ONTARIO STOLEN COMPUTER LEADS TO IDENTITY THEFT http://www.communitypress-online.com/template.php?id=27836&RECORD_KEY(News)=id&id(News)=27836


05.17.06
The OPP in Campbellford recently presented information on fraud schemes that are taking place across the province and in our own communities. The focus was on credit card and identity theft, the two fastest fraud crimes in Canada and America. The schemes are surprisingly sophisticated in many cases, but you can protect yourself by knowing about these scams and by following the advice given at the presentation.
Anyone can become a potential target for fraud. Age, income, or geographic location are irrelevant to scammers; they are interested only in your money. The criminals involved now use professional marketing methods and materials, using well crafted and researched telephone scripts, and they convincingly impersonate legitimate businesses, charities and causes through mail and e-mail. Some pose as landlords, employers, even police to access your personal information. According to the OPP, these professional criminals "know what they’re doing and unfortunately for victims, they do it well."
Identity theft has become a lucrative business for criminals. They steal your personal information, perhaps through a credit card receipt or by going through your mail or even garbage. This information can then be sold to organized gangs who use your information to create phony IDs for other criminals, turning out credit cards in your name, social insurance numbers, driver’s licences, and other pieces of identification that can be tied into your bank account or used to access your credit through accounts you may not even know about. The cards can be used at ATMs or rack up phone charges under your name.According to Detective Sergeant Dave Lollar, clandestine credit card labs are able to create cards that are almost indistinguishable from legitimate ones, using the same technologies employed by banks, including holograms and your actual PIN. He said that in extreme cases, some people have lost their homes when criminals used these stolen IDs to change titles on mortgages. In one bust of a Toronto card lab, police found an embossing machine, a $15,000 thermal printer, high tech scanning equipment, even thousands of VISA Dove holograms. They also found 10,000 IDs stored on a computer there.Your mailbox offers a common way for your information to be intercepted. Government cheques, renewed credit cards or pre-approved cards from banks are a favourite target. The criminals simply change the address on the card while retaining your name on the account. The redirected cards are then used to buy things, often working from a shop-to-order list acquired from other criminals. All your personal information gleaned from the mailing is also sold to create unlimited additional cards in your name. Be aware of any instances where you don’t remember receiving a monthly bill, as it may have been stolen. Also, don’t let your mail sit uncollected in your mailbox or sit in view in your car.Besides your mailbox and your garbage can, dumpsters behind retail stores are frequently rummaged through by criminals looking for discarded receipts or statements. Don’t throw out old bills or leave sales slips at stores or gas pumps. Shred them or burn them.Company insiders pose a real problem in these cases. Because selling personal information has become an easy way to make money, many people have been victimized by unscrupulous counter clerks in shops or gas bars. A dishonest employee in an investors group recently stole a computer from the company, selling hundreds of thousands of identities containing the financial data of its customers. Two years ago in Belleville, a gas station employee got work there for the sole purpose of stealing personal information from credit cards. When he had what he wanted, he simply walked off the job in the middle of the night.Some insiders help criminals tamper with ATMs or gas pumps. They give them access to the machines so they can install pinhole cameras on them to see you enter your PIN while other electronic gear captures your credit card or debit card information. Some of the devices attached to these machines fit over the actual credit card slots and are manufactured professionally to look exactly like the real machine parts. They are thin enough to not stand out much more than the real plastic or metal parts and the information they retrieve is transmitted to the criminals nearby. Such an ATM was recently discovered in operation at a Toronto subway station.Double swiping of a card by a clerk should immediately arouse suspicion. Demand to see the store manager at once in such a case. Some dishonest clerks employ a hidden data storage unit of their own which they use to swipe your card. The units are supplied to them by the gangs who are paying them for stealing customer information. A common technique is to distract the victim by placing the receipt farther down the counter for signing while the employee uses their nearby skimmer as it’s called to steal your information while you’re looking elsewhere. It can take less than a second to swipe your card that second time so you really need to keep your eye on your card. In some cases where a clerk or waiter takes your card to a remote location, as is the case of some gas stations and restaurants, there’s really not much you can do to protect yourself, other than to watch your credit card statements for any suspicious entries. You might even consider paying with cash when you find yourself dealing with such a situation.Internet users have likely received e-mails soliciting personal information for the purposes of updating or verifying your account with whatever company the criminals are pretending to represent. eBay and Paypal are common ones used for this "phishing" technique. Whether in e-mail or real mail, it is easy to reproduce company letterheads, logos and fliers to simulate real communications. If you reply with any personal information, you will lose your money. Same goes if you respond to winning a prize in a contest you never entered or somebody tells you they’ve found a lost inheritance for you, especially if you are asked to send money upfront to cover administrative or finder’s fees.Cons also set up bogus companies to access information from online employment sites such as Workopolis, or to create job fairs in order to get personal information from job applicants. A recent case in Ottawa netted 100 credit cards and 1,300 fake IDs. There are counterfeit web sites all over the Internet as well just looking for your personal information. Beware of sites that offer things for free. As soon as you log on, they can scan your computer and install software to retrieve and send data back to the criminals.Detective Sergeant Lollar advises people to watch out for household workers, babysitters, health care workers, even friends and room mates, as he’s seen many cases involving trusted people who have access to your home. When you’re not in your home and someone else is, put away all personal information, mail, bills, statements, wallets and purses so they’re not available to be stolen or examined.Online banking tends to be safe, but hundreds of thousands of accounts have been compromised in the U.S. over the past year. Internet cafes and even libraries have also become targets for those stealing personal information. A small device that captures keystrokes is attached to the back of the computers and whatever you type is copied and sent to the criminals, including passwords.When using an ATM or a debit card machine, always assume you are being watched and take steps to cover what keys you enter. In one operation recently uncovered, this wouldn’t have helped. Showing just how sophisticated these criminals can be, a thin film had been made that fit like a skin over the ATM’s keypad. It recorded every keystroke electronically that was entered, giving every user’s PIN to the criminals who had installed the device.If you find you’ve become a victim of credit card or identity theft, notify the police immediately. Contact your bank and all your creditors as well. Cancel your credit cards, close your bank accounts and open new ones, and notify the Equifax and Trans Union credit bureaus about what’s happened. They’ll put a flag on your account and will watch for future uses of your stolen information or cards.For more information or to report a scam, call the OPP’s Phonebusters at 1-888-495-8501 or visit their web site at . The RCMP operates a similar web site at .