7 Steps to Secure Profitable Business Data (Part I)

Everybody wants your data. Why? Because it’s profitable, it’s relatively easy to access and the resulting crime is almost impossible to trace. Take, for example, Sony PlayStation Network, Citigroup, Epsilon, RSA, Lockheed and several other businesses that have watched helplessly in the past months as more than 100 million customer records have been breached, ringing up billions in recovery costs and reputation damage. You have so much to lose.

To scammers, your employees’ Facebook profiles are like a user’s manual about how to manipulate their trust and steal your intellectual property. To competitors, your business is one poorly secured smartphone from handing over the recipe to your secret sauce. And to the data spies sitting near you at Starbucks, you are one unencrypted wireless connection away from wishing you had taken the steps in this two-part article.

Every business is under assault by forces that want access to customer databases, employee records, intellectual property, and ultimately, your bottom line. Research is screaming at us—more than 80% of businesses surveyed have already experienced at least one breach and have no idea of how to stop a repeat performance. Combine this with the average cost to repair data loss, a stunning $7.2 million per incident (both statistics according to the Ponemon Institute), and you have a profit-driven mandate to change the way you protect information inside of your organization. “But the risk inside of my business,” you say, “would be no where near that costly.” Let’s do the math.

A Quick and Dirty Way to Calculate Your Business’s Data Risk

Here is a quick ROI formula for your risk: Add up the total number of customer, employee and vendor database records you collect that contain any of the following pieces of information – name, address, email, credit card number, SSN, Tax ID Number, phone number, address, PIN – and multiply that number by $250 (a conservative average of the per record cost of lost data). So, if you have identifying information on 10,000 individuals, your out-of-pocket expenses (breach recovery, notification, lawsuits, etc.) are estimated at $2.5 million even if you don’t lose a SSN or TIN. And that cost doesn’t necessarily factor in the public relations and stock value damage done when you make headlines in the papers.

In an economy where you already stretch every resource to the limit, you need to do more with less. Certain solutions have a higher return on investment. Start with these 7 Steps to Secure Profitable Business Data.

  1. Start with the humans. One of the costliest data security mistakes I see companies make is to only approach data privacy from the perspective of the company. But this ignores a crucial reality: All privacy is personal. In other words, no one in your organization will care about data security, privacy policies, intellectual property protection or data breach until they understand what it has to do with them.Strategy: Give your people the tools to protect themselves personally from identity theft. In addition to showing them that you care (a good employee retention strategy), you are developing a privacy language and framework that can be easily adapted to business. Once your people understand opting out, encryption and identity monitoring from a personal standpoint, it’s a short leap to apply that to your customer databases, physical documents and intellectual property. Start with the personal and expand into the professional. It’s like allowing people to put on their own oxygen masks before taking responsibility for those next to them. For an example of how the Department of Homeland Security applied this strategy, take a look at the short video.
  2. Immunize against social engineering. The root cause of most data loss is not technology; it’s a human being who makes a costly miscalculation out of fear, obligation, confusion, bribery or sense of urgency. Social engineering is the craft of manipulating information out of humans by pushing buttons that elicit automatic responses. Data thieves push these buttons for highly profitable ends, including spear-phishing, social networking fraud, unauthorized building access, and computer hacking.Strategy: Immunize your workforce against social engineering. First, when asked for information, they should immediately apply a healthy dose of professional skepticism. Train them to automatically assume that the requestor is a spy of some sort. Second, teach them to take control of the situation. If they didn’t initiate the transfer of information (e.g., someone official approaches them for login credentials), have them stop and think before they share. Finally, during this moment of hesitation, empower them to ask a series of aggressive questions aimed at exposing fraud. When we do this type of training, whether it is for the Department of Defense, a Fortune 50 or a small business, the techniques are the same. You have to make a game out of it, make it interesting, interactive and fun. That’s how people learn. For an example of fraud training in action, visit www.Sileo.com/fun-fraud.

You will notice that the first 2 Steps have nothing to do with technology or what you might traditionally associate with data security. They have everything to do with human behavior. Failing to begin with human factor, with core motivations and risky habits, will almost certainly guarantee that your privacy initiatives will fail. You can’t simply force a regime of privacy on your company. You need to build a coalition; you need to instill a culture of privacy, one security brick at a time.

Once you have acknowledged the supreme importance of obtaining buy-in from your employees and training them as people first, data handlers second, then you can move on to the next 5 Steps to Secure Profitable Business Data.

John Sileo, the award-winning author of Privacy Means Profit, delivers keynote speeches on identity theft, data security, social media exposure and weapons of influence. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer, Homeland Security, Blue Cross, the FDIC and hundreds of corporations, organizations and associations of all sizes. Learn more at www.ThinkLikeASpy.com.

7 Data Theft Hotspots for Meeting Professionals

Everybody wants your data, especially when you are in the business of meetings. Your data doesn’t just have a high face value (e.g., the attendee data, including credit card numbers that you collect and store in your online registration system), it also has a high resale value .

Here is how the theft is most often committed in your industry:

  • Competitors hire one of your employees and they leave with a thumb drive full of confidential files, including client lists, personally identifying information on talent and employees, financial performance data, etc.
  • Social engineers (con artists) mine your employee’s Facebook profiles to gain a heightened level of trust which allows them to manipulate your human assets
  • Cyber criminals hack your lax computer network or sniff the unprotected wireless connections you and your employees use while traveling (Starbucks, hotels, airports).
  • Mobile Computing Thieves target your digital devices (Laptop, smartphone, tablet) and other weak points while on the road.
  • Opportunistic Vendors (Cleaning services, painters, landlords) quietly collect data assets from your desks, filing cabinets, trash cans and dumpsters when you aren’t even in the office.

Research is screaming at us—more than 80% of businesses surveyed have already experienced at least one breach (average recovery cost according to the Ponemon Institute: $7.2 million) and have no idea of how to stop a repeat performance.

A Quick and Dirty Way to Calculate Your Risk as a Meeting Professional

Here is a quick ROI formula for your risk: Multiply the number of attendees, employees and executives for whom you store any one of the following pieces of sensitive identity – name, address, email, credit card number, SSN, TIN, phone number – and multiply that by $240 (the industry average per record of lost data). So, if you have identifying information on 1,000 individuals, your out-of-pocket expenses (breach recovery, notification, lawsuits, etc.) are estimated at $240,000 even if you don’t lose a SSN or TIN. That is not a guess, those are real numbers.

As agencies who already stretch every resource to the limit just to stay in the game, you need to do more with less. I can’t possibly give you all of the answers to protecting your bureau or management company in a simple article, but I’d like to share 7 Data Theft Hotspots that you should address first.

  1. Start with the humans. One of the costliest data security mistakes I see departments make is thinking that this is a problem for large businesses only. It is a big problem for large businesses, but data theft is far more damaging to governmental organizations because of the increased regulation and legal scrutiny. Strategy: Give your people the tools to protect themselves personally from identity theft. In addition to showing them that you care (a good employee retention strategy), you are developing a privacy language that can be applied at work without spending all kinds of money on a security risk assessment. Once they understand opting out, encryption and identity monitoring from a personal standpoint, it’s a short leap to apply that to your attendee databases and intellectual property. You can do this in very simple, inexpensive ways. While this doesn’t necessarily train them on the specific tools to protect your bureau’s intellectual capital and customer data, it does increase their awareness of data theft and shows them that their self-interest is involved (i.e., their job depends on it). To get them started on protecting themselves, you are welcome to use this free Identity Theft Prevention Checklist.
  2. Immunize against social engineering. The root cause of most data loss in professional services companies like yours is not technology; it’s a human being who makes a costly miscalculation out of fear, obligation, confusion, bribery or sense of urgency. Social engineering is the craft of manipulating information out of you or your staff by pushing buttons that elicit automatic responses. Data thieves push these buttons for highly profitable ends, including spear-phishing, social networking fraud, unauthorized building access, and computer hacking. Strategy: Immunize your employees against social engineering. First, when asked for information, they should immediately apply a healthy dose of professional skepticism (Hogwash J). Train them to automatically assume that the requestor is a spy of some sort. Second, teach them to take control of the situation. If they didn’t initiate the transfer of information (e.g., the credit card company called you, not vice versa), have them stop and think before they share. Finally, during this moment of hesitation, empower them to ask a series of aggressive questions aimed at exposing fraud. This is the key – getting them to be curious in the face of a request for sensitive information. These are some of the materials that I went through in an abbreviated fashion during IASB, but you can communicate them just as well as I can.
  3. Stop broadcasting your digital data. There are two main sources of wireless data leakage in the meeting professionals world: the weakly encrypted wireless router in your office and the unprotected wireless connection you use to access the Internet in an airport, hotel or café. Both connections are constantly sniffed for unencrypted data being sent from your computer to the web. Strategy: Stop trying to keep your computer and network security in house and inexpensive – it is part of the costs of owning all of that processing power. Have a security professional configure the wireless router in your office to utilize WPA-2 encryption or better. If possible, implement MAC-specific addressing and mask your SSID. Don’t try to do this yourself. Instead, just hand a qualified technician this paragraph and continue to do what you do best (booking me J) while she earns your wisely spent dollars. While she’s there, have him do a security audit of your network, including firewall penetration, password strength, user-level access permissions, etc.Another major source of data theft (especially in the meetings industry) is Wi-Fi hotspot usage. Most Free hotspots do little to protect the data that you transmit over the wireless network. In fact, many home and company wireless networks are not set up to provide a secure connection to the internet and are, therefore, no safer than those you access for free in cafés, airports and hotels. Just say no to using free Wi-Fi hotspots, on your phone and your laptop. The most common form of exploitation associated with hotspots are “man-in-the-middle” attacks where a spy intercepts the transmission between your wireless network card and the cafés wireless router or modem. Using a legal, free and simple-to-use tool like Firesheep, a thief (or competitor/law enforcement, etc.) can sit next to you in a café and “sniff” your connections. Luckily, your Smartphone can provide a proactive way to help you protect your connection to the Internet when surfing wirelessly. Strategy: Tethering connects your computer to the Internet using a Smartphone (or Internet-enabled cell phone). It increases security because the mobile transmission between your cell phone and the cell tower is encrypted (scrambled) and hard to intercept. Therefore, when you use your Smartphone to surf the web, you are accessing a protected connection that probably can’t be sniffed. The connection might be slightly slower than a traditional Wi-Fi hotspot, but it is also much safer. Simply call your wireless provider and ask them if your Smartphone has tethering capabilities. You shouldn’t have to pay more than about $15 per month to put this solution into affect. Remember to do it for all company Smartphones as well.
  4. Eliminate the inside spy. Chances are you don’t always perform a very serious background check before hiring a new employee. That is short sighted, as most of the worst data theft ends up being an “inside job” where a dishonest employee siphons information out the back door when no one is looking. Many employees who are dishonest now were also dishonest in the past, which is why they no longer work for their former employer. Strategy: Invest in a comprehensive background check before you hire rather than wasting multiples cleaning up after a thief steals valuable data assets. Follow up on the prospect’s references and ask for some that aren’t on the application. Investigating someone’s background will give you the knowledge necessary to let your gut-level instinct go to work and will discourage dishonest applicants from going further in the process. Finally, make sure that the prospect you are employing knows that you are going to these lengths to check them out. Most people who are trying to gain employment in order to defraud you are scared away when they know you are investigating them.
  5. Don’t let your mobile data walk away. In the most trusted research studies, 36-50% of all major data breach originates with the loss of a laptop or mobile computing device (smart phone, etc.). Mobility, consequently, is a double-edged sword; but it’s a sword that we’re probably not going to give up easily in the high-travel world of the bureau and meetings industry. Strategy: Utilize the security professional mentioned above to implement strong passwords, whole disk encryption and remote data wiping capabilities. Set your screen saver to engage after 5 minutes of inactivity and check the box that requires you to enter your password upon re-entry. This will help keep unwanted users out of your system. Finally, lock this goldmine of data down when you aren’t using it. Either carry the computer on your person in a backpack, store it in the hotel room safe, or lock it in an office or fire safe when not using it. Physical security is the most overlooked, most effective form of protection and for people who travel as much as you do, it’s a major risk.
  6. Spend a day in your dumpster. You have probably already purchased at least one shredder to destroy sensitive documents before they are thrown out. The problem tends to be that no one in the business uses it consistently. Strategy: Take a day to pretend that you are your fiercest competitor and sort through all of the trash going out your door for sensitive documents. Do you find old W9s, invoices, credit card receipts, bank statements, customer lists, trade secrets, employee records or otherwise compromising information? It’s not uncommon to find these sources of data theft, and parading them before your staff is a great way to drive the importance of privacy home. If your employees know that you conduct occasional “dumpster audits” to see what company intelligence they are unsafely throwing away, they will think twice about failing to shred the next document. Also, check to make sure that these same documents are locked in a filing cabinet, safe or password-protected electronic format.
  7. Anticipate the clouds. Cloud computing (when you store your data on other people’s servers), is quickly becoming a major threat to the security of organizational data. Whether an employee is posting sensitive attendee info on their Facebook page (which Facebook has the right to distribute as they see fit) or you are storing meetings data in a poorly protected, non-compliant server farm, you will ultimately be held responsible when that data is breached. Strategy: Spend a few minutes evaluating your business’s use of cloud computing by asking these questions: Do you understand the cloud service provider’s privacy policy (e.g. that the government reserves the right to subpoena your Gmails for use in a court of law)? Do you agree to transfer ownership or control of rights in any way when you accept the provider’s terms of service (which you do every time you log into the service)? What happens if the cloud provider (Salesforce.com, Google Apps) goes out of business or is bought out? Is your data stored locally, or in another country that would be interested in stealing your secrets (China, Iran, Russia)? Are you violating any compliance laws by hosting customer data on servers that you don’t own, and ultimately, don’t control?

This is a very quick overview of some of the risks that I see as most pressing for meeting professionals. Here’s the good news… your espionage and data theft countermeasures don’t need to be sophisticated or expensive to be effective. Targeting the hotspots above is a savvy, incremental way to keep spies out of your agency. But it won’t start working until you do.

John Sileo speaks professionally on identity theft, social media exposure and online reputation and is the award-winning author of the newly released Privacy Means Profit. His clients include the Department of Defense, the FDIC, FTC, Pfizer and the Federal Reserve Bank. Learn more about bringing him in to motivate your organization to better protect information assets and develop information leaders.

 

13 Data Security Tips for Meeting Professionals – SGMP

I just finished delivering a keynote speech for the Society of Government Meeting Professionals (SGMP) at their annual convention on identity theft and protecting data in the meetings industry. Data security is a top concern in this industry because it is probably one of the most highly-targeted groups for identity theft, social media fraud, data breach and social engineering. Here’s why:

  1. Meeting professionals collect, store and transmit massive amounts of private data on attendees
  2. Data theft risk skyrockets when travel is involved, which is a frequent occurrence for meeting planners and professionals
  3. Meeting professionals are busy nearly 24 hours a day once they are onsite for the conference or meeting, meaning that they are highly distracted
  4. A single data breach of attendee data can put the organization responsible for the event out of business due to excessive costs and tight compliance regulations
  5. Conferences are generally collections of highly professional, highly valuable attendees who travel with laptops, sensitive intellectual property, smartphones, unsecured WiFi connections, etc.

Meeting professionals have enormous responsibilities throughout every stage of the planning process. Identity thieves target conferences because of the sheer quantity and value of data circulating around these events. Protecting sensitive attendee data before, during and after the event has become not only a nicety, but a necessity. Data stolen during the planning, execution or clean-up phases of your event can hamstring your organization with financial liabilities and a public relations nightmare. Start by taking these steps:

Meeting Security Before the Event

  • Secure Your Online Reservation System. If you are going to use online registration, invest in a system that delivers not only efficiency, but security. It is your legal, financial and ethical responsibility to protect your attendees’ personal information. Don’t try to do it all yourself. Hire a reputable technology provider to ensure that your data is protected behind firewalls, encryption, passwords, updated operating systems, security software and safe wireless.
  • Educate Attendees. Before they ever begin their travels, attendees should read through a quick 2-minute tip sheet on how to protect themselves while going to a conference. Simply making them aware of some of the risks that exist traveling (laptop theft, unprotected WiFi, smartphone hijacking, etc.) will cause them to pay greater attention on-site.
  • Minimize Data Collection. Collect only the data that you absolutely need and destroy it as soon as you are finished. Once you have processed credit cards, purge that information from your system. The quicker that you properly dispose of sensitive data, the lower your risk and liability.
  • Minimize Physical Files. Take as few physical files with you to the event (attendee lists, etc.) as these are easily misplaced when traveling and distracted. The more that you can keep behind a password protected, encrypted computer, the better.

Meeting Security Traveling to the Event

  • Protect Your Laptop. Almost 50% of serious corporate data theft occurs because a laptop computer is stolen. In addition to the standard forms of protection (passwords, encryption, anti-virus, etc.), carry as little data on your laptop as possible. And never leave the laptop unattended unless it is locked in your hotel room safe. Identity thieves target business travelers because they are generally rushed, distracted and carrying valuable data.
  • Think Twice about Free Wi-Fi. It is very convenient (and dangerous) to use a free wireless connection to the Internet provided by an airport, café or hotel. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to distinguish if you are on a safe network or one that allows thieves to pirate your information. Unless you are absolutely sure about the security in place, refrain from sending any sensitive material over a wireless connection that your IT department hasn’t configured or approved.

Meeting Security Onsite

  • Educate Attendees. Make frequent announcements at the start of each segment of your programming to remind attendees that they should not leave purses, laptops or files unattended. In addition, warn them to take care of their belongings in pre-conference material and encourage them to leave as much sensitive data at home or in the office as possible.
  • Room Monitors. Have room monitors that check badges as attendees are entering the room and that monitor purses and laptops that are left in the room during breaks (even if you warn people, some will still leave items). Make sure that you announce that room monitors are watching so that you let any would-be opportunists know that someone is watching. Just this one piece of information should discourage theft.
  • Control Digital Access. Make sure that only authorized users can access your onsite registration system. Don’t leave laptops or registration lists unattended, as they are a goldmine of sensitive data. Make sure you are using a VPN and secure wireless connection to connect back to your office or database server. Deactivate your USB drives so that data cannot be easily copied onto a USB thumb drive when you aren’t looking.
  • Provide Secure WiFi for Attendees. Setup secure WiFi (requiring a password) for your staff and attendees so that they are not broadcasting their private information over an unprotected network (which they are doing anytime they use a free hotspot without a password). Make sure that your contact onsite understands your security needs and concerns. That is part of the service they are providing.
  • Control Physical Access. Use a system of photo ID badges and room monitors to make sure that only authorized attendees have access to highly sensitive areas. You don’t want your biggest competitor to gain access to the meeting where you reveal next year’s strategy.
  • Shred Unneeded Documents. If you no longer need registration information on an attendee, shred it immediately. Every hotel or conference center should have shredders onsite that you are able to utilize. If they don’t, you might ask yourself how well they are protecting your data.

Meeting Security After the Event

  • Destroy the Evidence. When the conference or meeting is over, shred any remaining physical documents you no longer need. Purge digital files from your systems, especially those containing credit card or Social Security numbers. The less you keep on hand, the lower your changes of theft.

Above all, don’t forget to educate your staff and attendees on the risks of data theft while attending a conference. Higher levels of awareness drastically reduce the incidents of attendee identity theft and corporate espionage.

John Sileo is the award-winning author of Privacy Means Profit and America’s leading speaker on identity theft prevention, social media exposure, online reputation management and information leadership. Learn more about his keynote speeches on a variety of topics or call directly on 1.800.258.8076.

 

Dropbox a Crystal Ball of Cloud Computing Pros & Cons

Dropbox is a brilliant cloud based service (i.e., your data stored on someone else’s server) that automatically backs up your files and simultaneously keep the most current version on all of your computing devices (Mac and Windows, laptops, workstations, servers, tablets and smartphones). It is highly efficient for giving you access to everything from everywhere while maintaining an off-site backup copy of every version of every document.

And like anything with that much power, there are risks. Using this type of syncing and backup service without understanding the risks and rewards is like driving a Ducati motorcycle without peering into the crystal ball of accidents that take the lives of bikers every year. If you are going to ride the machine, know your limits.

This week, Dropbox appears to have altered their user agreement (without any notice to its users), making it a FAR LESS SECURE SERVICE. Initially, their privacy policy stated:

… all files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256) and are inaccessible without your account password. Quote from PCWorld

Currently, the privacy policy says that Dropbox can access and view your encrypted data, and it might do so to share information with law enforcement. Why is that important? Because it means that the encryption keys that keep your files private are actually stored on Dropbox’s server, not on your own computer. This puts the keys to your data (and every other Dropbox user) in the hands not only of Dropbox employees and law enforcement, but vulnerable to hackers. When the encryption key is located on your computer, at least the risk is spread over Dropbox’s user’s network.

But there is an even bigger issue that this exposes about the world of cloud computing in general: anytime your data lives on a device that you don’t own, you lose a certain amount of control over what happens to it. Here is just a sampling of factors that can affect the privacy and confidentiality of your cloud-stored data:

  • The cloud service provider changes their Terms of Service (like Dropbox just did) to cover their legal bases, making your data less secure without your even being alerted. This happens almost every week with Facebook, which changes privacy terms constantly. When you log back into your account, you are automatically agreeing to the new Terms of Service (and probably not reading the tens of pages of legal jargon).
  • The provider is bought out by a new company (possibly one overseas) or has its assets liquidated (the most valuable assets are generally information), that has different standards for data security and sharing. You, by default, are now covered by those standards.
  • The security of your data is weak in the first place. Security costs money, and many smaller cloud providers haven’t invested enough in protecting that data, leaving the door wide open for savvy hackers. SalesForce.com might be well protected, but is the free backup service or contact manager that you use?
  • Your data exists in a more public domain than when it is stored on internal, private servers, meaning that it is subject to subpoena without your being notified! In other words, the government and law enforcement has access to it and you will never know they were snooping around. This isn’t a concern for most small businesses, but it is still a cautionary note.

So does this mean we should all shut down our Dropbox, Carbonite, iBackup accounts? No. Does this mean that corporations should not implement the highly scalable, dramatically efficient solutions provided by the cloud? No. It means that both individuals and businesses must educate themselves on the up and down sides of this shift in computing. They can  begin the process by realizing that:

  1. Not all data is created equal and that some types of sensitive data should never be placed in someone else’s control. This is exactly why there are data classification systems (I subscribe to those used by the military and spy agencies: Public, Internal, Confidential and Top Secret).
  2. Not all cloud providers are created equal and you must understand the privacy policy, terms of service and track record of each one individually (just like you would choose a car with a better crash-test rating for your family).
  3. Anything of immense power comes with costs, and those costs must be calculated into the relative ROI of the equation. In other words, the answer here, like most complex things in life, exists in the gray area, not in a black or white, one-size-fits all generalization.

John Sileo writes and speaks on Information Leadership, including identity theft prevention, data breach, social media risk and online reputation. His clients include the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, the Federal Reserve Bank, FDIC, FTC and hundreds of corporations of all sizes. Learn more about his motivational data security events.

iPhone and Droid Want to Be Your Big Brother

Remember the iconic 1984 Super Bowl ad with Apple shattering Big Brother? How times have changed! Now they are Big Brother.

According to recent Wall Street Journal findings, Apple Inc.’s iPhones and Google Inc.’s Android smartphones regularly transmit your locations back to Apple and Google, respectively. This new information only intensifies the privacy concerns that many people already have regarding smartphones. Essentially, they know where you are anytime your phone is on, and can sell that to advertisers in your area (or will be selling it soon enough).

The actual answer here is for the public to put enough pressure on Apple and Google that they stop the practice of tracking our location-based data and no longer collect, store or transmit it in any way without our consent.

You may ask, “don’t all cell phone carriers know where you are due to cell tower usage?” Yes, but Google and Apple are not cell phone carriers, they are software and hardware designers and should have no real reason (other than information control) to be tracking your every move without your knowledge. Google and Apple are not AT&T or Verizon, therefore they should not be recording, synching and transmitting your location like it appears they are.

Both companies are trying to build huge databases that allow them to pinpoint your exact location. So how are they doing it? By recording the cell phone towers and WiFi hotspots that you pass and that your phone utilizes. This data will ultimately be used to help them market location based services to their audience, which is a market that is expected to rise $6 billion in the next 3 years.

The Wall Street Journal found through research by security analyst Samy Kamkar, the HTC Android phone collected its location every few seconds and transmitted the data to Google at least several times an hour. It transmitted the name, location and signal strength of any nearby WiFi networks, as well as a unique phone identifier. This was not as personal of information like what the Street-View cars collected that Google had to shut down some time ago.

So what do we do now? According to the Wall Street Journal, neither Apple or Google commented when contacted about these findings, so it is hard to know the extent of how they are using the data collected. Right now, there really isn’t much you can do to stop GPS tracing of your location without your consent. Of course you could power down your phone, but we are all way too additcted to these handy little digital Swiss Army Knives to do that. You can turn of GPS services, but again, that makes it impossible to use maps and other location-based apps.

The actual answer here is for the public to put enough pressure on Apple and Google that they stop the practice of tracking our location-based data and no longer collect, store or transmit it in any way without our consent.

While this may be the future of privacy, it is better that we are aware of what may come rather than remain in the dark about the possibilities of technology.

John Sileo is the President of The Sileo Group and the award winning author of four books, including his latest workbook, The Smartphone Survival Guide. He speaks around the world on identity theft, online reputation and influence. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer and Homeland Security. Learn more at www.ThinkLikeASpy.com.

How to Opt Out of Data Miners and Online Directories

Whether you like it or not, your information is available publicly to everyone through online directories. Businesses and advertisers have the ability to easily find this information and then market their products to you. This means that you have never actually “opted-in” to receive these ads. Fortunately, there are ways for you to “opt-out” of widespread information sharing (see the list of more than 120 ways below).

The Top 4 Opt-Out Opportunities:

  1. www.OptOutPreScreen.com. Remove yourself from the marketing lists sold by the three major credit reporting bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. There is not cost for this list.
  2. www.DMAchoice.org. This puts you on a Do Not Mail list for the Direct Marketing Association. The cost is $1, but it is well worth the instant trip down in your mail.
  3. White Pages. That’s right, your old-fashioned printed phone directory is the source for most of the online contact info databases. Remove your directory listing (you will likely have to the phone company every month to have your info NOT shared – I know, it’s asinine) or otherwise opt out.
  4. www.Spokeo.com. To opt out, read this blog post about [intlink id=”1752″ type=”post”]removing your info from Spokeo[/intlink]. This is one of the more utilized sites by identity thieves, stalkers and scammers.

There is a slower and more tedious process of opting out of online directories (i.e., you have to visit every one. Some (Spokeo.com)  are more important than others (Whitepages.com) because of the information that they collect. Sites such as Spokeo.com can have as much information as your physical address and pictures of your home, while others may just house your phone number. These sites spend hours upon hours scouring public records such as marriage licenses, birth certificates, and real estate purchases for this type of information.

Since most online directories typically offer a way to opt out of their listings you would think they would make it easy. Not so. They tend to hide this option deep within the site, as they don’t actually want you to leave. Luckily, The Privacy Rights Clearing House has done most of the legwork in their Comprehensive Opt Out List. I suggest starting with a few main sites, 123people.com, spokeo.com, etc. and continuously adding to it over time. Opt out of one a week if you like, and eventually your data will be less exposed. Protecting your privacy and identity is a layering process. It is easy for people to get overwhelmed, especially when it comes to online directories.

John Sileo speaks on information control, identity theft prevention and data breach avoidance. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer and the FDIC. To learn more, contact him directly on 800.258.8076.

Information Offense – How Google Plays

Google recently offered $20,000 to the first person who could hack their web browser, Chrome. Without question, a hacker will crack it and prove that their browser isn’t as mighty as they might think.

So why waste the money?

In that question, ‘why waste the money?’ lies one of the root causes of all data theft inside of organizations. Google’s $20,000 investment is far from a waste of money. Consider:

  1. The average breach inside of an organization costs $6.75 million in recover costs (Ponemon Study). $20,000 up front to define weak points is a minuscule investment.
  2. Chrome is at the center of Google’s strategic initiatives in search, cloud computing, Google Docs, Gmail, displacing Microsoft IE and mobile OS platforms – in other words, it is a very valuable asset, so Google is putting their money where their money is (protecting their profits).
  3. By offering up $20,000 to have it hacked IN ADVANCE of successful malicious attacks (which are certain to come), Google is spending very little to have the entire hacker community beta test the security of their product.

I would bet that there will be tens or hundreds of successful hacks into their browser, all of which will be fixed by the next time they commission a hack.

Anticipating the inevitable attacks and investing in advance to minimize the chances and resulting costs of a breach is a perfect example of Information Offense. Instead of waiting for your data to be compromised (defense), you take far less costly steps up front to deflate the risk. Only the most enlightened leaders I work with inside of corporations understand the value of spending a little bit on security now to reap huge benefits (in the form of avoided losses) down the road.

Too many leaders are so focused on the revenue side of the model (most of them are from a sales background) that they lack the depth of seeing the entire picture – the long-term health and profitability of the company. You know the saying… an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure. Just think of the ounce being loose change and the pound being solid gold.

Marshall Goldsmith, the executive coach, nails the behavior behind this phenomenon in his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There,

“Avoiding mistakes is one of those unseen, unheralded achievements that are not allowed to take up our time and thought. And yet… many times, avoiding a bad deal can affect the bottom line more significantly than scoring a big sale… That’s the funny thing about stopping some behavior. It gets no attention, but it can be as crucial as everything else we do combined.”

Listen to Google and Mr. Goldsmith, and avoid the mistakes before you make them by asking yourself this simple question: How can I refocus my efforts and resources on playing offense rather than defense?

John Sileo’s motivational keynote speeches train organizations to play aggressive information offense before the attack, whether that is identity theft, data breach, cyber crime, social networking exposure or human fraud. Learn more at www.ThinkLikeASpy.com or call him directly on 800.258.8076.

Opening Pandora's Privacy Box

I am a huge fan and frequent user of Pandora, the internet radio station that plays songs based on learned music preferences (if you like the Avett Brothers, it knows you will probably also like Dave Matthews, etc.). Pandora is an overwhelmingly popular online radio network app for computers, smart phones and the iTouch. It provides listeners with an informed collection of songs and play-lists based on a comprehensive analysis of over 400 qualities of a song that make it specifically appealing to you. While the financial cost to users appears at first site to be nothing (if you don’t mind the occasional ad), the privacy cost can be exponentially high with Pandora selling your web-surfing habits to advertisers.

Pandora clearly states in its FAQ that they are sharing information such as your age and gender with advertisers.

“…the free version of Pandora is mostly supported by advertisements, and we want to be able to show the most relevant ads to our listeners… Since this means that you’re more likely to see an ad that’s relevant to you, we hope it’s a good thing for our listeners as well as for our advertisers, and therefore also for Pandora as a whole.”

So are they sharing more sensitive identity information? While Pandora admits that they share your age and gender, a recent Wall Street Journal Article says they are sharing more. They state that Pandora shares age, gender, location, and phone ID information with marketing firms on both its iPhone and Android mobile versions. So while advertisers won’t have your name and email address, they’ll get their hands on a lot of info about your mobile phone behavior.

Just remember when you log into Pandora and stream your free music play list, there is a cost. When you are getting something for “FREE”, there is always a cost, and it’s often your personal information. While you may not be able to immediately understand the financial impact of this, just know that your privacy is slowly flowing out of your control – one song at a time.

To increase your privacy on Pandora, visit www.pandora.com/privacysettings and restrict access as much as possible.

Is your organization trying to stem the flow of information leakage via identity theft, corporate espionage, data breach and social networking exposure? Contact keynote speaker John Sileo to inspire your audience to change their poor privacy habits from the inside out.

Facebook Reveals the End of Your Privacy | Sileo

The many changes that Facebook has been making recently have users nervous. Nervous because they are lacking the control that they once had over their privacy on the social networking site. While Facebook has never been the mecca of privacy, the recent and swift changes they are making has created more of an issue for users. One by one they are voicing their concerns with the new features and why they feel Facebook is slowly revealing the end of your privacy.

Facebook and privacy issues go hand in hand.

Here are a few of the new features; although they are snazzy, they have many users concerned.

User IDs 

With only your email address on hand, data miners can easily match it with the new user ID that has been issued to you. Basically, the ID provides your name and profile picture no matter how your privacy settings are set. This can also include your hometown, photos, friends, and more depending on how strict your settings are. This gives companies the ability to advertise to you. If you are a young female living in Austin, Texas, there are literally thousands of products that can be marketed to you just using that information alone.

Face Match or Tag Suggestions

When you are uploading photos to Facebook (as shown above), they will make “tag suggestions” of who should be tagged in your photo album. In other words, Facebook has the ability to know what you look like. This feature will be gradually rolled out over the next few weeks. In order to disable your “tagability”, you need to adjust your privacy settings. Just click ‘Customize Settings’ and de-select ‘Suggest photos of me to friends.’ Your name will no longer be suggested in photo tags, though friends can still tag you manually.

Switch Account

In a recent and unintentional Facebook leak, many users reported seeing a switch account tab. This feature gives you the ability to go back and forth between different accounts without having to log in and out. While this is easy for people who are administrators for certain pages, it is a privacy issue for users who want to have many pages in order to play out a scam.

Facebook Privacy Concerns

Facebook was built on the idea that users connect and share personal information with each other. It is up to the users to decide how much and to whom. The more you share, the stronger Facebook becomes and the easier it is to share that information with friends, strangers and advertisers.

While Facebook is consistently rolling out more features, users are having to update their privacy settings.  With so much personal information sharing, the real cost to our privacy is still unknown.

John Sileo is an an award-winning author and keynote speaker on identity theft, internet privacy, fraud training & technology defense. John specializes in making security entertaining, so that it works. John is CEO of The Sileo Group, whose clients include the Pentagon, Visa, Homeland Security & Pfizer. John’s body of work includes appearances on 60 Minutes, Rachael Ray, Anderson Cooper & Fox Business. Contact him directly on 800.258.8076.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgwQPhpRPd0&rel=0]

Cyber-Bullying and Social Networking Identity Theft

With the meteoric rise in cyber-bullying, parents are desperate to find a way to shield their children. Unfortunately, most parents are far behind their child’s proficiency with technology. Many don’t text, aren’t on Facebook, and are oblivious to the many ways in which kids can taunt each other with technological ease. Although children may be quick and nimble with technology, they lack the maturity to understand its consequences.

A recent article in the New York Times on Digital Bullying (read the MSN version here) addressed these very issues and gave true and heart-wrenching accounts of how parents were left helpless at the hands of their children’s online bullies. “I’m not seeing signs that parents are getting more savvy with technology,” said Russell A. Sabella, former president of the American School Counselor Association. “They’re not taking the time and effort to educate themselves, and as a result, they’ve made it another responsibility for schools.”

Kids have a great deal of anonymity on the internet if they want it, and can easily impersonate another child or steal their identity. This modified form of identity theft (character theft, I tend to call it), allows the bully to hide behind his or her computer with no real consequences for what they are saying. A scathing remark made in passing by one child can haunt another child for the rest of their lives.

In a recent case, a young boy was taunted at school by classmates that claimed he was in turn bullying them on Facebook. He quickly became socially withdrawn until his mother looked on Facebook to see that someone with his name and picture was in fact taunting other students online. Except, of course, that it wasn’t him. Some fellow classmates had stolen his Social Networking Identity and set up a false Facebook account as if they were him. The bullies then berated other kids, attracting negative attention to the victim. The victim’s mother found out that it’s not so easy to stop this cycle.

For one thing, Facebook doesn’t make it easy to reclaim one’s identity. In the previous case, the mother had to contact police, who went through a process to subpoena both Facebook and the internet service provide to uncover the bullies’ identities. Only then were they able to shut down the account, but the damage to the victims reputation had already been done.

Some parents prefer to resolve the issue privately, by contacting the bully’s family. Although psychologists do not recommend that approach with schoolyard bullying, with cyber-bullying, a parent’s proof of cruel online exchanges can change that difficult conversation. So what do you say?

Approaching another parent can be awkward. Most parents see their children’s actions as a direct reflection of their ability to raise their child. This means they can easily become defensive and almost submissive of the actions. As quoted in the Times article, experts recommend you follow a script like:

“I need to show you what your son typed to my daughter online. He may have meant it as a joke. But my daughter was really devastated. A lot of kids type things online that they would never dream of saying in person. And it can all be easily misinterpreted.”

In most situations, the reporting parents should be willing to acknowledge that their child may have played a role in the dispute. To ease tension, suggests Dr. Englander, an expert on aggression reduction, offer the cyber-bully’s parent a face-saving explanation (like that it was probably meant as a joke). If they are willing to accept what happened, they are more likely to take action.

Parents need to be mindful that their children might be victims of cyber-bullying, and they need to be just as aware that their kids might be the cyber-bullies. Here are some steps to get you started down the right track with your kids:

  • Have short, frequent coversations over dinner about what it means to be cyber bullied
  • Establish a no-tolerance stance on your child bullying anyone, in person or on line
  • Friend your child and if possible, your child’s friends to keep tabs on the dialogue taking place. Let them know that you are interested and observant by communicating with them using social networking. If you are more fond of the stick approach, post a sticky note on your monitor (like another parent in the article did) that says “Don’t Forget That Mom Sees Everything You Do Online.”
  • Be open and honest with your child. Communicate the real issues of cyber-bullying and how in some cases this leads to very negative consequences, like suicide
  • Encourage your children to talk with you if they have any concerns about their online life
  • For more answers and background on keeping yourself and your kids safe, take a look at the Facebook Safety Survival Guide below.

Facebook Safety Survival Guide
Includes the Parents’ Guide to Online Safety

This Survival Guide is an evolving document that I started writing for my young daughters and my employees, and is an attempt to give you a snapshot of some of the safety and privacy issues as they exist right now.

Social networking, texting, instant messaging, video messaging, blogging – these are all amazing tools that our kids and employees use natively, as part of their everyday lives. In fact, they probably understand social networking better than most adults and executives. But they don’t necessarily have the life experiences to recognize the risks.

I’d like to make their online vigilance and discretion just as native, so that they learn to protect the personal information they put on the web before it becomes a problem. Social networking is immensely powerful and is here for the long run, but we must learn to harness and control it.