No Hacking Required

May 02 2007

By Ira Winkler:

While all of the media attention is focused on computer hacking creating identity theft, we see case after case of low tech theft of identities. The most recent is the JP Morgan Chase example, where people went through their trash with a camera and found a great deal of personal information thrown in the trash. No hacking required.

Sadly, this isn’t the only example. The state of Texas is suing a Radio Shack (I believe) store because of info thrown in the trash. There are plenty of examples of people failing to use a cheap shredder to protect customer data.

I thought it was odd the last time I traveled to the UK, when I put down a credit card to pay at a restaurant, and they wouldn’t take my credit card. Instead they ran to the back and picked up a portable credit card machine. I then personally had to run the card through the system, and the waiter never touched the card. I thought that was a little overkill, until I found out that one of the major sources of credit card “theft” was at restaurants, where the wait staff copies the credit card info when they take the credit card back to “run it through the machine”.

Now the portable card systems are coming to the US, which is great. This was enabled by new technologies. Now if we only can get companies to buy shredders, which have only been available for decades.

Editors Note: The Real Hustle (excellent TV program) had an episode on this, waiters and waitresses can use portable terminals themselves to scam your card, at the table. Please see the following blog entry for a video of this in action:

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/the-real-hustle-credit-card-cloning

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