Tag: Fraud

Opinion: Facebook numpties deserve to be defrauded!

Jon_small_new.jpgJonathan Weinberg writes…

Two days into the week and TWO Facebook security threats appear. The first in The Guardian on Monday warned secret code from FB’s inner-workings had been published on the internet prompting warnings of a security risk for users. Boring! Code, schmode, it’s far too technical.

But then this piece of wonder appeared today in The Times and it’s far more worrying, not least because everyone I know does it – and also because it involves a frog!

Freddi Staur is a cute green frog who has stolen email addresses and mobile phone numbers from users on the social network website – in an experiment to show how easily people give out their personal information to strangers…

Jonathan Weinberg Columns & Opinion, Facebook Applications, Internet, Web 2.0, Websites, Weirdness

Second-hand computers an ID fraudster's paradise

old_computer.gifNew research from Navigant Consulting suggests that slack handling of computers destined for the second-hand market could make them an identity-thief’s dream.

To demonstrate the potential dangers, the consultancy purchase three second-hand computers last week, and determined that one of them still contained sensitive personal information on the hard drive.

It’s not enough to simply wipe the hard drive using most basic operating system tools, as anyone with some tech knowledge can recover data from a disk that’s supposedly been wiped. Simply dumping the hard drives intact isn’t a good plan either – it’s akin to putting your paper-based financial documents in the waste bin without shredding them first.

One second-hand computer recovered from a community college still contained student and staff details, including names and addresses, budgets, payroll information, photos, and bank account details.

Andy Merrett Computers