Category Archives: Cybercrime

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2020/04/want-get-your-coronavirus-relief-check-scammers-do-too?utm_source=govdelivery

For now, here are some things to know.

1. You don’t need to do anything. As long as you filed taxes for 2018 and/or 2019, the federal government likely has the information it needs to send you your money. If you haven’t filed taxes recently, you’ll need to submit a simple tax return to get your check. (More on who’s eligible here.)
2. Do not give anyone your personal information to “sign-up” for your relief check. There is nothing to sign up for. Anyone calling to ask for your personal information, like your Social Security number, PayPal account, or bank information is a scammer, plain and simple. Also be on the lookout for email phishing scams, where scammers pretend to be from the government and ask for your information as part of the “sign-up” process for the checks.
3. To set up direct deposit of your check, communicate only with the IRS at irs.gov/coronavirus. And you only need to do this if you didn’t give the IRS your bank information on your 2018 or 2019 return. In the coming weeks, the IRS will be setting up an online form available through irs.gov/coronavirus. But nowhere else, and never in response to an email, text, or call.
4. No one has early access to this money. Anyone that claims to is a scammer. The timeline for this process is not exact, but it looks like funds will start going out in the next few weeks. Scammers are using the lack of detail to try to trick people into giving their personal information and money.

To get official updates and more information, visit the IRS’s page on economic impact payments. And if you come across a scammer trying to take your check, we want to hear about it. Report it at ftc.gov/complaint.

“There already is a high level of anxiety over the potential spread of coronavirus,” FTC chairman Joe Simons said in a statement. “What we don’t need in this situation are companies preying on consumers by promoting products with fraudulent prevention and treatment claims. These warnings are just the first step. We’re prepared to take enforcement actions against companies that continue to market this type of scam.”

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/secret-service-warns-scams-disinformation-campaigns-spread-coronavirus/story?id=69509243

The company claims to have scraped more than 3 billion photos from the internet, including photos from popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

The firm garnered controversy in January after a New York Times investigation revealed that Clearview AI’s technology allowed law enforcement agencies to use its technology to match photos of unknown faces to people’s online images. The company also retains those photos in its database even after internet users delete them from the platforms or make their accounts private.

That prompted cease-and-desist letters from tech giants Twitter (TWTR), Google (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB). Some states, such as New Jersey, even enacted a statewide ban on law enforcement agencies using Clearview while it investigates the software.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/26/tech/clearview-ai-hack/index.html

KrebsOnSecurity has long maintained that the 2017 breach at Equifax was not the work of financially-motivated identity thieves, as there has been exactly zero evidence to date that anything close to the size of the data cache stolen from that incident has shown up for sale in the cybercrime underground.

However, readers should understand that there are countless other companies with access to SSN, DOB and other information crooks need to apply for credit in your name that get hacked all the time, and that this data on a great many Americans is already for sale across various cybercrime bazaars.

Readers also should know that while identity theft protection services of the kind offered by Equifax and other companies may alert you if crooks open a new line of credit in your name, these services generally do nothing to stop that identity theft from taking place. ID theft protection services are most useful in helping people recover from such crimes.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/02/u-s-charges-4-chinese-military-officers-in-2017-equifax-hack/#more-50492

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/01/experian-hack-t-mobile-credit-checks-personal-information

After the initial breach was announced on September 7, 2017, law enforcement officials and investigators turned their attention to China’s military. This was due in part to the fact that the Equifax data has never been found for sale on underground internet forums that usually involve the trade in this type of data to criminals who may use it to fraudulently obtain credit or tax return funds. 

By naming Chinese military officials, the Justice Department is finally confirming which nation’s military they suspect was behind the incident, which ultimately led to enormous upheaval at Equifax. The company’s CEO resigned, as well as its head of cybersecurity, Susan Mauldin, and chief information officer Jun Ying. 

Ying would later be sentenced to four months in prison for insider trading on the security incident before it was announced to the public, to profit from the information by $117,000.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/equifax-hack-justice-department-indicts-4-chinese-military-members.html

A former employee of American Express is under investigation by the police for allegedly accessing customer information with the intent to commit fraud. 

The exact details of the incident have not been disclosed, but the employee is thought to have wrongfully accessed the personal information of Amex customers in America in an attempt to open accounts at other financial institutions. 

Amex began notifying customers of the data breach by letter on September 30. Customers who received the letter were told “as a result of the incident, your name, current or previously issued American Express Card account number, physical and/or billing address, date of birth, and Social Security number were compromised.” 

When contacted for comment, Amex would not say precisely how many customers had been affected by the breach but stated that “only a small number of our customers were impacted.”

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/amex-employee-suspected-of-fraud/

Nearly 12 million U.S. residents may have had their credit cards, Social Security numbers compromised, thanks to a data breach at a medical blll-collection agency. It’s likely that names, addresses and dates of birth were also part of the breach.

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/amca-data-breach,news-30238.html