Tax season is here and that means scammers are working overtime to steal personal data from both individuals and businesses. This is a form of identity theft that can result in false returns, as well as, bogus loans and charges on credit accounts you didn’t open. Let’s look at some of the scams the IRS has seen so you know how to spot them!
In early October, Equifax announced another 2.5 million consumers’ data was stolen bringing the total to 145.5 million people. The data stolen includes names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers, credit card numbers, and in some cases driver’s license numbers. Chances are, most adult Americans were victimized by this data theft. Let’s look at what’s changed, what to do, and how this relates to your home and car insurance.
On Thursday, September 22, Yahoo confirmed data associated with at least 500 million user’s email accounts was breached in 2014 in what may be one of the largest data breaches ever. Some security experts think between 1 billion and 3 billion accounts may have been hacked by cyber criminals who sold the compromised date to an Eastern European nation state.
It’s tax season and you have just over a month to file your taxes! It also means this is a busy time for scammers and identity thieves. Here are a few of the scams taking place.
Two data breaches of government systems have made headlines since late May. One involved the Internal Revenue Service where hackers gained access to 104,000 tax returns. This pales in comparison to the hack of the Office of Personnel Management where the personal data of 21.5 million current and former employees, as well as applicants was breached.
Last week, I introduced 5 home insurance options home owners should consider, but that barely scratches the surface. Depending on the insurance company, there may be up to 2 dozen options, and what would life be without options?! Since no home policy covers everything, these options help tailor the coverage of a policy to the individual needs of each home owner. Here are 5 more options worth knowing about!
Anthem, the second largest health insurance company in the US, announced last week it had been the victim of a massive data breach. The good news appears to be no medical records or credit card data was compromised. The bad news was the names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers of up to 80 million people were compromised which could lead to an even bigger problem than had they simply taken credit card data.
Two huge data breaches made front page news in the past two weeks. Home Depot discovered its systems were compromised in September exposing the data of 56 million credit and debit card holders. The good news, at least for now, is there’s no evidence the personal identification numbers for customer debit cards were compromised.
Credit card fraud and identity theft have been in the news a lot over the last 6 weeks. It all started with the news that Target’s card processing systems were hacked resulting in the unlawful theft of 40 million customers’ account numbers and PINs. This data was sold on various black markets resulting in fraudulent purchases being made with fake credit and debit cards.
Target and news services disclosed late last week the PIN numbers of debit cards were also obtained as a part of the data stolen during the debit and credit card breach at US Target stores from November 27th through December 15th. Security analysts recommend anyone who used their debit card at Target during these dates go ahead and change their PIN number.
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