The Friday following Thanksgiving is a unique day American shoppers anticipate for weeks -- practically another holiday itself -- but Black Friday is also the most ideal time for an identity thief to target unsuspecting victims. According to the Federal Trade Commission, last year consumers reported losses from identity theft and fraud of more than $1.2 billion, and with consumers facing an already tough economy, they need to be particularly wary this holiday season of scams and fraud both at stores and in the online world of shopping.

Consumer Watchdog released a new on-line video exposing privacy problems with Google's Gmail service and other Google applications in the wake of Google's recent marketing efforts on Capitol Hill. At a speech in Washington D.C. today, Google CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledged the group's privacy concerns and expressed an interest in addressing them. He said his concern was balancing performance and speed of the system with privacy and security demands.

New types of payment methods, including mobile banking, pre-paid cards, and "virtual world" transactions, are expected to be a hot area of regulatory interest, according to a newsurvey of senior anti-money laundering (AML) compliance officers in North America and Europe, conducted by risk and compliance specialist Fortent. Survey respondents also cited identity theft as "presenting the greatest emerging threat" to their institutions in the area of financial crime.

OpenDNS, the award-winning navigation service that makes the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable, today announced its PhishTank anti-phishing service has seen a half-million individual phishing scams reported in the two years since the service was launched.

GadgetTrak® Mobile Security fights mobile phone theft by enabling devices to "phone home" and device owners to send remote commands to backup and wipe sensitive information and more. GadgetTrak® Mobile Security provides the most advanced theft recovery and data protection solution available for smart phones, by enabling remote control of the device.

Late last week SonicWALL, Inc., a leading secure network infrastructure company, saw the first phishing threat to hit inboxes related to the banking-related crisis. The first threat targeted at Washington Mutual and Chase Manhattan online banking customers asks customers to verify their personal information using a dummy Chase website. If you are a Chase Manhattan or Washington Mutual customer and receive this type of email, you may be the victim of a phishing attack. Do not click on the link in the email and contact your bank  mmediately.

BluePrint Data today announced the release of its newest Internet Security component by providing anti-phishing to all users of its Kidsnet Internet Filtering Parental Controls software. The anti-phishing service was integrated into the existing Internet Security suite of products providing the Internet Filtering Service to the Kidsnet users as a form of SaaS (Software as a Service).

Responding to the millions of identity theft claims made by consumers every year, Affinion Security Center, announced the availability of its most comprehensive identity theft protection solution to date, IdentitySecure. IdentitySecure provides members with a combination of powerful services to protect personal information and financial data. The service is available to businesses seeking to protect their customers from identity theft, and direct to consumers at www.identitysecure.com.

Goodmail Systems, creator of CertifiedEmail™, the industry’s standard for trusted email, today advised consumers to be on the lookout for fraudulent email scams and “phishing” attacks related to the current turmoil in the U.S. financial and insurance markets.

As Hurricane Ike hit Texas, identity theft protection company CSIdentity offers the following tips to help people protect their identity as they evacuate the Gulf Coast. Ike is so far blamed for four deaths — two in Texas and two in Louisiana — where the storm flooded thousands of homes and cut power to about three million people.