Identity theft is child's play?
A blogger friend of mine sent me a link to this article: "How I Stole Someone's Identity"
It's kind of scary. A lot of people are fanatical about NOT posting information about themselves on the web. What I think this article really stresses, however, is to be careful how you set your security questions in all your online accounts and to remember that your identity is only as safe as your least secure online account or email address.
The other scary thing is, I wonder how many amateurs are reading this article and trying it for themselves. :-(
It's kind of scary. A lot of people are fanatical about NOT posting information about themselves on the web. What I think this article really stresses, however, is to be careful how you set your security questions in all your online accounts and to remember that your identity is only as safe as your least secure online account or email address.
The other scary thing is, I wonder how many amateurs are reading this article and trying it for themselves. :-(
posted by DenverSop @ 10:32 AM
1 Comments:
At 9/08/2008 8:47 PM,
Anonymous said…
The process of stealing that subject's identity was way too easy for comfort.
As far as passwords go, a colleague of mine has an interesting story to tell. When his father, a prolific composer, died, his password to his computer went to the grave with him, and a power failure shut down that computer. Never fear, though, symphonies, cantatas, masses, and thousands of smaller works were all recovered by reconstruction of his password, a process that took just fifteen minutes.
This expert then gave that family some advice. Have I taken this advice? Well, uh, hmmm. Anyway, passwords should be at least 16 characters long if possible. They should contain at least two numbers, two capital letters, and two symbols, all of these randomly placed. With this combined mess, software used by most crooks will have an extremely difficult time getting a password deciphered.
Of course, the frightening thing is how easily this guy got around what could have been a good password. It's definitely food for thought.
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