New Media: A Wake Up Call

We are becoming an “online” society.
You look at where the news is going these days and it’s obviously headed to the internet, where you can instantly access it. In fact, we are invited to instantly comment on the story or participate in some form of opinion survey or online poll. Not everyone wants your opinion, however. The internet is the latest platform for the criminal element and that want nothing more than to take what you have. We better wake up and recognize that fact before we all suffer some form of irreparable damage.
I got an email Sunday from Customer Relations with Bell Canada, Canada’s largest communications company. It was short and simple: “Dear costumer,” it began, “This e-mail was sent by Bell Canada to notify you that we have temporarily prevented access to your account. We have reasons to believe that your account may have been accessed by someone else. Please verify your details by following the link below…”
Wow, looks important. But I suspected a scam and did some checking (without clicking on the link, by the way) and sure enough found that it was an identity theft scam. Here is the first clue that something is wrong here: the word “costumer” is misspelled. It should be “customer”; not “costumer”. A "costumer" is someone who makes costumes. Then, there was that other thing: “Bell Canada”. I don’t know anybody in Canada and I certainly don’t have any sort of account with them. One can easily see, however, how someone might go ahead and click on the link just to find out what this is all about. Unfortunately, in doing so, you may already be allowing a hacker to cut into your personal information.
I came across this story dated February of 2008. “Bell Canada has become the latest company to fall victim to the growing problem of personal information theft. On Tuesday, the company reported that the personal information of more than 3.4 million customers in Ontario and Quebec had been recovered from the home of a Montreal man. The case highlights a growing problem for businesses, as thieves continue to target large corporations for the personal information stored in their databases. The information could be sold to marketing firms, or used to commit identity theft.”

The story goes on to report that studies released in 2007 by the Ponemon Institute, a research organization specializing in privacy and security, show more than 85 per cent of businesses in the U.S. are estimated to have experienced some sort of data breach within the past two years, and more than 49 per cent of all data breaches come from lost or stolen laptop computers or USB memory cards.

Bell was at a loss to explain how the man in the Montreal case obtained the information found on a computer seized from his home — about 170,000 unlisted and unlisted phone numbers, names and a description of all the Bell services a person subscribes to. Maybe people just gave it to him.

It’s time for consumers to wake up and start being a little smarter about their online use. Here at KRBC, we have a rule: if you personally don’t know who and email is from, don’t open it. If it doesn’t have a “subject” entry, don’t open it. In no circumstance should you download anything that you are suspicious of. Oh, and one final note: if companies have a problem with your account, they will notify you by registered mail, not email.

It’s time to wake up and wise up.