scams

Update at 9:30 a.m. PST: A new chart has been added to the end of the article.

This was originally published in ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Identity theft cases surged in 2008, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Last year, ID theft was by far the biggest complaint to the FTC, representing 26 percent of total problems reported. The next biggest one--third-party and creditor debt collection scams--represented only 9 percent of complaints.

The FTC's annual Consumer Sentinel Network report (PDF), released Thursday, details that ID theft complaints totaled nearly 314,000 in 2008, up from about … Read more

MobileMe users are being targeted by a phishing scam.

Users of MobileMe, which automatically sends e-mail, contacts, and calendar events to your computer, iPhone, or iPod, have been receiving a new e-mail that looks like it comes from Apple. It warns that attempts to renew the MobileMe subscription have failed because of a problem with charging the credit card and prompts the recipient to log in and update information on a site that looks legitimate but is not, Macworld reported on Wednesday.

A similar phishing scam targeting MobileMe users was discovered in August, according to Macworld.

Tips for MobileMe users … Read more

I just got my digital TV converter box. I'm planning on dumping Comcast, and this is the first step. The next is either DSL or Clearwire or something--anything--but the "traffic shaping" cable giant's offers. In shopping around, I've noticed that many broadband sellers (Comcast included) are offering a special price and, if you sign up for a two-year contract, the ability to lock that price in for life.

Sounds good, right? $29.99 for broadband, from now till you switch carriers, even if their prices go up. The thing is, it's not a great deal.… Read more

Within the past 30 minutes, I have received Twitter follower notifications from a couple of high-profile Twitterers, or so it would seem.

The subject line of one reads "Duncan Riley is now following you on Twitter!" Upon clicking through to the profile, it's obvious that this is not the Duncan Riley that we know from The Inquisitr, but rather an impostor trying to cash in on affiliate rewards from the sale of the book, 5 Steps to Twitter Success. According to the book's site, which I am not going to link to here, it is authored … Read more

If you are one of those people who is never surprised at how silly people can be, then perhaps you will find this story dull.

However, for the rest of us hopeful humans, the story of Shane Symington leaves us clutching our lattes a little too tightly and screaming a little too loud.

Shane appears to be a somewhat lonely U.K. mailman who went on MySpace looking for company. He found it in Angela Gates. She chatted to him for several weeks before revealing that she needed money to help with her mother's medical and funeral expenses.

For … Read more

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez wasn't really high on crack this morning, and the reason his Twitter feed said so wasn't the phishing scam that's been going around--it was a lone hacker, the microblogging service said later on Monday.

"The issue with these 33 accounts is different from the Phishing scam aimed at Twitter users this weekend," a post on the Twitter blog explained. "These accounts were compromised by an individual who hacked into some of the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the e-mail address associated with their … Read more

Clarification: Twitter has clarified that this incident was the work of a hacker and separate from the phishing scheme.

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez is one of the most popular users on microblogging service Twitter, with nearly 40,000 followers and a Twitterholic rank in the top 20. Unfortunately for Sanchez, it looks like he fell victim to the phishing scam that has been plaguing the popular service for several days now.

In a "tweet" that has since been deleted, Sanchez's account displayed the message "i am high on crack right now might not be coming into … Read more

A new report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group is yet another reminder of the information security threats we all face. This latest publication states that the number of compromised URLs used to distribute malicious code nearly tripled in the 12-month period from July 2007 through July 2008.

This data, along with similar research from McAfee, RSA Security, Symantec, and Trend Micro, demonstrate that the bad guys are taking advantage of the global recession with an increase in attack volume and sophistication. Certainly, security professionals recognize this unsettling trend, and according to ESG Research data, security remains a top IT priority … Read more

Think you can spot the difference between a legitimate e-mail and a phishing scam sitting in your in-box? According to one security vendor, many people can't.

The SonicWall Phishing and Spam IQ Quiz test presents a series of e-mails that may or may not be from PayPal, Wells Fargo, the IRS, and others. Test takers must decide whether the e-mail is a phishing attempt, legitimate, or provide no answer. Afterward, a score card is presented and if any questions were missing, there's an opportunity to see why: A page opens up identifying the clues that should have told … Read more