Last year, 11.6 million adults fell victim to Identity fraud costing upwards of $37 billion. So, whether or not young adults are among the last to detect Identity Fraud, here are some good pointers to to provide your kids as they head off to college.

• Keep your computer’s (including your phone’s) operating system up to date
• Have your students leave critical documents at home if possible. These include Social Security Cards, Passports, and Birth Certificates.
• Never lend credit cards or debit cards to anyone.
• Make sure they open and read their mail.

Read the whole article here: Young adults among last to detect identity theft

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t add one other pointer… Be sure to shred!

Your friend,

Mike
Head Shredding Guy

Hey Folks,

I would imagine that there isn’t too many still walking around with a PDA. Better yet, how many people even remember what a PDA is? Do you remember the Palm Pilot?

Well here’s a little story…

Once upon a time, long long ago (at least in terms of computing) back in 1986, the very first portable hand held electronic device know as Personal Digital Assistants or PDAs was released upon the public.

These devices were designed to get rid of those old fashioned paper day planners in which you would right down all your appointments and important contacts. And perhaps, if you were so inclined, you would also annotate your own personal information (just in case someone found your day planner – they could return it) and other important information like account numbers and pins.

So these PDAs were able to perform all the same functions as a paper day planner or organizer, but just not as easily or conveniently.

They often included such functions as:

• Appointment calendar
• A to-do list (everyone loves a “to-do” list!)
• An address book
• A Calculator (a very novel idea indeed)
• A memo or “note” program.

These PDA’s would save infinite amounts of time required every year copying all the information over from last years planner. From the busy executive to the average stay at home mom, this was manna from heaven not to mention digital efficiency at its finest. Perfect organization; never again late for an appointment; and no more forgetting important dates like birthdays or anniversaries.

At first, you needed a little stick, known as a stylus, to write on the PDA’s glass screen in order to input your information. These PDAs tried to recognize your handwriting, but as you could probably guess, it never worked as well as writing on paper. After all, half the time we can’t even read our own writing, how in the world is a computer going to read it!

So a virtual keyboard was designed that would appear on the screen and you would tap each virtual key one at a time with your little stick to input your data. Of course this took forever, but at least once that data was put in, you never had to input it again.

Then, a brilliant engineer came up with the idea of adding button onto the face of the PDA in order to facilitate data entry. It didn’t take very long until a full mini keyboard was included on the front of the PDAs to streamline data entry.

Everything was going along just fine until one day someone realized that they were carrying both a cell phone and a PDA. And, as luck would have it, the cell phone had many of the same features as the PDA including contacts and the ever present, tool for all occasions: A Calculator.

So again, one day, another brilliant engineer came up with the idea of combining the PDA and the cell phone. After many years of careful thought, a new device was created to replace the cell phone and the PDA. This device was called the Smart Phone!

Today, it is very hard indeed to find a mere cell phone or a PDA… They are all but extinct. However, it is equally rare to find someone without a Smart Phone. These Smart Phones can now browse the internet, send personal messages, play music, and even play games for hours on end.

Of course Smart Phones can still make phone calls, create a “to-do” list, be used as a calculator, contain an appointment calendar, and create a memo… however they just don’t perform these functions very well. Many times, instead of using your Smart Phone, we still use the old fashioned methods of paper and pen for data functions. And if you want to make a quality phone call where you can actually hear the other person talk, it’s often best not to use your cell phone.

So although PDAs, and now Smart Phones, have not made us any more efficient or less likely to forget an important birthday or anniversary, there is a high likelihood that you did try to input some important sensitive information into that old PDA or even a new Smart Phone.

If that is the case, it might be worth while to get that old PDA shredded to make sure none of that information falls into the wrong hands.

Until next time…

Keep Totally Secure!

Mike
Head Shredding Guy

Finally, an article that puts the argument of Hard Drive Shred Size to bed!

Just a week ago, I about put myself into a coma by trying to explain the impracticality of trying to recover data from a hard drive that had been physically destroyed.

In short… IT’S IMPOSSIBLE

Ok… it is possible… but in the “I’m going to win the Powerball Lottery” kind of way.

It all comes down to how the data on a hard drive is encoded. Each manufacturer encodes their hard drives differently.  Then, to allow for the most data to be stored on these hard drives, the manufacturers are increasing the “areal density” (how tightly the data is encoded) on the drives.

This equates to extremely complex coding unique to each manufacturer.

But isn’t there something that can read the data off a random discarded piece of a hard drive?

In theory… Yes.

There is a process called magnetic force microscopy (MFM) photography that can see the data in its encoded format.

So then all we have to do is decode it – Right?

Well, not so fast.

First, there is the problem of size. Each one of these pictures would have to be saved somewhere for later decoding. For a 20 gigabite hard drive, all these MFM “pictures” would take up approximately 16 terabytes.

Then, here’s the fun part, each picture would then have to “be analyzed by an expert to interpret each bit” of information. Just the idea of this puts the notion of hard drive data recovery in the realms of impossible.

But were not done.

Now we have to know how the hard drive was encoded so we can know how to decode it.

To decode the data it would be necessary to know the manufacturer of the hard drive and the model of the hard drive, in fact. Most likely, one would even need to know the version of the firmware that was used to write the data. Even this information is not enough to decode the data, as one would need access to the manufacturer’s proprietary information concerning how that particular firmware/model drive actually wrote the data to the disk surface.

Still not satisfied that the data on your hard drive is not secure after running it through a hard drive shredder?

So even if we had all the information needed to decode the data, any hard drive that has been physically altered (shredded) will have significant damage to portions of the disks platters that will make the data impossible to retrieve no matter what.

The only response at this point is that data recovery from a physically destroyed hard drive, especially one that is in pieces, is impossible.

So I guess I need to restate my earlier comment…

You probably MORE LIKELY to win the lottery than having the data from a shredded hard drive restored.

To read the full story as published in Storage & Destruction Business magazine, here’s the link:

“Does Size Really Matter?”

As always, if you have any questions about hard drive shredding or have other document destruction concerns, please feel free to give us a call:

(619) 295-5474

Also, I’d love to hear your feedback about this topic in the comments section below.

Until next time… Keep Totally Secure.

Your friend,

Mike
Head Shredding Guy

P.S. I always knew that data recovery from a shredded hard drive was virtually impossible. But that paragraph in quotes above really eliminates the “virtually” part – Don’t ya think?

“Swiper no Swiping, Swiper no Swiping, Swiper no Swiping…”

Anyone who’s raised a child in the last 10 years is most likely familiar with Dora the Explorer and Swiper.

Perhaps the New York City police are familiar (I doubt it) but this week the New York police have indited 111 people and arrested 85 in a two year operation called “Operation Swiper.”

The Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said this is “by far the largest and certainly amongst the most sophisticated identity-theft credit card fraud cases that any of us have ever seen.”

It certainly was a big one…

Apparently “skimmers” were hired “to steal credit card data from customers at restaurants and other businesses” where the info was than transferred onto other credit cards that were supplied overseas from Russia, Libya, Lebanon, and China.

The main items of interest were Apple products due to their easy resale overseas.

In total, $13 million in goods were purchased using this stolen credit card data.

Unfortunately there seems no simple precaution consumers can take to prevent their credit card from being skimmed at a restaurant. I for one, turn over my credit, on a plate (might as well be a silver platter), to my waiter or waitress. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether this person is an accomplice in some identity theft ring.

I suppose one option is to pay with cash at restaurants. However, this is probably not practical for most of us.

The only other thing to do is to keep a close eye on your bank and credit card accounts.

Reviewing your monthly bank and credit card statements in a timely manner is always a good idea.

If you find that your credit card has been compromised. Immediately let your bank or credit card company know. They will cancel your card and send out a new one.

In my experience, I’ve found that they are also really good at getting the money back into your account if there is any dispute.

To read the full story online, here’s the link:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/10/identity-theft-ring-busted.html

In the end, keep vigilant and keep an eye out for Swipers!

Until next time… Keep Totally Secure,

Mike
Head Shredding Guy

Don’t think people are paying attention at the recycling center?

It appears a Charlotte North Carolina doctor recently had to pay out $40,000 for dumping patient files at the local recycling center.

This makes it pretty clear that recycling is not the same as shredding.

1,000 records in 25 boxes containing the personal information of 1,600 patients were dumped by the doctor’s sons in mid-June of 2010.

This comes to a whopping $1,600 per box of records!

Kind-of puts the cost of shredding in perspective doesn’t it? Especially when you could drop off these boxes at a secure shredding facility, such as Total Secure Shredding (for instance), and only pay $4.45 per box. I’d say the total cost of $111.25 for the secure shredding of these 25 boxes pales in comparison to this $40,000 fine.

I’ve personally seen records just dumped off at the recycling center here in good old San Diego. I have to say, not only is this irresponsible with regard to patient information, it also just doesn’t make any sense when you now consider the hefty fines that are being handed out by Attorney Generals.

My rule is simple when it comes to deciding whether to shred or not: When in doubt, shred!

After all, why take a risk with your own identity theft or the identity theft of a patient, client, or employee?

As always, if you have any questions about whether you should shred, please feel free to give me a call.

And until next time… Keep Totally Secure.

Your friend,

Mike
Head Shredding Guy
(619) 295-5474

P.S. Here’s the full article if you’d like to check it out: Doctor pays $40,000 fine for dumping 1,600 patients’ medical records