4 posts and columns on social security number

Cybercrooks Digging for Tax Data

in News on March 11, 2011 at 1:56 pm PT

It’s tax season, which means cyber-thieves are trawling the Web and sending counterfeit email in the hopes of snaring your personal tax data. And they’ve created websites with reasonable-seeming addresses and legitimate-seeming emails in order to lure unsuspecting citizens into clicking on the wrong link or downloading a virus-laden PDF.

The Information That Is Needed to Identify You: 33 Bits

in News on August 4, 2010 at 9:20 am PT

With more than 6.6 billion people in the world, it’s easy to feel safely anonymous. Many data collectors assure consumers that they don’t collect or store personally identifiable information — things like full names, Social Security numbers or credit-card numbers. But researchers say it’s often possible to identify people even without that information.

eBay Bids to Fix a Security Hole

in Media on August 11, 2009 at 8:47 am PT

See? You don’t just have to be a buzzy social network to suffer through security problems. You can be a relatively staid Web 1.0 giant, too. eBay is warning developers who build programs that incorporate the online marketplace’s engine about a security breach.
shawshank-1

How Social Networking Sites Can Reveal Your Social Security Number

in News on July 9, 2009 at 10:32 am PT

A new study says that mundane information like birthdays and hometowns on social-networking profiles can be used to accurately predict a user’s Social Security number, a key to identity theft.