Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Online Safety: A Growing Concern

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal published an article detailing the rise and fall of Albert Gonzalez.



Gonzalez was the ringleader of a data breach that siphoned off more than 40 million credit-card numbers from TJXCos. and others in recent years, costing the parent company of the TJ Maxx retail chain about $200 million. The article states:


"Wire fraud, conducted in cyberspace because wire transfers now use networks that connect to the Internet, has exploded in recent years. The Treasury Department recently reported that of the more than 55,000 incidents of wire fraud since 1998, more than half of them occurred in the past two years..."


As an identity theft victim myself, I can certainly state that it is not a joke - and often times there is no easy fix. What you can and should do is protect yourself. Many good ways to empower yourself with useful online safety techniques can be found at girl led website LMK. It has a very helpful Privacy module that you should check out. More importantly however, there is a quiz - which I failed.

Head on over to the quiz and let us know how well you do!

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