Massive ID theft & new media literacy ed

The identities of some 4 million Britons and 40 million people worldwide (mostly Americans), are up for sale on the Internet to the highest bidder, the TimesOnline reports. "Highly sensitive financial information, including credit card details, bank account numbers, telephone numbers and even PINs are available to the highest bidder. At least a quarter of a million British bank and credit card accounts have been hacked into by cybercriminals, exposing consumers to huge financial losses." All of it has been put into a single database built by a retired police officer in the UK who wants to offset his 160,000-pound ($263,000+) investment "by charging members of the public for access to his database to check whether their data security has been breached," raising consumer-privacy questions (see the Times for more on this). This is and isn't kid-tech news. It isn't only at the superficial level: it's about the privacy of Net users of all ages. It is because we need to start teaching our kids critical thinking about social and commercial influencing just about the same day they start using the Internet. Critical thinking is protective - of our psyches, identities, pocketbooks, and computers. Increasingly, phishers' and other Internet fraudsters' success is based on their social-engineering skills as much as their technical ones - creating messages that trick people into clicking to sites that download keylogger and other malicious software onto their computers or into typing passwords or account numbers into fake bank sites. Stark stories like this illustrate not only how important it is to fold computer security into new-media literacy ed but also what an opportune subject it is, for examining all forms of manipulation. See also "How social influencing works."

Data breaches way up

Whether or not age verification would help keep kids safe online, as state attorneys general suggest, it would require the collection of children's personal information into some database(s) somewhere. Consider that possibility against the news of where we are with the security of personal information in databases right now. "Businesses, governments and educational institutions reported nearly 50% more data breaches last year than in 2007, exposing the personal records of at least 35.7 million Americans," the Washington Post reports, citing a report from the Identity Theft Resource Center of San Diego. Nearly 37% of the breaches happened at businesses and about 20% at schools, the Center found. See also "Social networker age verification revisited" and "Europe on age verification, social networking."

Child ID theft

If your kids start getting credit card offers in the mail, it's no joke. It's quite possible their identities have been stolen. A way to find out is to check with the Social Security Administration, to see if they have earnings reports, SCnow.com in South Carolina reports. Just how can this happen? It's actually not usually an online problem. "Identity thieves can steal a child’s information in a number of ways," according to SCnow.com. "Many times a parent will use his or her child’s identity because of their own bad credit. But strangers can also get the information fairly easily by sifting through trash, stealing mail, or taking it from a form that’s not properly protected." A whole group of kids became victims after their pediatrician's office left a patient check-in book with names and social security numbers out on the medical office counter. Check out the SCnow article to see what the Federal Trade Commission says to do if a toddler you know has an earnings report - or go to OnGuardOnline.com's page on ID theft or the FTC's index to all its resources on the subject.

UK data security breach & kids

A massive security breach involving the personal information of "virtually every child in Britain" has occurred in the United Kingdom, The Guardian reports. It "could expose the personal data of more than 25 million people - nearly half the country's population," CBS News reports. The data concerns "families with children, including names, dates of birth, addresses, bank account information and insurance records." Two computer disks containing the data were sent via ordinary mail between two government departments and were apparently lost in the mail. The breach was announced to the House of Commons yesterday by Alistair Darling, Britain's equivalent to our treasury secretary. He said this wasn't the first time Britain's tax agency had experienced such a breach. There was, however, no evidence that the data has fallen into criminal hands. This is a clear illustration of risky it would be to have a national database of children's personal information in the US, which is what would be required in order to establish children's age verification online (for more on this, see "Social networker age verification revisited").