Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast Episode: Responding to Direct and Indirect Identity Theft Disputes Under the FCRA: What Are The Differences?
Torres Talks Trade Podcast Episode 9 on U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Global Business Identifier program
Phishing: Cybersecurity’s Biggest Threat
Digging Deeper, Episode 1: The Con Queen of Hollywood
Preserving Black History in Bucks County, PA, with Recorder of Deeds Robin Robinson: On Record PR
What is Consumer Fraud and What Deceptions are Employed?
What Companies Should Do to Prepare for Implementation of Cybersecurity Executive Order
In the digital age, identity theft has taken on new and sinister forms, extending beyond the living to the deceased. When a loved one passes away, their identity doesn’t simply vanish; it lingers in both the digital realm and...more
Recently, I attended the 2024 Summer Meeting for the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) in Toronto. While there I presented to ACTEC’s Digital Property Committee on ghost hacking. Ghost hacking is when a...more
A U.S. district court in the Eastern District of New York recently denied a motion for summary judgment filed by a credit card issuer because the plaintiff alleged identity theft and a reasonable factfinder could determine...more
The FCC has significantly expanded telecommunications carriers’ data breach notification and reporting obligations. Telecommunications carriers, including Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, and telecommunications...more
I have received many questions this week on what to do if you are the victim of a fraudulent unemployment claim. It is unbelievable how many people I know who have become victims—yes—including myself....more
On March 3, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), in a 5-4 ruling, agreed with the State of Kansas that it could use the state’s identity theft statutes to prosecute three separate criminal cases where the...more
Tax identity theft continues to be a significant problem for taxpayers. Tax identity theft occurs when criminals use the personal information of individuals and file fraudulent tax returns before the taxpayer does, requesting...more
With data breaches becoming a common event throughout the world, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) has been undertaking a number of initiatives aimed at enhancing its security of taxpayer information and preventing the...more
Synthetic identity fraud (SIF) is a recent phenomenon that scammers have used to circumvent the increasing awareness of traditional identity fraud. Instead of stealing a real person’s identity as with traditional identity...more
The Security Summit, consisting of the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”), state tax agencies, and private-sector tax industry officials, is encouraging tax professionals during the 2019 summer season to take some time to...more
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced the development of a portal that would allow financial institutions to join a planned real-time electronic system for verifying the identity of credit applicants. ...more
Last week was National Consumer Protection Week. In celebration of that, this post is devoted to protection from tax identity theft. ...more
As tax season winds on, the W-2 form scam has emerged as one of the most dangerous and common phishing email schemes during this time of year....more
State AGs - Coalition of AGs Asks Social Security Administration to Establish Database of SSNs to Combat ID Theft - Forty-three state AGs sent a letter to acting Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Nancy...more
The Social Security Administration (SSA) recently announced that, by spring 2019, it will begin notifying each employer (and third-party payroll company) that has submitted at least one Form W-2 that contains name and Social...more
Atrium Health and its vendor AccuDoc Solutions have released a joint announcement this week that AccuDoc’s database of 2.6 million billing records of Atrium Health’s patients has been compromised by a hacking incident....more
We all know that it is important to protect our social security number. But sometimes companies still try to use the last four digits of our social security numbers as identifiers or to verify identity in some way....more
Social Security Numbers (“SSN”) were originally established by the Social Security Administration to track earnings and eligibility for Social Security benefits. Because a SSN is a unique personal identifier that rarely...more
In a recent Public Service Announcement dated February 21, 2018 entitled “Increase in W-2 Phishing Campaigns,” the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) issued another alert about an increase in phishing campaigns since the...more
This writer has been lamenting for years about the fact that Medicare recipients’ Social Security numbers are included on the face of the card. This is an unnecessary risk posed to Medicare recipients, which are primarily...more
Tax returns and W-2s are information rich documents. Among other things they contain the name and Social Security Number of an employee, as well as information concerning their salary and address, and personal behavior and...more
Employers beware: Companies are experiencing a wave of phishing scams that target employee paychecks. Here is the scenario: An employee receives from a company email account e-mail that mimics a familiar and trusted company...more
As employers prepare to send employees their W-2s for last year by the end of the month, cybercriminals are preparing phishing emails under the guise of company executives requesting personal information on employees. The IRS...more
The IRS is putting an increased emphasis on identity theft protections for business returns as a result of an increase in fraudulent business tax returns in recent years. The IRS will be asking tax professionals to gather...more
HR and payroll professionals nationwide have been, and will continue to be, targeted with e-mails apparently sent by a senior executive but actually sent by scammers who ask for a prompt reply with the 2016 W-2s for all of...more