Category Archives: Data Security News

Time to Reset Passwords

Posted on by HV Shred

Frequenters of the HV Shred Blog know that a favorite source for our blog is the OnGuard Online Blog posted by the Federal Trade Commission–the government agency charged with protecting consumers.

A recent post by Consumer Education Specialist Aditi Jhaveri indicated last Thursday was Password Day!

Some good reasons to update passwords regularly:

Updating your passwords can help prevent:

 

We’re not just talking about changing the password for your email account. Consider updating passwords for other important accounts, too — like your bank, credit card, utility, and social media accounts. If you use a password manager, select a unique, strong password for it, too.

Jhaveri also shared some tips for creating strong passwords:

  • Use a different password for each account. That way, if it gets stolen — either from you or one of the sites where you use it — someone won’t be able to take over all of your accounts.
  • Get creative. Mix letters, numbers, and special characters. Never use your name or birthdate.
  • Use 12 characters if you can, but no less than 10. The longer the password, the tougher it is to crack.

 

For more on best practices in the realm of identity theft protection, please visit www.hvshred.com

Reminder of Best Practices to Protect Personal Information

Posted on by HV Shred

A valuable resource we have found is the The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). It is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center Internet Crime Complaint

A recent posting focused on Defending Against Hacktivism:

While eliminating your exposure in the current digital age is nearly impossible, law enforcement and public officials can take steps to minimize their risk in the event they are targeted.

(1) Turn on all privacy settings on social media sites and refrain from posting pictures showing your affiliation to law enforcement.
(2) Be aware of your security settings on your home computers and wireless networks.
(3) Limit your personal postings on media sites and carefully consider comments.
(4) Restrict your driver license and vehicle registration information with the Department of Motor Vehicles.
(5) Request real estate and personal property records be restricted from online searches with your specific county.
(6) Routinely update hardware and software applications, including antivirus.
(7) Pay close attention to all work and personal emails, especially those containing attachments or links to other Web sites. These suspicious or phishing emails may contain infected attachments or links.
(8) Routinely conduct online searches of your name to identify what public information is already available.
(9) Enable additional email security measures to include two factor authentication on your personal email accounts. This is a security feature offered by many email providers. The feature will cause a text message to be sent to your mobile device prior to accessing your email account.
(10) Closely monitor your credit and banking activity for fraudulent activity.
(11) Passwords should be changed regularly–and make them strong by combining letters, numbers, and symbols
(12) Be aware of pretext or suspicious phone calls or emails from people phishing for information or pretending to know you. Social engineering is a skill often used to trick you into divulging confidential information and continues to be an extremely effective method for criminals.
(13) It’s a group effort! Advise family members to turn on security settings on ALL social media accounts. Family member associations are public information and family members can become online targets of opportunity.

It’s a lot to do in some ways–but worth the effort.

For more on best practices with personal information protection, please visit www.hvshred.com

Earth Day 2015

Posted on by HV Shred

Earth Day 2015 is officially Wednesday, April 22nd.

We are happy to report that HV Shred in on a record recycling pace in 2015. To date, we have shred and recycled enough paper to protect nearly 5000 trees and nearly 900 cubic yards of landfill.

To celebrate Earth Month, our shred event season began April 10th and continues until the weather turns again in the Fall. This week’s events are at the Beacon HVFCU 2pm-5pm; Saturday as part of the Monroe Clean Sweep; and Gardiner as part of their town clean-up day.

This week, please give extra consideration to all the things you can do to help reduce, reuse, and recycle the precious resources of our Earth.

For more on recycling and especially identity theft best practices, please visit www.hvshred.com

Good news and the call for continued vigilance

Posted on by HV Shred

Today’s blog is some “kind of” good news in the world of Identity Theft— according to a study released recently by Javelin Strategy & Research, despite a series of large-scale data breaches over the past two years, identity theft fell for the second consecutive year in a row in the U.S. Roughly 12.7 million Americans were hit with identity fraud in 2014, a 3% drop from a year earlier, while losses tied to that fraud fell 11% to $16 billion.

The crime itself is still rampant; the difference is as individuals and society as a whole are more aware of the issue and taking precautions to a greater degree. Banks and others are getting better at protecting customers’ data in the wake of breaches.

The decrease was attributable in part to the Target breach in 2013. After it occurred, 95% of affected cards were replaced.
Because the Target breach was so high-profile, banks went on the offensive, and the value of the stolen cards on the black market plummeted.

The measures taken by the government to increase awareness and culpability in the business community are working. Every state attorney general has the power to fine businesses that were breached and require businesses to provide identity protection to victims.

It’s only a drop in the bucket though. Identity theft continues to be a huge problem and a huge threat.

In a recent report, The Federal Trade Commission said identity fraud is the number-one type of consumer complaint it receives. Out of more than 2.5 million total complaints filed with the FTC in 2014, 332,000 (13%) were related to identity theft. The previous year, 2.2 million complaints were filed and 13% were of identity fraud. (The FTC’s data also show a sharp uptick in impostor scams, particularly those related to tax identity fraud.)

The bottom line is education and awareness remain key—as well as continued vigilance by individuals and businesses.

For more on best practices to prevent identity theft, please visit www.hvhsred.com

Celebrating Freedom

Posted on by HV Shred

Sitting around the Seder table at this year’s Passover Seder telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt and the liberation of the Jews from the tyrant Pharaoh made me think about the small ways in which our on-site shredding service is also a liberation.

Not on biblical proportions–but on-site shredding service does free businesses of many frustrations and worries as well as providing the assurance of the certificate of destruction as well as the benefit of recycling shredded paper.

At HV Shred, we want to introduce the business community to a world with no security breaches, no removing staples and paper clips, no overheating or paper jams; no noisy shredding and dusty bags of shredded paper; a world where shredded paper saves trees and water and oil.

This is the world of on-site service with HV Shred.

In this world, we preserve and protect reputations as well as the environment. So far in 2015 we have shred and recycled enough paper to preserve and protect nearly 4000 trees!

For more information, please check out our website www.hvshred.com

A Season For Cleaning & Going Green

Posted on by HV Shred

This past Saturday was Earth Hour–a celebration to bring awareness to the limited resources and the preciousness of our home planet–Earth. Earth Hour is a worldwide movement for the planet organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The event is held worldwide annually encouraging individuals, communities, households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. on the last Saturday in March, as a symbol for their commitment to the planet. It was famously started as a lights-off event in Sydney, Australia in 2007. Since then it has grown to engage more than 7000 cities and towns worldwide. Today, Earth Hour engages a massive mainstream community on a broad range of environmental issues. The one-hour event continues to remain the key driver of the now larger movement.

Whether you participated in Earth hour or not, we strongly urge our community to consider the option of securely disposing of confidential paperwork in a fashion that also helps implement sustainable practices.

HV Shred does on-site shredding services for business and residential clients throughout the Hudson Valley and we recycle all shredded paper.

To learn more about our secured document destruction, please visit www.hvshred.com

Reduce, reuse, recycle–stay secure!!!

2015 Shred Event Schedule

Posted on by HV Shred

Over the course of the 2014 events in conjunction with the Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union (HVFCU), Walden Federal Savings (Now Hometown Bank of the Hudson Valley), Wallkill Valley Federal Savings, Hudson Heritage Federal Credit Union, and Mid Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union we are thrilled to have helped community members recycle over 50 tons of paper, saving over 800 trees and 150 cubic yards of landfill.

If it’s posted on this page, the event is free (a donation may be suggested) and open to the public with a suggested limit of 3 file boxes/garbage bags and the like per person. The intention is to be a resource for the residential community. We appreciate your being mindful of keeping the line moving and being appropriate with the volume of shredding you bring to an event.

Announcing the schedule for 2015 (likely more to be added):

Friday, April 10, HVFCU Pleasant Valley Branch 9:00 am – 12:00 pm

Saturday, April 11, HVFCU Montgomery Branch 10:00 am – 1:00 pm

Friday, April 17, HVFCU Carmel Branch 10:00 am – 1:00 pm

Friday, April 24th, Poughkeepsie Library District Adriance Branch 10:00 am – 12:00 pm

Friday, April 24th, HVFCU Beacon Branch 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Friday, May 1st, HVFCU Highland Branch 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Saturday, May 2nd, Jawonio Fundraiser Hosted by Lynch’s Restaurant 79 S Liberty Dr, Stony Point, NY 10980 11:00 am – 2:00 pm Donation to Jawonio required

Friday, May 8th, HVFCU Hyde Park Branch 9:00 am – 12:00 pm

Friday, May 15th, HVFCU Rhinebeck Branch 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Saturday, May 16th, HVFCU New Windsor Branch 9:00 am – 12:00 pm

Friday, June 5th, HVFCU Hollowbrook Branch 10:00 am – 1:00 pm

Monday, June 8th, HVFCU Arlington Branch (Tucker Drive) 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Friday, June 12th, HVFCU Newburgh Branch10:00 am- 1:00 pm

Stay tuned for more!

Your financial institutions and towns are the most likely to sponsor the shred events, so please suggest they contact us for more information about scheduling an event. Contact Judith @ judith@hvshred.com (845) 705-7279

Another Email Scam to Watch Out For

Posted on by HV Shred

Frequenters of the HV Shred blog know that we often use this space to share valuable information we find on OnGuardOnline, the FTC blog designed to share information for consumer protection. A recent post by Consumer Education Specialist Amy Hebert caught our attention as worthy of sharing.

Hebert writes about a new scam email that says it’s a court notice from the Bureau of Defaulters Agency-FTC with your arrest warrant record attached. It says you’ve ignored their efforts to contact you, so now your Social Security number is on hold by the federal government, you’ll be prosecuted for fraud, and you’ll owe all kinds of money when you’re found guilty. You’ve got just 24 hours to respond.

It’s not true.

There is no Bureau of Defaulters, and the FTC doesn’t send emails like this to people.

If you get an email like this, forward it to spam@uce.gov, then delete it. Don’t click on any attachments or links. Scammers send convincing-looking fake emails with links or attachments they want you to click. When you do, you could download malware onto your computer. If you’re not sure whether an email is real, you can always look up a phone number yourself and contact the court, company, or agency the email claims to be from.

What if you already clicked on the attachment? Follow these steps to get rid of malware. You also can file a complaint with the FTC at ftc.gov/complaint, then visit the FTC’s Identity Theft website. Victims of phishing emails like this could become victims of identity theft, and there are steps you can take to minimize your risk.

The FTC has scam alerts you can sign up for to find out about the latest scams. Go to consumer.ftc.gov and click on Scam Alerts, which include a category for imposter scams like these.

For more on best practices in Identity Theft Protection, please visit www.hvshred.com

FTC aims to tap into private sector’s brain trust

Posted on by HV Shred

Robocalls are not just annoying—they are also costing our economy money through lost productivity as well as some falling to the scams. Aiming to tap into the private business brain trust, the FTC is returning to DEF CON with a new robocall challenge.

Zapping Rachel, the FTC’s 2014 contest, challenged security experts to build tools that investigators could use to track and minimize illegal robocalls. For 2015, the agency is hosting Robocalls: Humanity Strikes Back, a contest that asks tech gurus to create tools people can use to block or forward unwanted robocalls automatically. Forwarded calls will go to a honeypot — a data collection system that researchers and investigators can use to study the calls. $50,000 in prize money is on the table for the best solutions, with $25,000 going to the first place winner.

Similarly, the FTC also that as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking on June 6, 2015, the agency is challenging the tech-savvy public to DetectaRobo. For this challenge, contestants will use call data to develop an algorithm that predicts which calls are likely to be robocalls. Submissions are due June 7, 2015.

Each contest has its own website with more information, including rules, criteria, and judges. Visit ftc.gov/strikeback for the DEF CON challenge and ftc.gov/detectarobo for the National Day of Civic Hacking contest.

These contests are part of the FTC’s larger efforts to combat illegal robocalls, a problem that has grown worse since advances in technology have made it easy for robocallers to send out thousands of calls every minute and to display fake caller ID information

We look forward to the contest generating some productive solutions.

For more on best practices in identity theft protection and general consumer protection, please visit www.hvshred.com

New Year File Maintenance Guidance

Posted on by HV Shred

With all the snow lately, there has been some extra quiet time for offices to go through old files and do some new year cleaning out.

Here is some basic guidance:

Whether it is a client’s financial information or your own, you need to shred all documents. This includes paperwork that has credit card information or bank and routing numbers. It can be voided checks or bank statements. Any pages that have sensitive financial information need to be shredded.

Any paperwork that has employee, client, or your personal social security numbers should be shredded. This can also include customer ID numbers that are used to get into accounts.

If your forms require someone to write down pin numbers or login information for their accounts, these documents need to be destroyed. Should they fall in the wrong hands, it can put someone at severe risk of information breach.

When you are ready to clear out old clients or personnel, be sure you get rid of any documents that have contact information. This is to include email addresses, physical addresses, and phone numbers that will tie the individual to the contact information.

If you are getting rid of receipts, be sure to send them through the shredder. This can include original receipts as well as copies of receipts. It is best to keep yourself safe from people who can find this information and use it against you.

Still unclear what needs to be shredded? Go ahead and shred everything. This might not be the best idea if you are paying for the services, since it will cost you more. However, paper shredding should be taken seriously. If you are in doubt about what has to be shredded, go ahead and put it in the stack. It is better safe than sorry when it comes to HIPPA compliance.

It is a good idea to keep a running list of all documents that need to be destroyed. This will help you avoid throwing away information that should have gone through the shredder.

If you have any questions about this article, or need assistance with your shredding program, contact us today!

The more sensitive the information, the more important it is to have it destroyed securely.

Let us help keep you compliant and lessen the burden when handling sensitive information. Contact HV Shred, Inc today www.hvshred.com