Privacy settings on Facebook, and the difficulty in understanding their impact, have been the subject of several recent news articles and studies. Setting the Facebook user profile to “private” is the most fundamental step in protecting user information from misuse.

United States Attorney Robert E. O’Neill announces the unsealing of a 15-count indictment charging Allen Gregory Schleicher, a/k/a Gregory Klonowski, (49, Ruskin) with 10 counts of mail fraud, four counts of money laundering, and one count of aggravated identity theft. If convicted, Schleicher faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison for each mail fraud charge, 10 years in federal prison for each money laundering charge, and two years in federal prison, consecutive to any other sentence, for the aggravated identity theft charge.

We’ve been talking about social media and identity theft at ProtectMyID for years and are glad that media outlets like the Wall Street Journal are now covering this topic, too. One recent WSJ piece on the aforementioned subject cited recent studies that show an increase in identity theft in 2011, noting that one of the factors is the vast wealth of information people share on their social media accounts.

In this day and age, many of us have storage units…and many of us couldn’t tell you what is in them. Recently, I was talking with a friend who mentioned that she had gone to her storage unit to get her Social Security card. It was just a causal mention but it set off alarm bells in my head: What other documents did she keep in her storage unit? Did she find her card? Were her sensitive documents and cards in a safe within her storage unit?

Belarusian Operator of International Identity Theft Website Sentenced in Manhattan Federal Court to 33 Months in Prison

Can RFID cards can be “hi-jacked” by use of an unauthorized RFID scanner, thus making the information available for use for fraudulent purposes? Fortunately, it’s not as straight-forward as it sounds.

There’s a great deal of public discussion is currently surrounding credit cards that have RFID technology. Many people don’t know what it is, how it works, or what it is for. In brief, RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification which involves an “RF tag” and a “reader”. These components allow for what they industry calls “contactless payments”. Here’s some background:

With the explosive popularity of smartphones and social media platforms, sharing photos has never been easier. Millions of pictures are uploaded to the web every day, and camera-enabled mobile phones are the perennial top-selling consumer electronic devices. So it’s a safe bet that even more photos will be cropping up on image-hosting communities and personal websites. But what exactly is being shared?

Think back to your first cell phone. Was it the brick model with the thick antenna, a flip phone you thought couldn’t get any better, or a first generation iPhone? Whatever the style, mobile phones have come a long way in the last decade. In fact, they have become so much more than a simple device meant for calling people. With all their conveniences, there is a downside too: an increased risk of identity theft.

Ever lost your cell phone, misplaced it in a crowded place, or left it on a restaurant table? In the old days, the concern was about the expense of the phone and the inconvenience of replacing it. In today's world, it's important to understand the ways your phone could lead to identity theft and the steps you can take today to protect your identity.