Identity Theft

This post sort of follows on from my musings on Pownce, and the relative (in)utility of the current glut of social networking "services".

Received any Spock trust invitations lately?

Spock, a self-described “people search application that allows you to see what your friends and colleagues are doing on the web”, could potentially tell us something about the future of metasearch engines—those clunky crawlers that tried, and mostly failed, to bridge the gap between structured web directories like Dmoz, and the chaotic openness of Google’s PageRank™ technology. Although its interface design, a web-2.0-ified “Google Classic Home”, is so trendy that I’m afraid it’s already terribly dated.

On December 10 and 11, 2007, the Federal Trade Commission will host a public workshop, “Security in Numbers: SSNs and ID Theft,” to explore the uses of Social Security numbers in the private sector and the role of SSNs in identity theft.  This workshop continues the work of the President’s Identity Theft Task Force, and, in particular, its recommendation to explore ways to reduce unnecessary uses of the SSN. 

The workshop will provide a forum for public-sector, private-sector, and consumer representatives to discuss the various uses of SSNs by the private sector, the necessity of those uses, alternatives available, the challenges faced by the private sector in moving away from using SSNs, and how SSNs are obtained and used by identity thieves.  The workshop will be free and open to the public.

For more information, visit http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/ssn/index.shtml

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced that it is seeking comments on the use of Social Security Numbers (SSNs) in the private sector. This inquiry is in response to a recommendation in the President’s Identity Theft Task Force Strategic Plan that called for the development of a comprehensive record on the uses of the SSN in the private sector and evaluate the necessity of those uses.

Similar to love, identity theft can occur when you least expect it! When that hot guy or girl in the coffee shop starts flirting...it could be more than just your heart at stake!

This PSA was inspired by a winning submission for the 2007 Computer Security Awareness Video Contest, which was organized by the EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Computer and Network Security Task Force, in cooperation with ResearchChannel, and sponsored by the National Cyber Security Alliance.

View or download this year's winning videos. And don't forget to check out the 2006 winners.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a Report on Data Breaches that concludes while "breaches of sensitive information have occurred frequently and under widely varying circumstances, . . . the extent to which data breaches have resulted in identity theft is not well known." It further concludes that "should Congress choose to enact a federal notification requirement, use of a risk-based standard could avoid undue burden on organizations and unnecessary and counterproductive notifications of breaches that present little risk."

Some further higher education references in the report: