Identity Theft Protection Blog with Robert Siciliano

Robert Siciliano Identity Theft Expert

Skimming data off of debit and credit cards has been happening at ATMs, gas pumps and electronic funds transfer point of sale terminals for quite some time.
When criminals plant skimming devices, they have to physically attach a skimming device that fits over the face of the ATM’s card slot. Then [...]

Robert Siciliano Identity Theft Expert
Naiveté: A lack of sophistication or worldliness. That sums up a lot of people I know. “There’s a sucker born every minute” is a phrase often credited to P.T. Barnum (1810 – 1891), an American showman. It is generally taken to mean that there are (and always will be) a lot [...]

When I was 17 my friend “Baldo” as he was known by all was the Fake ID Master. He also fixed TV’s and still does today. But he didn’t actually create “fake ID’s”, he altered real ones. The technology he used back then is still used today. It’s called Crayola Crayons. He would take a [...]

New Hampshire, USA. “Live Free or Die,” baby. The official state motto emblazoned on every NH license plate has always intrigued. The thought of someone from NH might bring to mind revolutionaries or America militia sympathizers. New Hampshire has come a long way since its motto was created in 1945 and is not much different [...]

It made a little buzz in the States, but over in Dubai, as more details become available about the assassination of senior Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, it is becoming apparent to some (depending on which side of the wall you live on) that the assassins stole the identities of several Israelis carrying [...]

A webcam is certainly one way the bad guy can get intelligence about you. They can use it to spy on you. They can listen into everything you say all day. They know when you are home or not, whether or not you have an alarm, they watch you. But in my opinion, the real [...]

Robert Siciliano Identity Theft Expert
Dan Yost Chief Technology Officer of MyLaptopGPS brought attention to the Ponemon Institute, with sponsorship from PGP, has released their “Fifth Annual U.S. Cost of Data Breach Study.” As usual, the report is a treasure trove of great data (just like most people’s laptops are).
The average cost per breached data record [...]

Robert Siciliano Identity Theft Expert
Chip and PIN is the name of a government-backed initiative in the United Kingdom to implement the EMV standard for secure payments.
There have been rumblings from Europe over the past year about American based credit cards that solely rely on the magnetic strip not being accepted in the future due [...]

Robert Siciliano Identity Theft Expert
The sheer volume of potential targets coupled with the vast amounts of money to be made has captured the attention of the global criminal hacking community.
Enterprise networks are becoming hardened and they are still vulnerable. Some are being penetrated directly while others are accessed through 3rd parities such as their clients [...]

Robert Siciliano Identity Theft Expert
Financial institutions have the most to lose and the most to gain by improving security education of their clients and employees.
A while back I appeared on a local TV show talking about phishing. Amazingly, still, not everyone knows what phishing is. A good friend saw the show and was shocked [...]