Medical Information Bureau (MIB)

If you have a Medical Identity Theft issue, you may need to contact the MIB about your records. Information on how to do that is here on their website where they describe themselves and their mission:

http://www.mib.com/html/consumer_protection.html

Dead but not because of Identity Theft

This is not an Identity Theft article but it could have been. I have met and trained people who were listed as Deceased on their credit reports. A dead person can be a good target for an Identity Thief.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/19/MNAI1CI0SC.DTL&nopu=1

Being dead can be a real drag, especially if you're alive.

Just ask Doris Temple, 85, a Navy veteran who learned in January that the government had declared her deceased. Strongly suspecting an error, she protested, but not before she lost her health insurance and thousands of dollars in income - Social Security benefits as well as private insurance and pension payments.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/19/MNAI1CI0SC.DTL&nopu=1#ixzz0ieRPBRcR

Identity Theft is a very complex issue

This is an excellent article illuminating the complexity of the Identity Theft Issue although that is not the primarly focus of the article:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/05/cyberattack.prosecute/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Some interesting quotes:

...the whole get-the-bad-guys effort, while it makes for good drama, is a futile way to secure the Internet, some computer security experts say.

...On Wednesday, Spanish authorities announced the arrests of three men in connection with a "botnet" network of nearly 13 million infected computers, which is believed to be one of the largest in the world. The infected network, called Mariposa, or "butterfly" in Spanish, was used to steal financial or personal information from people in at least 190 countries.

...The people who actually write these programs -- the keys to cybercrime -- are almost impossible to catch and prosecute....

...Lindner said it's unclear if the authors of malicious code are doing anything illegal.

..."The U.S. doesn't have jurisdiction on the [entire] planet Earth, so even if you can identify the author [of the malicious program], that doesn't give us the legal authority to get him, one, and two, it's not clear he's committing a crime," he said. "It's not illegal to write bad software. It's illegal to use it."

I'll end with this quote as it relates directly to the purpose of my blog and my profession

"The weak link in all this is still the user education," he said.

Feel free to contact me for information on protecting yourself, your company or your government agency. And please also share this blog address. Thank you.