Whether it’s a family trip to the beach, an exotic honeymoon, or international travel – 2012 Summer Olympics anyone? – travel season will be in full swing this summer, starting Memorial Day weekend. According to AAA, about 34.8 million people are expected to travel this holiday weekend.

Summer vacations began as an attempt to disconnect and unwind, but in today’s hyper-connected world, most of us are still plugged in; checking email, doing online banking and chatting with friends, all while on vacation.

But being in a vacation state of mind doesn’t always translate to a secure state of mind, and criminals are prepared to take advantage of that.

Recently, the FBI warned consumers about targeted attacks directed at vacationing travelers. These attacks are by committed by criminals who download malicious software onto the traveler’s computer through pop-up windows while the unsuspecting vacationer is establishing an Internet connection in their hotel room.

Attacks like these can happen all too often due to travelers being preoccupied by the details and logistics of the trip and less concerned with securing their information. The last souvenir any vacation-goer wants to come home with is an infected computer or a compromised identity.

Preparing for a trip involves planning and often checklists. Safety and security should be part of that routine, and the preparation needs to begin before you ever leave the house. And remember, just like arriving to the airport on time, it’s up to you to take your information and security into your own hands, to proactively protect yourself at home or away.

Here are some tips for travelers to consider when taking their next trip:

1. Protect Your Home – Your home not only holds your physical valuables, but also the sensitive documents and electronic records that are so appealing to criminals. Don’t leave these sensitive documents or mail out in the open. You may also consider having your mail held at the post office or collected by a trusted friend or family member.

2. Don’t Post Pictures – It’s tempting to share the details and photos of your trip with family and friends in real time through social media channels, but sharing these details on social networking sites like Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Foursquare could give criminals a heads up that your home is vacant, inviting them to pay a visit while you’re away. Try to limit the details you share until you’re back from your adventure.

3. Turn off Geo-Tracking – Don’t give criminals information about your location. This tool is just another way thieves can identify a vacant home, so it should be disabled while traveling to limit the visibility into your whereabouts.

4. Practice Online Safety – If you need to log into the web from a cyber cafe or other establishment, limit your access, avoid entering any passwords to your personal financial accounts, and be sure to log off when you are finished with your session. If you’re browsing the Internet with a wireless connection, do not assume public “hot spots” are secure. Ensure you are using encryption to scramble communications over a network.

5. Guard Your Devices – If you are planning to stay connected while you’re traveling, protect your device from key loggers, hackers, spammers, and botnets by installing anti-virus and anti-spyware software on your laptop computer, tablets, and mobile devices. Also be sure to update the software on a regular basis.

6. Limit the Number of Credit Cards you Carry — Carrying too many sensitive cards is risky. Carry just one and keep a backup in the hotel safe. Keep a copy of the emergency contact numbers for your credit cards and bank accounts handy in case they’re lost or stolen.

7. Back-up Your Documents — Be sure to make photocopy backups of the cards and documents in your wallet or purse, including credit and ATM cards and your driver’s license. In the event that your wallet is stolen, you’ll want to have these records available for your bank so they can easily be cancelled. Alternatively, enroll in a card registry program that has your card information on file.

8. Alert Your Bank. Especially with international travel, it’s a good idea to let your bank know where you are heading. This way, they can alert you of any suspicious activity that doesn’t match your itinerary and help minimize damages by freezing accounts.

9. Limit Information You Provide Over the Phone – Limit the information you provide to hotels, transportation, etc. over the phone, and opt for an in-person exchange when possible. If you’re staying at a hotel or motel and receive a call from the reception desk asking that you confirm a credit card number, tell them you’ll provide the information at the front desk.

10. Monitor Your Activity – If you’re leaving for an extended period of time, consider using a credit and public monitoring service that alerts you to potentially suspicious activity.

In today’s article, Intersections’ Consumer Security Adviser, Neal O’Farrell writes about how cyber criminals and identity thieves target small businesses. Why? Because many small businesses do not have substantial security procedures in place, and they make an attractive target for thieves hoping to steal your personal information.

Last night a neighbor of mine called for some advice on identity theft. He’d just received a call from a mortgage broker he hadn’t dealt with in more than two years, who told him that he’d just had a break-in at his office, his computer was stolen, and my neighbor’s personal information was on that computer. Along with the personal information of possibly thousands of other victims who had provided their personal information to that broker over the years.

And because the information was about loan and mortgage applications, it included everything a thief would need to commit devastating identity theft against multiple victims. Information like name and spouse’s name, Social Security number, address and date of birth, earnings and employer, previous addresses and more.

What bothered my neighbor most, apart from the obvious risk to his identity, was why the broker had held on to so much sensitive information for so long. And why it was sitting unprotected on a personal computer for so long.

I had to explain to him that this practice was very common. Small businesses, whatever their nature, tend to be unfamiliar with security procedures and data protection basics. Chances are, this broker has been hanging on to highly sensitive client information for years, maybe even decades, either in the hope that he could do business with those individuals again in the future, or simply because he was too lazy to properly dispose of that information after he no longer needed it.

While something as simple (and often free) as encryption would have made that personal information completely safe from thieves, few small businesses have yet embraced this simple idea.

I’ve been saying for years that one of the biggest identity theft threats for consumers are the small businesses they deal with on a daily basis. I don’t want to be harsh on small business owners – I’ve been one for thirty years – but they’re running out of excuses. There are few small business owners today who have not heard about cybercrime and identity theft and who are not aware that they have a responsibility to protect their customer and employee information from these threats.

Yet there are also very few small business owners, in my experience, who are actually doing anything about it. The most common excuse I hear from small business owners is that they’re just too small for a hacker to bother with. This completely misses the point, because hackers usually work by doing large sweeps or trawls for victims, and are quickly able to identify those businesses that have gaping security holes.

And with identity theft often viewed as the new burglary, small business owners have just as much to fear from local petty criminal as they have from global cyber gangs, because information stolen in burglaries often ends up in the same place.

Which probably explains why the most recent study of data breaches, just published by Verizon’s security division, found that out of the 855 data breaches the company’s security team investigated last year, more than 600 of them were at small businesses. That tally’s with a claim made last year by Visa that approximately 95% of its credit card breaches were at its smallest customers.

If any small business owner is still not convinced that hackers are targeting small businesses, the Verizon report also found that more than 80% of these breaches were as a result of the activity of hackers, and nearly 70% involved the use of malware.

To me there’s little doubt that the small business is squarely in the sights of hackers and cyber criminals around the world, and a single security incident at a small business could be its’ death knell. As public awareness grows about the danger of doing business with small businesses, worried consumers may take their business elsewhere.

And the inevitable result, if small business owners fail to take heed and responsibility, is that some form of legislation will be introduced to force small business owners to do the right thing.

If you are interested in reading the 2012 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, you candownload a copy here.

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We recently reported on the findings of the 2012 Identity Fraud Report released by Javelin Strategy and Research. The report states that the number of identity fraud incidents increased by 13 percent in 2011, totaling 11.6 million adult victims. The report also found that certain social media behaviors and increasing number of data breach incidents contributed to the overall amount of identity fraud instances in the United States over the past year.

Our infographic highlights some of the things that you can do to protect yourself from identity fraud. Please share it with your friends and colleagues.

Read more about the 2012 Javelin Strategy & Research Identity Fraud Report.

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In our post today, Intersections’ Consumer Security Adviser, Neal O’Farrell shares his insights on the recent identity theft report released by Javelin Strategy & Research.

Hackers, identity thieves, and scam artists follow the crowds. This is why there are more attacks targeted at Windows PCs instead of Macs, and endless scams focused on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

With so many people relying on increasingly powerful smartphones, this may be the new battleground for your information and identity. A new report may provide the first hard evidence. Just last week, Javelin Strategy and Research released their ninth annual Identity Fraud Report which provides the most comprehensive and detailed look at the current state of identity theft.

The news wasn’t good. The study found that in spite of a significant drop in the number of identity theft victims in 2010, that might have just been a temporary blip, because in 2011 the number of identity theft victims in the U.S. spiked back up to more than 11.6 million – possibly the highest on record.

One of the more interesting facts revealed by the report was the heightened vulnerability of smartphone users to identity theft. The survey found seven percent of smartphone owners were victims of identity fraud, which was nearly 30% higher than the general population.

The report attributed this increased exposure to a number of reasons. For example:

• 32 percent of smartphone owners do not update to a new operating system when it becomes available.

• 62 percent do not use a password on their home screen—enabling anyone to access their information if the phone is lost.

• 32 percent save login information on their device.

According to James Van Dyke, president and founder of Javelin Strategy & Research “The study found specific opportunities for improvement. Consumers must be vigilant and in control of their personal data as they adopt new mobile and social technologies in order to not make it easier for fraudsters to perpetrate crimes.”

Identity thieves have plenty of opportunities when it comes to attacking smartphones. There are estimated to be more than 200 million Android phones and tablets in use today, with another 700,000 being added every single day.

Every day, users of those devices are downloading some of the nearly 500,000 apps that are available for Android devices. With those apps come lots of data-stealing malware. A company called NQ Mobile says it discovered more than 22,000 instances of mobile malware in 2011, Google saw a 40% increase in potentially malicious apps in its own Android market, and Juniper Networks saw a 150% increase in mobile malware in 2011.

There are some simple steps you can take to protect yourself:

• Keep to a minimum the amount of personal information you keep on your smartphone.

• Password-protect your device.

• Be careful and selective about the apps you download.

• Consider using one of the free apps that will help you find, disable, and backup a lost or stolen phone.

• Consider using one of the growing number of free security apps that can protect your smartphone from malware and malicious apps.

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The IRS recently released its annual list of the “Dirty Dozen”, the top twelve most common scams the IRS detects each year. And it is no surprise that identity theft and fraud take the top three places.

According to the IRS, many of these schemes hit a peak during filing season as people prepare their tax returns. “Taxpayers should be careful and avoid falling into a trap with the Dirty Dozen,” said IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. “Scam artists will tempt people in-person, on-line and by e-mail with misleading promises about lost refunds and free money. Don’t be fooled by these scams.”

The following is the Dirty Dozen list of the tax scams to watch out for in 2012:

1. Identity Theft

2. Phishing

3. Return Preparer Fraud

4. Hiding Offshore Income

5. “Free Money” from the IRS & Tax Scams Involving Social Security

6. False/Inflated Income and Expenses

7. False Form 1099 Refund Claims

8. Frivolous Arguments

9. Falsely Claiming Zero Wages

10. Abuse of Charitable Organizations and Deductions

11. Disguised Corporate Ownership

12. Misuse of Trusts

As you can see from the list, many of those threats are actually scams faced by the IRS and not consumers. And while anything that costs the IRS money costs taxpayers money too, many of these scams will not apply directly to you. But the top three are always something to worry about. And of course we have seen an increase in identity theft and fraud committed by tax preparers.

Dishonest tax preparers can be a very dangerous threat because they can possess so much personal and financial information about you, and perhaps hundreds or even thousands of others. The IRS offers some advice on the things a dishonest tax preparer might not do that should be a red flag:

• They don’t sign the return or place a Preparer Tax identification Number on it.

• They don’t give you a copy of your tax return.

• They promise larger than normal tax refunds.

• They charge a percentage of the refund amount as preparation fee.

• They require you to split the refund to pay the preparation fee.

• They add forms to the return you have never filed before.

• They encourage you to place false information on your return, such as false income, expenses and/or credits.

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Although it is still the middle of winter, there are many media reports stating an increase in vacation rental scams. Intersections’ Consumer Security Adviser Neal O’Farrell shares some insights on this disturbing trend and offers up some tips on how you can protect yourself.

Believe it or not, now is the time that many people start making decisions about their vacation, especially with Easter and spring break not far away. And now is also the time that scammers start to ramp up their attacks to take advantage of this.

That’s probably why consumers around the country are being warned to watch out for a new wave of scams based around vacation rentals. It’s a story we covered about a year ago but is fast becoming a favorite for scammers around the world.

In recent cases, scammers are stealing the email passwords of genuine renters using vacation rental web sites, and posing as the real owner are advertising vacation properties, accepting deposits, and then simply vanishing; leaving the real homeowner, the victims, and the web sites to pick up the pieces.

In the most advanced scams, scammers are creating entire web sites devoted to highlighting a variety of rental properties around the world at attractive prices. The sites come complete with detailed photos and descriptions of the properties, information on local attractions, testimonials from happy renters, and even currency exchange calculators. All designed to convince customers that the site is real.

The scammers use international payment systems to collect multiple deposits for properties that are not theirs to rent. And in many cases the properties are actually real and available to rent – just in case the vacation-seeker decides to try to look at the property using Google Earth. If scammers can take multiple deposits, for thousands of dollars at a time, for the same non-existent rental, you can imagine how lucrative the scam is.

And this is where the scam can get particularly heartless. Imagine that you and your family have booked and paid for your dream vacation. Everyone has taken time off work, you renewed your passports, paid for a pet sitter, and purchased a bunch of expensive plane tickets.

After hours of exhaustive travel you arrive at your dream rental only to find someone else is renting it, or the owner has never heard of you and has never rented the property. And because it’s the height of tourist season there isn’t a single room anywhere nearby to rent instead. It can be emotionally and financially heartbreaking for victims. And if the vacation is purchased directly from the scammers, there’s no recourse, refund, or insurance.

In one recent case, an unlucky homeowner in Florida was plagued by an endless stream of angry vacationers demanding to get into his property – which they believe they had rented – or get their money back. After some victims became so threatening, the homeowner had to post signs on his lawn that the property was never for rent in the first place. And it’s easy to understand why victims might assume that the real homeowner is in on the scam.

And the Chicago Tribune recently ran the story of one such victim, who paid a deposit of $4,500 to rent a vacation home that simply did not exist. And while the victim was careful enough to rent the property through a reputable online broker called HomeAway.com, she was still out of luck. Many of these sites do little if anything to verify the authenticity of their advertisers. And in this case, the crooks had gone to the trouble of hacking into the real owner’s email account and launching the scam that way.

But with some sites hosting property listings by more than half a million property owners and managers, it’s impossible to police such a large pool of properties all around the world.

Unfortunately, there’s very little you can do to avoid such a scam. The obvious protection is to not pay upfront for rental listings you find on Craigslist or in unsolicited emails. But even going through reputable online sites and brokers is no guarantee either.

There are some things you can do to at least reduce the risks:

• Use an established and reputable online broker and see if they have some form of rental guarantee or insurance.

• Pay with a credit card or PayPal if you can but never by wire transfer.

• See if you can get any referrals from friends who might have some favorite vacation properties they can recommend.

• Never respond to an email offering vacation rentals. Most legitimate renters won’t spam you.

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The Today Show recently featured a story about a man sentenced to 26 years for stalking a woman for 17 years. In this article, Intersections’ Consumer Security Adviser Neal O’Farrell writes about a new report that indicates that as many as 1 in 5 Americans may be victims of online stalking, Read on to learn how you can prevent yourself from becoming one of those victims!

1 in 5 Americans may be victim of online stalking

A new study recently released by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and McAfee found that one in five Americans have come in contact with someone online who made them feel uncomfortable through stalking, persistent emails, and other aggressive outreach attempts.

The report was published to coincide with January’s National Stalking Awareness Month and revealed a number of troubling statistics.

For example:

• The National Center for Victims of Crime estimated that stalking affects 3.4 million victims every year

• One in four victims report that the stalker uses a variety of technologies, such as computers, global positioning system (GPS) devices, or hidden cameras, to track the victim’s daily activities.

• Just less than 40% of those victims reported the incident while 61% chose not to.

“The Internet is an amazing tool for sharing and connecting with people. Unfortunately, there are some people who will use it to track, harass or make unwanted contact. Stalking can be dangerous and should be taken seriously,” said Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance. “We encourage anyone who believes they are being victimized online to report the crime and seek help, if needed, from law enforcement or a victim service provider.”

The authors of the report offered the following tips to help you avoid stalking and deal with stalkers:

1) Clean up your online profiles – Don’t include your address or phone number in an online profile. If you must use a professional networking site such as LinkedIn for work, include your company’s corporate address instead of your actual office to prevent someone from knowing where you work. Think about each piece of information you include on your profile and whether it would be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.

2) Lock down your privacy settings – If you are a social networking user, make sure to set all of your privacy settings to “private” or “friends only” to keep people outside of your network from accessing your information. It’s also important to regularly check the settings to make sure there haven’t been any changes that leave your data exposed.

3) Be careful whom you connect with – When using social networking sites, only connect with people who you know in real life. A stranger who tries to “friend” you could become trouble later on. Also, pay attention to the people your friends are connected with to prevent your information from being shared with someone suspicious.

4) Search yourself to see what’s out there about you – You might be surprised at what you find when you search for yourself. Old website profiles, online forum posts, and pictures of you posted by other people could all be unearthed in a quick search. If you find information about yourself that you want removed, contact the website or person hosting the content.

5) Don’t use an email address that is easy to identify – Stay under the radar by selecting online handles that don’t include your name, date of birth, or other details about you that a stalker might easily recognize. Once you have an anonymous address, guard it as you would your credit card or Social Security number.

6) If you have a personal website, don’t post your email address – These days many of us have blogs and personal websites, but it’s a bad idea to post your email address. Instead, use a contact form so that people can reach you without having your personal address.

7) Be careful when posting photos online – You never know where photos can end up when you post them online. Someone could find them in an image search, post them to a website or downloaded them to their computer. And if the photo contains information about where you live or work, you could wind up giving a stalker all the information they need to locate and harass you.

8. Create strong passwords – Make it difficult for someone to guess your passwords by using a mix of letters, numbers and characters and make sure that they don’t spell anything. Passwords that include the name of your pet or some other personal detail could easily be guessed, allowing an attacker to gain access your account. The same goes for security question answers. Choose hard-to-guess answers to prevent someone from using the password retriever function to obtain your password.

9) Avoid using location-based services – “Checking-in” to restaurants and other locations can be fun, but it can also be dangerous if someone is stalking you. If you must use location-based services, choose a unique username or alias that is not associated with any of your other accounts to make it more difficult for people to identify you.

10) Delete old posts or entries – If you have a stalker, they will scour the Internet for any tidbit of news about you so it’s a good idea to delete any old forum posts, Tweets or status messages that include any personal details or information that could allow them to find you both online and off.

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Although it’s barely a month into 2012, there is a lot going on with security and privacy on the world’s most popular social networking site – Facebook. Intersections’ Consumer Security Adviser, Neal O’Farrell is here today to give us an update on several new Facebook security issues.

2012 has already been an interesting year for Facebook security, with the emergence of some dangerous new scams and the unmasking of one of Facebook’s most notorious cyber gangs.

In case you never heard of Koobface, it’s a piece of malware that first emerged in 2008 and quickly infected millions of users. Users were tricked into downloading the malware by clicking on infected links on Facebook pages with messages like “Lol, is this you in this video?” These users were then enlisted into a giant international bot network of hijacked computers, at one point numbering close to one million computers, which in turn were used to engage in a variety of criminal activities that including pedaling fake anti-virus software.

The Koobface gang, as they became known, were able to generate millions of dollars in criminal gains, and all the while working out in the open, in plain sight, in the Russian city of St Petersburg. Until January 16th, when the New York Times and other outlets identified the five members of the gang and posted their photos across the world.

Apparently that did the trick, because Facebook just reported that they had finally wiped all traces of Koobface from Facebook, and that the command and control servers used to manage this massive criminal network appear to have gone silent.

But if everyone knows who these criminal are, and have known for some time, why were they not arrested? In a statement from Russian authorities, the answer is simple – no-one ever bothered to ask them to investigate or arrest them. While that’s probably not the case, and Russian authorities have probably known about and tolerated the gang for years, it reminds us once again why so many of the world’s most notorious hacking gangs work unimpeded from behind the Russian border.

But that might have been the only good news on the security front for Facebook. Just last week we talked about a dangerous new worm called Ramnit, which had apparently been merged with the highly dangerous Zeus banking Trojan and stealing Facebook passwords in the expectation (probably correct) that many Facebook users use the same password on other sites. Like their online banking.

And that was followed by a Facebook ransomware attack, where Facebook users received messages claiming that as a result of some unusual activity their Faceook account had been suspended and they would have to pay a fee of around $30 in order to unlock it.

There are some important lessons to be learned here:

• Probably the only way to defeat all these Facebook threats that keep emerging is for everyone to stop using Facebook. Criminals are only targeting Facebook because it’s easy to pick the pockets of such large crowds.

• It’s like playing whack-a-mole with criminals. As soon as one gang or piece of malware has been neutralized, another takes its place. And often the replacement has learned from its predecessors, adapted itself, and become even more potent.

• It’s still down to users. Facebook is doing all it can (I assume) to counter all these threats. But if you really do love Facebook, you can help – by being more cautious, vigilant, and cynical when it comes to any unusual messages you receive. And of course, a strong and well-protected password would be greatly appreciated too.

You can read details of the compelling Koobface expose here.

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In today’s article, Intersections’ Consumer Security Adviser, Neal O’Farrell shares some important tips to keep us safe during the upcoming tax-filing season. April 15th may be several months away, but it’s never too early to protect yourself!

I don’t normally start talking about tax time identity theft this early, but if you want to prevent someone else from grabbing your refund before you do, early filing is essential. That’s the advice I recently gave to one victim who found that every member of his family had their identities compromised, as a small ring of thieves did everything they could – from applying for mortgages to opening new credit cards – as soon as they got their hands on the stolen information.

And at this time of the year, one of the first things a thief will do with a stolen identity is concoct a fake tax return and submit it using the victim’s identity. When the victim files their own return, the scam is exposed, leaving the victim without a refund they might have been relying on to pay important bills. And the IRS can take up to a year or more to investigate the fraud and issue a new refund. If they issue a new one at all.

And it’s not just the living who are victimized. In 2009, the IRS issued more than $12 million in tax refunds to 5,000 dead people, part of a variety of scams using the identities of the dead to defraud the IRS. And that impacts us all. Not only does it deprive us of money that belongs to taxpayers, it consumes a huge amount of time processing these fake returns, investigating the frauds, and trying to recover the funds.

According to a recent story by Bloomberg, the IRS is woefully unprepared to investigate fraudulent returns. Bloomberg cited a government watchdog that claims the IRS does not have the funds to identify potential identity theft and investigate suspicious tax returns. It said that last year the IRS identity theft caseload grew by 20 percent to more than 226,000 and that the number of tax returns the IRS decided needed additional screening for possible fraud exceeded 1 million, a 72 percent increase over 2010.

And this is what thieves are preying on. I’ve written a few times about Operation Rainmaker, a stunningly-successful scam in Florida last year where street level drug dealers turned to IRS-related identity theft and were able to scam the IRS out of more than $130 million in bogus tax refunds.

The scam took advantage of the fact that because of budget and manpower issues, the IRS rarely investigates tax refunds of less than $10,000. So the drug dealers learned how to steal identities and prepare tax returns, and were quickly able to earn millions from the scam. A scam that was not discovered by the IRS but by a local employee who became suspicious of all the text refunds going to the same addresses.

There are some things you can do to protect yourself and your refund:

• File early so you get your refund before the thieves do.

• Choose your tax preparer carefully. There seems to be a worrying uptick in recent years in the number of tax preparers stealing or abusing the identities of their clients.

• Be wary of any emails or even phone calls you receive claiming to be from the IRS. They rarely call and they never email.

• If you plan to mail in your return, take it directly to the post office to reduce the risk of mail thieves intercepting it.

• If you can, have your refund deposited directly to your bank account so that your refund check is not intercepted by thieves.

• If you file online, make sure your computer is free from malware. You should be doing this anyway.

• If you think your Social Security number has been compromised or exposed, call the IRS identity theft hotline and ask them to place a red flag on your Social Security number. You can call the IRS Identity Protection Specialized Unit, toll-free at 1-800-908-4490

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The recent Zappos data breach has highlighted the need to protect your computer passwords. We have written about the need to protect your computer passwords, and the importance of having different passwords for every online account. But, how do you keep track of all of those passwords? How many of you are sitting here reading this post, with all of your computer passwords written down on Post-It® notes sticking all over your desk or on your computer monitor? Gotcha!

Today, The Daily Shield welcomes back Identity Guard® product manager Lindsey George and she tells us about a tool called ID Vault®, which is included with IDENTITY GUARD® TOTAL PROTECTIONSM. ID Vault stores all of your computer passwords and will sign you on to all of your online accounts. Watch the video below as Lindsey explains how to use this important tool.

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