Identity Theft Check

The Identity Fraud Communications Awareness Group is warning visitors to South Africa about potential scams that could hit World Cup Tourists. Neil Munroe, a spokesman for the group, is stating that football fans will be easy targets as they will stand out from the crowd and identity theft is already a major risk in South Africa. But Munroe claims that with extra vigilance fans will still be able to enjoy the experience and all the wonderful things South Africa has to offer. Fans have been advised to be particularly cautious when using credit cards and to remember the old rule that if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is.

Compared to the same period in 2009, the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service has revealed an increase of nearly 20% in identity fraud. CIFAS also commented that the compared with the first quarter of 2009, the number of victims of impersonation increased by over 20% this year. In the first three months of 2010, 27,000 victims of impersonation were recorded by CIFAS Members. Other public and private sector bodies are also alerting the public to be aware of the increased risk in identity theft this year. The identity fraud communications awareness group is particularly warning World Cup tourists about potential scams which might give fans a financial hangover when they return to the UK.

US and German government officials are planning to launch an inquiry regarding the disclosure from Google that it ‘mistakenly’ collected sensitive data from consumers over wireless networks. For years Google’s street view cars have ‘accidentally’ collected personal information, which could include email messages and passwords. Germany’s commissioner for data protection has called for a detailed probe into Google’s activity. Google claims it has never used the data and it accidentally collected it due to a piece of legacy code in the machines installed in Google’s fleet of cars. Regulators in countries around the world will be approached by Google as to how to dispose of the data.

Facebook has finally admitted that they have made some serious privacy mistakes over the past few months and have promised to simplify the privacy controls on the site.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has stated that in the next few weeks they will also offer users the option to disable all third-party services. He explained that Facebook wanted to give its users the ability to control privacy settings at a fine granularity level but this has not been what the majority of users actually wanted. Last week it emerged that, contrary to its privacy policy, Facebook passed users names and locations to third parties.
Facebook’s real customers are its advertisers and it is in Zuckerberg’s commercial interests to make user supplied data as widely available as possible. Therefore it will be important to ensure Facebook is checked against delivery of its promises.

The UK’s coalition government will refuse to refund people who have applied and paid for an identity card, according to the Sunday Telegraph
A bill is expected to abolish the cards, along with parliamentary and electoral reform, in the Queen’s speech on Tuesday 25th May.
The Telegraph obtained a leaked version of the Queen’s Speech which along with identity card legislation also contains details of financial service regulation and changes to the DNA database.
In an interesting twist, it has been stated that once the cards have passed their expiry date they could be worth a lot of money in a few years time due to being a collector’s item!

The creation of the central electronic patient record in regions where it had planned for an accelerated implementation has been suspended by the Department of Health. The BMA (British Medical Association) was informed that the work would stop in the identified regions until appropriate public and professional awareness has been raised. This was after the BMA had called for the halting of developments, claiming that patients had not been informed. A BMA spokesman said it welcomed the decision by the DoH to suspend uploads. The creation of records will continue in early adopter areas and will only be suspended in five ‘accelerated work’ regions.

The UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has directly blamed Israel for forging passports used in January for the assassination for a Hamas military boss. The founder of Hamas’s military wing, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, was assassinated in a Dubai Hotel by  a hit squad who entered Dubai using forged British passports. SOCA, the UK’s Serious and Organised Crime Agency, carried out an investigation and the British victims were all questions and found completely innocent of any identity theft. Most of those questioned live in Israel and hold dual citizenship. Assurances have been sought from the Israeli foreign minister by the UK Government, that British passports will not be misused again. David Miliband also reiterated that the UK had no prior knowledge of the assassination.

A bug which has existed in the popular Firefox browser for nearly 10 years is to be fixed imminently.
The bug relates to the web history of a browser and basically allows a hacker to discover which sites have been visited by checking the cascading style sheets which display the links in purple and not blue.
A spokesman for Mozilla, the developers behind Firefox, stated that some sites might look slightly odd after the changes, especially sites which use more than colour to differentiate visited links, but the privacy advantages far outweigh this. Firefox has a 25% share of the worldwide browser market and is a favourite amongst software developers especially due to the large amount of browser plug-ins which can be easily installed.

Through charging the general public, the UK Home Secretary has stated the identity card scheme should eventually pay for itself and that to end the scheme at this stage would be a waste and counterproductive.
The Liberal Democrats and the Conservative party are planning to drop the scheme as part of their election manifesto. The scheme is estimated to cost £5.3bn over 10 years. The opposition parties are stating that in reality the cards are only voluntary and over 13 million people would be required to sign up for the cards to cover the costs. Current estimates indicate only 3,000 are likely to apply for a card. Identity cards came into effect in November 2008 for foreign nationals only but people who live in the North West of England can now apply for a card. In February 2010 the scheme was extended to 16 to 24 year olds who live in London.

Provisions to mitigate data loss should be included in European electronic waste disposal laws, according a European data protection supervisor. There have been calls for manufacturers to integrate privacy-enhancing techniques into computing devices by design, in order for companies and organisations to delete sensitive data more easily.
The marketing of second hand devices that have not had sensitive information removed before resale has also been raised. Under UK law, data must be deleted from obsolete equipment. An ICO spokesperson said that under the DPA companies have responsibilities to store personal information securely but to also delete it once no longer required. After the new powers for the ICO came into effect in April, companies can face a maximum fine of 500,000 for breaches of privacy law.