I've Been Mugged

Identity Theft Humor

There are some really funny identity-theft cartoons at the Daryle Cagle Cartoonists Index site. Here's one:

Interested In Identity Theft And Identity Fraud?

More humor inspired by the ridiculously witty Indexed blog. I hope that you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed writing it:

Women More Likely Than Men To Give Passwords To Strangers For Chocolate

When I read this news story, at first I thought that it was a humorous hoax. But, it's no joke. This is serious. According to InformationWeek:

"Women are four times more likely than men to surrender their computer passwords for chocolate, according to a survey of 576 office workers conducted outside Liverpool Street Station in London by Infosecurity Europe. According to the survey, 45% of women revealed their passwords to strangers posing as market researchers for a chocolate bar, compared to 10% of men. Apparently the overall percentage of password-yielding respondents this year (21%) represents an improvement over 2007, when 64% of respondents traded their security for a few moments of chocolaty goodness."

I spent part of a summer in 2004 living and working in London. I found the people there very friendly and a wide variety of great pubs. I'd love to visit London again. In fact, my photo in the right column is from my London Tube pass.

Claire Sellick, Event Director of Infosecurity Europe, emphasized the consequences of a lax attitude towards the security of personal data:

"... that promise of a trip could cost you dear, as once a criminal has your date of birth, name and phone number they are well on the way to carrying out more sophisticated social engineering attacks on you, such as pretending to be from your bank or phone company and extracting more valuable information that can be used in ID theft or fraud."

Do Consumers Pay Attention To What's Important?

A friend recently confided with me that while she would like to read I've Been Mugged more often, she didn't because identity theft is too scary. I can understand how she feels. After thinking about her comment, I developed the chart below:

Help Name The DHS Privacy Pig

The Wired Privacy, Security, Politics, and Crime Online blog seeks name suggestions for the Department of Homeland Security's new "Privacy Pig:"

"Homeland Security's Privacy Chief Hugo Teufel III likes THREAT LEVEL more than we could ever have imagined. On Wednesday, at a press conference at the 2008 National Fusion Center Conference Wednesday, Teufel gave us a pig. A pink, squishy pig with wings and sunglasses. We assume the Privacy Office created the flying pig as a way to publicize or remind people about  its Privacy Incident Handling Guidance booklet. PIHG, get it?"

Several people have already posted names. The new DHS Privacy Pig:

The Word From Colbert: AT& Treason

Stephen Colbert shares his rationale about the issue of retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies. His logic is undeniable:

Congratulations, You're A Winner!

More humor inspired by the ridiculously witty Indexed blog. I hope that you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed writing it:

Top 10 Strangest and Funniest Data Disasters

From the Ontrack Physorg site:

"10. PhD Almost an F -- A PhD candidate lost his entire dissertation when a bad power supply suddenly zapped his computer and damaged the USB Flash drive that stored the document. Had the data not been recovered, the student would not have graduated."

"9. Suffering from Art -- While rearranging her home office, a woman accidentally dropped a five pound piece of clay pottery on her laptop, directly onto the hard drive area that contained a book she'd been working on for five years and 150 year-old genealogy pictures that had not yet been printed."

"7. Bite Worse than Bark -- A customer left his memory stick lying out and his dog mistook it for a chew toy. Ontrack was able to recover all of the data despite teeth marks all over the stick and a hole that went completely through."

Enjoy! Do you have a funny or strange ID-theft story or lost data story? We'd love to hear it.

Will They Ever Learn?

More humor inspired by the ridiculously witty Indexed blog, by the TJX/TJ Maxx data breach, and by the recent UK data breach. I hope that you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed writing it:

Breaches

Most of us begin every new year with resolutions... habits we'd like to change, stop, or start. While considering resolutions for 2008, I thought about changes I'd like to see regarding data breaches, data security, and identity protection. This inspired the poem below (with sincere apologies to the great American poet, Joyce Kilmer).

Breaches

I think that I will never see
A month pass that's data-breach free.

No unencrypted WiFi feeds
By retail chains' focus on greed;

No stolen past employee files,
That firms claim were "lost" for a while;

No stolen backup data tapes,
Spawning breach notices that make

People pay to lock credit files,
Or add fraud alerts for awhile;

One-year offers of free credit
monitoring -- what a poor fit!

People like me would love to see,
Lifetime credit monitoring for free.

Have Laptop, Will Lose Personal Data

More humor inspired by the ridiculously witty Indexed blog and by The Home Depot data breach. I hope that you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed writing it:

Happy Holidays!

First, I'd like to welcome all of the new readers to I've Been Mugged. If you want to know more about why I started this blog, read the first post.

Second, I'd like to wish everyone an enjoyable and safe Christmas, holiday season, and happy New Year! If you live in a cold climate and like to snow sculptures, then this Calvin & Hobbes comic strip is definitely worth a read. Enjoy!

I am going to take a break and enjoy the holidays with family. Posts will resume on Wednesday January 2, 2008.

Holiday Humor

Happy holidays and enjoy:

Far From Reality

More humor inspired by the ridiculously witty Indexed blog and by IBM's credit monitoring offer:

Lost

More humor inspired by the ridiculously witty Indexed blog. I hope that you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed writing it:

Great Expectations

For humor this week, I'm exploring a different format inspired by the ridiculously witty Indexed blog. I hope that you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed writing it:

Dilbert Promoted To The Boss

For years, Scott Adams has made fun of bosses in his Dilbert comic strip. Now, the tables have turned and Mr. Adams is the boss. What company was Adams promoted at? The details are available in a New York Times article. Or you can read the My Pointed Haired Ways post at the Dilbert blog.

To celebrate Adams' promotion, I thought it appropriate to share some of Dilbert's advice about corporate data security -- which probably applies also to many companies' data breach notification plans:

Elder To Comcast: It's Hammer Time!

I imagine that all of us, at one time or another, have received the run-around on the phone by incompetent customer service representatives. This Washington Post story was too good to pass up:

"Shaw storms in the company's office. BAM! She whacks the keyboard of the customer service rep. BAM! Down goes the monitor. BAM! She totals the telephone. People scatter, scream, cops show up and what does she do? POW! A parting shot to the phone!"

" 'They cuffed me right then,' she says."

"Her take on Comcast: "'What a bunch of sub-moronic imbeciles.'"

While parts of Shaw's story may seem humorous, it really isn't funny. Shaw's story really resonated with me. First, the staff in the Comcast office assumed that because Shaw and her husband are elders that they could push them around: ignore them and leave them sitting outside the office in the sun in August.

Second, I've had my own problems this week with Comcast: snowy cable TV reception TV channels which shut off intermittently. Not one but three Comcast technicians arrived Wednesday evening (after Comcast sent a confirmation that a technician would arrive between 11am - 2pm) to fix the problems. My TV service is better, but the reception still gets snowy at times on some channels. I thought that the chief benefit of cable is better TV reception versus over-the-air broadcasts.

I think that I'll spend more time at the Comcast Must Die blog, especially since Comcast practices Internet data discrimination by arbitrarily blocking some customers' usage.

After reading the Washington Post article, I began to wonder if the poor data security efforts by many companies to protect the sensitive personal data of former employees is also rooted in the same ageism Shaw experienced. What do you think?

Data Breach Humor

This item was too funny not to share. I hope that this flow does not describe how Information Technology and Human Resource executives within companies actually analyze data breaches which expose the personal data of employees and former employees:

Identity Theft Humor

Reactions to IBM's data breach notification seem to vary. This June 26, 2007 post by Shelby was too entertaining not to mention:

"Staying on the sunny side of life, IBM informed me that the information had not surfaced anywhere and that it was in such a format that it required specialized equipment to access it. They also assured me that according to their extensive investigation, the information had simply been lost, not stolen. And also, they were really, really sorry about it. In exchange for being dumbasses, they have offered me a free year's membership in a credit monitoring service, which I accepted. The service looks pretty cool, and I bet [Kroll] threw a huge party when they got the IBM deal. I didn't have to provide any kind of payment information and the service would not be automatically renewed after IBM stopped paying, but of course I'm welcome to continue their service should I choose after my free period expires. Thanks IBM!"

I know how Shelby feels. IBM's carelessness has inconvenienced us both in time and money. Plus, the risk window (during which an identity thief could sell, resell, and/or abuse our personal data) extends far beyond IBM's one year of free credit monitoring offer. Thanks IBM!

Next entry: Opt-out Resources for Consumers (Part 2)