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FedEx driver alerts police about identity theft

May 16th, 2012 by admin No comments »

A typical FedEx Ground truck. Photographed in ...

FedEx driver reports meeting a guy whose behavior was suspicious

This post is dedicated to all law-abiding citizens. Without them, this world would be a chaotic place. Even the Police force draws strength from them and at times use their help. If we stay alert and keep the police informed of suspicious activities, thieves will think twice before stealing. In today’s digital world, staying alert and securing data is of utmost importance. This post shares an interesting story of a FedEx driver whose suspicion is helping the police in tracking a thief.

FedEx driver helps in identifying thief

A FedEx driver’s alertness helped him identify a thief who was planning to steal a few laptops.

According to the FedEx driver, a black man in his late 20s to early 30s driving silver Audi with New York license plates, on Tuesday afternoon, May 8, before 12:25, approached him in the Land Rover Darien parking lot, 90 Post Road. The man told the FedEx driver he wanted to pick up packages scheduled for delivery on Prospect Avenue and that he was the addressee. Nevertheless, the driver had a great memory and he immediately recognized the man as the same one who had made a similar request on Friday, May 4. The FedEx driver flatly denied handing over the packages and the man sped off.

The thief’s strategy is to approach a FedEx driver and have computers shipped to homes in town and trying to intercept them before they are delivered.

The first incident – The first incident took place on May 4. The driver was parked in a parking lot on Parklands Drive. A black man approached him and asked him for packages that were to be delivered to a home on Bayberry Lane. He showed the driver a New York license with the recipient’s name. The driver took a long look at the license and believed it was a fake. He did not hand over the packages to him, which were to be delivered to the Bayberry Lane house. It contained four laptop computers. The owner of that address had not ordered the computers and was going to be the victim of an identity theft.

The second incident - The same man approached the same driver in the parking lot of 90 Post Road on May 8. He used the same modus operandi and asked for a package to be delivered on Prospect Avenue. This time the man claimed to be the owner of the package. The FedEx driver recognized the man and refused to give the packages. The man then sped away from the area.

The Police are on the hunt

The man on the run is described as a black man in his late 20s to early 30s. He was seen driving a silver Audi with New York registration. The case is currently under investigation.

Alertsec can catch thieves

Protecting your laptop via encryption software would be your best bet. That is where Alertsec steps in.

Alertsec is the frontrunner in offering hard disk encryption as a fully managed service. We provide protection for all information stored on laptops and PCs in an easy, convenient, and cost-effective way.

By using industry leading Check Point Full Disk Encryption (former Pointsec) software, Alertsec has created a web based encryption service that radically simplifies deployment and management of PC encryption.

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Posted in Computer security, Encryption Chip, Identity and Information loss, computer security software, data encryption, identity theft, laptop encryption, laptop theft

Tags: Audi Dave Cliff Enter your zip code here FedEx identity theft Law Law Enforcement New York North Island Police Police officer Recreation Theft Tuesday United Parcel Service

Tel Aviv’s D.A. charges six people with a massive data theft: Personal details of millions of Israelis exposed

May 14th, 2012 by admin No comments »

Tel-Aviv - A massive data theft surfaces. The DA charges six people of stealing and selling data

Data breach/ data theft can take place in multiple ways. By accessing unauthorized data, by stealing diskettes or USB sticks. By stealing documents, by copying data and selling it to another vendor without authority. Also what is disturbing but true is that the perpetrators are often people who are of a decent background, earning good money. Some of them do just because it gives them a ‘technological high’, some do it because they think it will help them in their career.

The latest data theft news from Israel proves that the perpetrator was somebody who came from a good educational background but wanted to make a fast buck.

Data theft news from Israel – In brief

Tel Aviv’s District Attorney charged six people with a major data theft that leaked the personal details of millions of Israelis.

The stolen data contains full names, ID numbers, and addresses, dates of birth, family status, and names of siblings. In addition, it includes an extensive search engine allowing users to determine extended family relations of any Israeli in the database.

The perpetrators sold the data to Haredi charities.

Data theft news – In detail

This data theft took place in 2006 and it contained detailed personal information on nine million Israelis including minors, deceased persons and citizens living abroad.

Shalom Bilik, a former Social Affairs Ministry contractor, who had access to the database during his work at the ministry, copied the data and took it home without permission. Bilik’s contract with the ministry ended in 2006 and soon thereafter, he began to provide computing services to an ultra-Orthodox organization in Jerusalem. He used to install the database on computers there.

The persons indicted other than Bilik are Avraham Adam, Yosef Vitman, Haim Aharon, Moshe Moskovitz and Meir Leiver.

Adam worked at the ultra-Orthodox charity. He used the stolen data after Bilik gave it him. He later passed the data on to Vitman, who volunteered at the charity. Vitman then sold a copy of the stolen database to an independent computer consultant called Aharo who combined it with a copy of the voter registration database and eleven other databases. Aharon later sold the combined database to other people and gave it to a computer programmer, Moskovitz, who in turn sold it to other people.

Moskovitz then updated the database with a sophisticated search program and named the final database ‘Agron’ (‘Glossary’). He allegedly stole it to other interested parties. The database finally ended up with Leiver who then decided to call it aRi and sold it overseas.

The Indictment

According to the indictment, the six men are charged with various offenses under the Privacy Protection Law, which attract a maximum five-year prison sentence. Bilik is also charged under the Penal Code with removal of a document from custody and passing it to a third party, which attracts a maximum five-year prison term and Leiver is charged with destroying evidence, after allegedly attempting to disrupt the investigation by deleting computer files.

Alertsec strives hard to protect data

Alertsec’s encryption service helps protect data and secure your computer systems. Alertsec Xpress offers computer protection software from Check Point as a fully customizable and pre-packaged data encryption software solution.

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Posted in Computer security, Data Protection, Encryption, Hackers, Hard Disk, Identity and Information loss, computer security software, data breach, data encryption, identity theft

Tags: Bilik Computer security Crime data breach Data theft Encryption Enter your zip code here Haredi Judaism Israel Israelis Jerusalem Tel Aviv Theft USB flash drive

Phoenix Police nab 3 in connection with laptop theft

May 13th, 2012 by admin No comments »

3 suspects nabbed by Phoenix Police in connection with a series of laptops

Wow! Another laptop theft and that too in less than 24 hours! When it rains, it pours but we wish this was not true in cases of thefts, right? Well, unfortunately these days it has been raining less and ’stealing’ more. Stealing laptops is becoming a way of life with thieves and they think they can get away with it. Alas, the Police force is on the alert and suspects are getting caught sooner than later!

Thanks to Phoenix Police for nabbing laptop thieves

Thursday was a promising day for the Phoenix police. They were successful in nabbing Jordan Griggs, Camden Jernigan and Shawn Thompson in connection with a string of laptop computer thefts from Valley coffee shops.

Phoenix police arrested three 19-year-old men Thursday

They had stolen a man’s computer while he was using it at a Phoenix Starbucks.

Series of Laptop thefts

The car drove to a neighbourhood about one block southeast of the shop and Griggs and Shawn Thompson got out of the car, Jernigan waited in the driver’s seat.

Griggs opened a door to the shop and Shawn Thompson went in and snatched a 35-year-old man’s computer while he was working. After stealing the computer, the two young men ran from the store and jumped into the waiting car, which was then driven by Jerrigan. This was apparently the thieves modus operandi. They always stole laptops when people were actually typing out.

The Police were watching the scene unfold in front of them. They tailed the car and the suspects were stopped at 4900 N. 12th St., and the computer was found in their car. The suspects were immediately arrested and taken into custody.

The laptop was returned to the owner and the three suspects were jailed on suspicion of felony theft and felony conspiracy charges.

Alertsec helps curb laptop thefts

The fact that we now buy more laptops than desktops shows that the information we all store is increasingly more vulnerable to be exposed. It is a much higher risk to lose a laptop than a desktop computer.

The only way to protect information stored on a PC or laptop is by using encryption. Alertsec Xpress offers full disk encryption and is therefore superior to other encryption methods when comparing security, performance, robustness and ease-of-use for both administrators and users.

The following preventive measures can be done to increase laptop security with Alertsec and reduce damage if your laptop is lost or stolen:

a. Always have a fresh back-up on a server or back-up device

b. Use Laptop encryption to protect your valuable data

c.Full disk encryption software encrypts the entire disk sector by sector, including the system files, temporary and deleted files, and the operating system

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Posted in Computer security, Data Protection, Identity and Information loss, data encryption, identity theft, laptop encryption, laptop theft

Tags: alertsec AlertSec Xpress Crime disk encryption Encryption Enter your zip code here Hardware insurance laptop laptop theft Motor vehicle theft Notebooks and Laptops Personal computer Phoenix Police South American Theft Groups Starbucks Theft

Payroll data of home-care workers goes missing in the mail – Los Angeles County news

May 12th, 2012 by admin No comments »

Data breach of home-care personnel in the County of Los Angeles

Another breach where data of home-care personnel goes missing! We cannot stress enough the importance of protecting health-care data. It is so crucial and sensitive and the chances of it getting misused is very high, especially data belonging to ill people and vulnerable children.

Payroll data goes missing

700,000 people who offer or get home care for the elderly and disabled have become victims of data breach. Their payroll data has lost its way in the mail, as told by an internal government email.

According to the email, the breach was found out on Wednesday. Hewlett Packard handles the payroll information for workers in California’s In-Home Supportive Services program. According to them the data disappeared en route in the mail to a state office in Riverside.

“While we continue to investigate, at this time we can’t confirm whether the information was damaged, lost or stolen,” the email said.

As soon as it was learned that the package had disappeared, an investigation started and as of now the Police are looking into the theft. The affected parties are being notified via email. The spokesperson for the California Department of Social Services, Oscar Ramirez, has confirmed the breach.

Security policies are being changed to avoid such mishaps.

Comment by lobbyist, Deborah Doctor

“That’s unbelievable,” said Deborah Doctor, a lobbyist at Disability Rights California. “This will be very worrying.”

According to Ms Doctor the worst hit are the low-income people in the program for whom English is often not their first language, while others are too blind to read notices from the government about the missing data.

Approximately 40% of employees and recipients in the program are based out of Los Angeles County.

Late night update

According to a news release sent out late Friday said, “The package containing the information was reported as damaged while being shipped by the U.S. Postal Service and the information contained in the package was incomplete upon delivery.”

The package that contained the data was mailed on April 26 and arrived May 1. The state was not notified for another week. The breached data from October to December 2011, for 375,000 workers included names, Social Security numbers and wages. State identification numbers may have been leaked for about 326,000 recipients.

Time to use Alertsec to protect your vulnerable and sensitive data

Data encryption is the key here. Alertsec is into data protection and it does a fine job of securing data.

Alertsec Xpress includes pre-boot authentication, which ensures that only authorised users are allowed to access the computer. A common misconception is that a bios password conveys the same level of security as the pre boot protection included in Alertsec Xpress. This is not the case.

BIOS level protection schemes only protect the actual BIOS settings.

To secure stored data, it must be encrypted. Once encrypted with full disk encryption, the files will be inaccessible to any unauthorized person and immune to the widely available password cracking tools.

Get Alertsec and leave the data security to us!

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Posted in Computer security, Data Protection, Encryption, Hard Disk, Identity and Information loss, computer security software, data breach, data encryption, identity theft

Tags: AlertSec Xpress California California Department of Social Services data breach Deborah Doctor Enter your zip code here Hewlett Packard Home care Los Angeles County Los Angeles County California Missing data Social Security number The Package (Lost) United States Postal Service

Two Murrieta men arrested in connection with the theft of a laptop

May 11th, 2012 by admin No comments »

Laptop and other items stolen from cars in Murrieta

Just when we thought laptop thefts are on the decrease, here comes one that shows nothing can be relied on in the digital world. You go to be extra careful with mobile devices. You don’t know when they might fall prey to a theft. Especially if you leave them in your vehicles.

Murrieta Police were kept busy

A laptop and other items were stolen from vehicles in the last few weeks in Murrieta.

The cars, from which these items were taken, were parked near the California Oaks Road corridor between April 29 and Sunday. The missing laptop appeared as a sales item on Craigslist and that’s how the police tracked down the thief. The stolen items were found at a residence on Via Diamante.

The recovered items included devices, sunglasses and phone chargers. The police are trying to track down the owners of these recovered items.

Andrew Ortiz is a student at Temecula Preparatory School in French Valley where he was arrested Tuesday.

Albert Clarke was an accomplice in the theft and the detectives tracked him to his home on Breckenridge Court. Clark admitted his connection with the theft as well as multiple other thefts from vehicles (between April 29 and May 6).

According to Murrieta police Sgt. Steve Dyer “Some of the recovered property includes GPS navigation devices, sunglasses and phone chargers,”.

The arrests

The Murrieta PD arrested Justin Albert Clarke, 19, and Andrew Philip Ortiz, 18 in connection with the theft. Both the young men were put into the Southwest Detention Center in French Valley on suspicion of grand theft and receiving stolen property.

Update – Suspects released on bond

Both suspects posted $5,000 bonds and were released from the Southwest Detention Center in Murrieta on May 9.

Dial for theft

Sgt. Dyer has asked anyone with information related these thefts or might have items stolen from their cars during the time frame of April 29 and May 6 to contact Detective Steve Whiddon at 951-696-3615.

If one wishes to stay anonymous, one can use “We Tip” at 1-800-78-CRIME.

Moral of the story

The above story shows that not all laptops are stolen for want to information. Thieves simply steal it to sell it off and make money. Most laptops end up in a pawn shop or on Craigslist.

What can companies and individuals do to protect their laptops?

The easiest and the most cost-effective way is to physically secure the laptop with a cable so that a thief cannot grab it.

However, the above has limitations; hence protecting your laptop via encryption software would be your best bet. That is where Alertsec steps in.

Alertsec is the frontrunner in offering hard disk encryption as a fully managed service. We provide protection for all information stored on laptops and PCs in an easy, convenient, and cost-effective way.

By using industry leading Check Point Full Disk Encryption (former Pointsec) software, Alertsec has created a web based encryption service that radically simplifies deployment and management of PC encryption.