A new bill initiated at the Ohio Statehouse would permit Ohioans to automatically freeze their credit report history if they suspect they've become a victim of identity theft. It would also establish tougher sentences for those convicted of identity crimes.

As you know by now, the Texas Attorney General issued an Opinion (GA-0519) last week (2/21/07) that basically said it is a crime (that could subject a County Clerk to fines, jail time or both) to disclose SSNs in public records (land records and other courthouse records may be public, but people have a right for personal identification in them, such as SSNs, to remain confidential).  The AG opinion cited both state (Sec. 552.147 of the Texas Government Code) and federal (Public Information Act) laws.

During the past week roughly 750 CCSU students have received mail from the Bursar’s office that exposed their social security numbers in the name and address window of the envelopes. The letters were folded incorrectly by a malfunctioning machine in the office.

Finjan Inc., declared that it backs up recent reports that Google have accidentally exposed private user names and passwords on the Google anti-phishing blacklist, without using any access protection. Such sensitive data could potentially have been used to compromise user privacy, and could even have been used for identity theft or financial profit .

An email stating that online auction site Ebay is closing at the end of February is a phishing scam, advised IT security firm Sophos.The email claims the site is closing because of the increasing number of scams and rogue merchants using it and asks people to vote on whether or not they agree with the resolution.

Today, quite a few media reports point out that MySpace user are the latest victims of a phishing scam. Roughly 60,000 users were lately targeted and directed to a scam page, which mirrored MySpace's login page. Unknowing users entered login and password identification, which were then sent off to scammers.

PayPal is beta testing a new device to help keep user accounts protected. The PayPal Security Key is a tiny electronic tool that account-holders may order from PayPal. The tool, small enough to attach to a keychain, produces a unique six-digit security code about every 30 seconds.

Users enter that code when they log in to their PayPal or eBay account with their regular user name and password. Because the numbers on the device change frequently, the code used to sign in expires, providing a higher level of security.

State Rep. Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, is encouraging customers in Wisconsin to get informed about a new tool in the fight against identity theft, the credit freeze.As of Jan. 1, Wisconsin state residents may put a voluntary freeze on their credit reports making it virtually impossible for fraudulent credit to be extended in their name.

Hackers are setting up to attacks which target social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook in a multi-billion-dollar "cyberwar" next year, security experts warn.Network security experts expect cybercriminals to launch a campaign to gather personal information from users of the popular websites.

Private data including age, sex, marital status and locale are available on the sites, and malicious users plan to search the networking websites collecting this data and picking targets for phishing scams.

A new warning has been issued by online gambling portals concerning Neteller users. Criminal fraudsters are again trying to fraudulently persuade online clients of the e-cash processor Neteller to reveal their account details on a fake Neteller site.

This week several portals were advising their visitors to beware of an email claiming to be from Neteller that says: