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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsScammer dupes Experian into selling Social Security Nos
Cybersecurity investigative blogger Brian Krebs is reporting that a Vietnamese hacker duped Experian into selling him valid social security numbers, probably paid for via hijacked online accounts.
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Experian declined Krebs' interview request, instead sending him a carefully vetted statement acknowledging that Court Ventures sold data to Ngo. Here's the statement Krebs received:
"Experian acquired Court Ventures in March, 2012 because of its national public records database. After the acquisition, the US Secret Service notified Experian that Court Ventures had been and was continuing to resell data from US Info Search to a third party possibly engaged in illegal activity. Following notice by the US Secret Service, Experian discontinued reselling US Info Search data and worked closely and in full cooperation with law enforcement to bring Vietnamese national Hieu Minh Ngo, the alleged perpetrator, to justice. Experian's credit files were not accessed. Because of the ongoing federal investigation, we are not free to say anything further at this time."
This disclosure supplies more evidence of the tenuous nature of the online credit -checking and loan-selling system ported to the Internet by the financial sector to save costs. It's much cheaper to conduct sensitive transactions online that it is hiring staff and erecting buildings to needed to conduct transactions face-to-face.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/cybertruth/2013/10/21/scammer-dupes-experian-into-selling-social-security-nos/3144069/
xfundy
(5,105 posts)should not be in the hands of private, for-profit companies.
Remember how we were told that privatizing would save taxpayers billions? HA! We're paying more than ever for these services.
Take the gov't out of private, for-profit hands. They've shown they'll stop at NOTHING to make a profit. Even treason.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)kentauros
(29,414 posts)or to hire me. Unless you're going to work for the federal government, they shouldn't need that info. There are other ways of doing background checks, and we could insist that even our other pertinent numbers (driver's license, student ID, passport, etc.) can only be used with some other level of security on top. Something like those additional and temporary passcodes used for online banking now. Not sure how that would work, but I'm sure there are security experts around here that could offer their ideas, too.
DevonRex
(22,541 posts)and presentation of the facts. The other had the facts but was kind of hard to piece together. I can't remember who wrote the article but he did a bad job.