Gwebs Cryptographer

Identity theft can be a scary thought that lingers on the edge of your mind. As more of life’s interactions are digitized, the odds that a hacker can get your information is increasing.

As Chris Hooley, a professional blogger, will tell you, identity theft can make the life you worked so hard to build a jumbled mess.

“Having your identity stolen is far more damaging than just losing money. I never realized how much of a tangled web finances and real life obligations where until I had to rebuild that web from scratch. When a thief cleared out my checking account from 5 different Bank of America branches using a fake ID, it basically turned my life upside down.”

Hooley had nearly $40,000 wiped out from his checking account in the span of few short days this past July. It took him months of hard work and hundreds of hours on the phone, calling every credit agency, every bank, and every customer service hotline, just to piece most of it back together.

We live in a world where it’s nearly impossible for you to control all of your personal data. For example, a Money Magazine article from summer 2005 exposed that one of Citigroup’s vendors couldn’t locate the financial records of nearly 4 million clients. The same article also revealed Card Systems, a credit-processing firm, had 40 million customers who were at risk because a hacker had gained access to their database.

As Hooley learned from his experience, “A lot of people you don’t know have access to almost everything about you. There is no such thing as privacy.”

Another victim of identity theft, only identified by their online handle “trixare4kids”, details the steps to take if you are a victim of identity theft. In her case, a hacker (or an unscrupulous employee at her health insurance company) got a hold of her social security number and wreaked havoc on her stable financial life by purchasing expensive furniture, cars, and opening additional credit cards in her name. 

While you can’t control all of your personal info, you should protect what you can. One place you can start to protect yourself from leaks is your email. Even if you know better than to write an email containing the personal information needed to steal your identity, a motivated hacker can often piece together the necessary info be aggregating the contents of many email messages. But if the hacker can’t read your email, they can’t get any info at all.

Encrypting your email is a simple way to avoid prying eyes. There are several consumer products on the market today that works with many email programs to encrypt email messages for additional safety.

Here at Global Web Security, we saw a need for a simple encryption solution with an easy-to-navigate user interface that works for most webmail styems, so we built MailCloak. MailCloak is designed to work with both webmail (such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and MSN Live Mail) and POP3 clients (such as Outlook, Thunderbird, and Foxmail).

For more information on what to do if a hacker has compromised your personal information, check out the government’s anti-identity theft website.

Security, email, encryption, privacy