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), are the champions and founders of National Cyber Security Awareness Month and work together during the month of October to increase general cybersecurity awareness. 

What are you planning to do for National Cyber Security Awareness Month? 

The success of National Cyber Security Awareness Month rests on all of us doing what we can do to engage those around us to be safe and secure online. There are opportunities for everyone to get involved, no matter what their role is. 

To visit their website to learn what you can do for yourself, your children, their classroom, your business, just click on image below.

 

Are You Compliant?

If you're in business, you'd be wise to make information security an important part of it. Not only is it smart to be responsible and to protect against cyber-crime and ID theft, but properly managing your security and your computer systems can make you more productive and save valuable time and money.

It's everyone's responsibility to do what they can to fight identity theft and consumer fraud. But with current laws and regulations requiring the protection of customer information, businesses, and organizations now bear the biggest liability and the greatest monetary damage from identity theft and fraud.

If you collect, use, transmit, or store information about your customers or members, you must comply with these laws and regulations. And while not every law or regulation is applicable to every business, every business must meet minimum standards of information security, or face steep fines, penalties and even civil action against them in the event customer or employee information is leaked, lost or stolen.

Here are some questions you need to be asking:

• Does your business meet the security standards and requirements for virtually every federal, state, and industry law and regulation mandating the protection of customer and employee information?
  
  
• Does it have the potential for big penalties and fines for negligence and non-compliance? If so, what can you do to prevent it?
  
  
• Does it have comprehensive technical and administrative safeguards required to keep out hackers and identity thieves?
  
  
• Does the bank accounts, private information, and trade secrets of your business have maximum protection?
  
  
• Is your business increasing referrals and sales by increasing trust and loyalty with its customers?
  
  
• Does your business protect the personal information of its employees from would-be thieves?
  
  
• Does your business protect the information of its customers from identity theft and fraud?
  
  
• Is the image and customer goodwill of your business protected from security breaches?

How much at risk are you right now? Find out now. Click to "Free Business Scorecard" in the right column under Are You Compliant?

Some Ploys Used by Hackers and Scammers Especially During the Holidays

If you do your holiday shopping online, don’t let the coziness of your home fool you into thinking that everything is okay. Your life is still in danger. Hackers, crackers, spammers, and thieves all want the same thing – your money, your life – and more. They want your credit cards, bank accounts, social security numbers, club cards, names, addresses, medical records, and money. You name it, they want it.

So how do these villains get this information from your life? Lots of ways, but we will focus on three.

1. Malware. Viruses, spyware, Trojans, and all the other malicious tools out there come together to steal your information. Once a computer gets infected with these malware programs, they can steal any information you put into your computer. When you purchase that new blanket that looks like a backwards robe you have been dying for with your credit card, the attacker gets your card too. Most of the time, the user won’t even know they are infected. There are no symptoms. The last thing a virus that steals information wants is to be detected. The usual annoying pop-ups and other tell-tale signs of infection just aren’t there.

2. Fake/fraudulent Websites. Spam can go along in this category. Most times users visit these malicious sites due to spam. You get an email from your favorite department store advertising a deal that would be crazy to pass up. You click the link to go to the deal online and purchase the holy grail of all deals. Days pass, then weeks and you still haven’t gotten your order. Then you check your credit card to see if the order processed only to find that it has been maxed out by purchases you never made. You just got scammed. The same can happen to your bank accounts. Attackers set up very legitimate looking websites to trick you into thinking that you are on the real site. The layout, colors, and logos are all perfectly placed. Even the shopping cart looks real. But it is just a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

3. Non-patched Software. If you have heard of zero-day attacks, this is how they are so effective. They find holes in a program that has not been fixed yet and send all sorts of attacks out there to compromise as many machines as possible before the holes are patched. From the operating system, to software installed on the computer, they are all vulnerable if not properly updated. A lot has been in the news about Adobe and the exploits that have been found.

Launch Your Own "Nuclear Bomb" in Your Fight Against ID Theft

Find out from Liz Pulliam Weston, a personal finance columnist at MSN Money, how you can use a little know and underutilized secret weapon to launch "a nuclear bomb" of identity theft protection.

In a short, but info-packed video Liz will reveal one way you can freeze out identity thieves. Additionally, she will walk you through the import steps you need to take now to make sure you are not already a victim.

Now, to get started, just click on the link below to be taken to the MSN Money web site. It will open in a new window.

MSN Money Video