What is card skimming? ‘Card skimming’ is the illegal copying of information from the magnetic strip of a credit or ATM card. It is a more direct version of a phishing scam. The scammers try to steal your details so they can access your accounts. Once scammers have skimmed your card, they can create a…

Mailings for unsolicited offers of pre-approved credit cards present a significant risk to identity theft if they fall into the wrong hands. Applications are completed under the name of the person identified and the address is changed so that the bills are sent to a different address. The victim, in this case, may not find…

Everyone has turned on the local news to see some local company that improperly discarded client’s files in the dumpster.  Most of the time it is an employee who did not receive the proper training.  Another poor business practice is recycling without destroying.  We see it on a daily basis.  Loading docks all over the…

The data recoverability or the overall security of the hard drive destruction process is a factor that has become more and more important as the number of obsolete or replaced hard drives has grown.  What is sufficient to ensure that the data contained on a hard drive is unrecoverable? It is useful to consider the…

The IRS reports that 641,052 taxpayers were the victim of identity theft in calendar year 2011.  The significant increase in identity theft of the past few years has overwhelmed the IRS.  TIGTA found that identity theft cases were not worked timely and it can take more than a year to resolve the problem for the…