Kudos to Second Life

I commend Second Life on their decision to offer a voluntary verification policy for their members. They are the first big social network to take a step toward adopting this technology.
The way I understand it, if you are a member that has chosen not to be verified you won’t be allowed access [...]

The United States of Attorneys Generals

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Attorneys Generals of all 50 States have joined forces to pressure social networking sites to require greater parental controls and age verification tools so that minors can’t access the sites so easily.
Here’s what Blumenthal had to say:
“These sites say they want to cooperate, but they have resisted [...]

Spotting a Fake ID with Identity Proofing

A reporter at the Arizona Republic recently wrote a great article about the booming fake document market in Arizona, illegal immigrants, identity theft and how business is about to get even bigger. 
The State’s new employer-sanctions law requires verification of worker eligibility through a federal system called the Basic Pilot Program.  The system works to [...]

Identity Verification Countdown

According to this article employers have 120 days to determine (and resolve) discrepancies over Social Security Numbers of employees and matching government records or else face a possible criminal investigation and a 25% increase in fines. The effort is to help crack down on employing illegal immigrants.
DHS issued a regulation that will take effect [...]

YouTube As A Crime Fighting Social Network

Did you hear about the laptop thief in New Zealand who was caught after somebody identified him through a YouTube video?  Apparently someone caught the crime on camera and created a video of it set to the Pink Panther’s theme music and uploaded it to YouTube.  One of the 500,000 viewers recognized the thief and [...]

Punishments for Identity Fraud Crime

The AJC reports today that an Atlanta man has pled guilty for stealing $1.5 million in credit from 225 people. He was sentenced to 3 ½ years in the federal penitentiary.
I commend the officers involved in catching this man, especially because his capture led to the uncovering of a multi-national scam. Many of [...]

Age & ID Verification + KBA = Better Protection on Social Networks

PC World wrote a more in-depth article last week regarding the Facebook news I blogged about here. I was particularly pleased to see this from Chris Kelly in the article:
“It is better to have some sort of verification on the front end and various forms of behavioral verification on the back end,” Kelly said of [...]

What are the Hot Spots for Fraud?

Our friends over at ID Analytics just released a fraud study titled U.S. Identity Fraud Hotspots. The study looks at fraud rates over 2006, as confirmed by businesses not consumer victim reports, and is an update to a report they issued earlier this year which examined identity theft fraud rates by geography from 2005 [...]