From Margie Tann Independent Distributor iSekurity
The Modern Pickpocket Thief!
Source: Privacy News / Kent Larson
January 24th, 2011
There's a much more modern, efficient way to do it. Anyone who is so inclined can take their laptop down to the local Starbucks - or any other WiFi hotspot - download some readily available software - and hack into everyone's Internet communications.
How? That's easy. Remember that WiFi signals are just radio waves. All you have to do is tune into the right "channel" and you can "listen" into everything that is being transmitted in that hotspot. Every laptop has the ability to do that; it just needs the right software.
So, if one is at the coffee shop, settled in at a table and sipping a Venti latte, it's a simple matter to begin looking through the Internet traffic for Social Security numbers and other data being sent back and forth. Identity thieves who do these things look for something specific and may even enlist the aid of a computer geek to write a simple program that conducts automated searches. I would tell him to look for something that had the form of 3 digits, then a dash, then 2 digits, another dash - and then ending in 4 digits, which would almost surely be a Social Security number. Starting to see how easily your identity can be stolen in this setting?
Source: Privacy News / Kent Larson
January 24th, 2011
There's a much more modern, efficient way to do it. Anyone who is so inclined can take their laptop down to the local Starbucks - or any other WiFi hotspot - download some readily available software - and hack into everyone's Internet communications.
How? That's easy. Remember that WiFi signals are just radio waves. All you have to do is tune into the right "channel" and you can "listen" into everything that is being transmitted in that hotspot. Every laptop has the ability to do that; it just needs the right software.
So, if one is at the coffee shop, settled in at a table and sipping a Venti latte, it's a simple matter to begin looking through the Internet traffic for Social Security numbers and other data being sent back and forth. Identity thieves who do these things look for something specific and may even enlist the aid of a computer geek to write a simple program that conducts automated searches. I would tell him to look for something that had the form of 3 digits, then a dash, then 2 digits, another dash - and then ending in 4 digits, which would almost surely be a Social Security number. Starting to see how easily your identity can be stolen in this setting?
No comments:
Post a Comment