Thursday, February 21, 2002

Nick Petreley: Identity theft http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47-74_STO68446,00.html Nick Petreley's *Computerworld* column (18 Feb 2002) describes how some unknown person hijacked his phone account and made loads of long-distance calls "at his expense". The saga goes from bad to worse as poor security and company incompetence frustrates his attempts to stop the fraud. [After noticing the frequent calls to Germany, Nick canceled his calling card and switched his long-distance carrier. The person who had been piggybacking on his old card then managed to switch his new account back to the old carrier and make more calls. It turns out that person had created a Web account for him, so that he no longer received statements. The entire saga is a real horror story, and very well worth reading. Lots of lessons to be learned. PGN] ["Anthony W. Youngman" via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 93] 13:05 # G!