Florida Fraud
Florida remains the top state for per-capita fraud and identity theft complaints. The Panhandle State also accounted for nine of the top 20 metropolitan areas in per capita identity theft complaints.
Pinnacle Payment & FTC
Pinnacle Payment Services, operating out of Atlanta and Cleveland, has been halted for abusive debt collection practices of an operation that used fictitious names and threatened consumers into paying debts they may not have owed. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says the Company is subject to a Nearly $10 million judgement.
Fujitsu and Tidel Integrate PalmSecure
Fujitsu Frontech North America Inc. (FFNA), a leader in innovative technology and front-end solutions, and Tidel Engineering, L.P. a global leader in intelligent cash management solutions, today announced the full integration of Fujitsu’s PalmSecure biometric authentication solution into Tidel’s Revolution® series of “Closed Loop System” cash automation products. The Fujitsu PalmSecure sensor uses a near-infrared light to capture a user’s palm vein pattern, generating a unique biometric template that is matched against the palm vein patterns of pre-registered users. Unlike other readers, a PalmSecure device does not come into contact with the skin, making it extremely hygienic, non-intrusive and unrestricted by external factors such as skin types and conditions.
Commidea Secures high volume CNP Payment
Commidea managed service payments provider launched “Vanguard” payment gateway for the secure management of Customer Not Present transactions. Vanguard offers a fast and certified solution for online purchasing with the authorisation taking, on average, less than two seconds. With this, e-commerce sites can handle high volumes of purchases without fear of transaction delays. The system provides a cost effective and straightforward way of ensuring that no sensitive cardholder data enters or passes through merchant systems, therefore simplifying efforts to achieve and maintain mandatory PCI DSS compliance. Vanguard has also integrated ‘Verified by VISA and MasterCard SecureCode’ into its payment process, which gives the merchant extra reassurance on the security measures employed within the service.
Commidea Protects Call Center from payment risk
Commidea integrated Semafone’s contact center software with its payment gateway, improving payment processing safety for without compromising customer service. This ensures contact center agents do not come into contact with any customer card payment details, by masking them as they are entered and sending them directly through to Commidea’s PCI DSS level 1 certified processing infrastructure for processing. During a phone transaction, customers enter payment details on their telephone keypad, which produce non-traceable monotonous beeps, while the call centre agent remains on the line to ensure the payment is processed correctly. Tokenisation from Commidea is also used to ensure that the merchant has no need to store sensitive card details on its system.
SafeNet Expands Data Protection Market
SafeNet information security will continue to expand into the Russian Data Protection market, offering customers security solutions for eGovernment Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and PCI DSS. Providing authentication solutions, SafeNet has reinforced and accelerated its business growth and development across the Russian enterprise data protection market. The company is introducing its entire Data Protection portfolio, including database and application security, disk and file encryption, centralized key management, network and WAN security, and content security, as well as the highly recognised eToken two-factor authentication product range to secure sensitive data. As part of SafeNet’s ongoing development, it has recently appointed the Russian organizations listed below as strategic distribution partners, providing customers with local sales and technical support.
HSBC Recognized for Anti-Payment Fraud
HSBC Merchant Services of Global Payments has been awarded the ‘Best Security or Anti-Fraud Development’ Award at the 2011 Card & Payments Awards. Recognizing customer service, excellence and innovation among its members in the card payments industry across the UK and Ireland the award ceremony saw HSBC beat out Bank of America, Lloyds banking group, Moneybookers and Nationwide for the award. HSBC Merchant Services won the award for its launch of Commidea’s Ocius Sentinel solution in the UK, supporting a major advance in security and a step-change in the ease of PCI DSS compliance for merchants who take in-store transactions. HSBC was the first end-to-end encryption card payment solution to achieve Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS) certification.
Cardtronics Appoints CMO
Tom Pierce has joined Cardtronics ATMs as Chief Marketing Officer. In this role, he will lead company-wide marketing, advertising and communications efforts; build Cardtronics’ brands; support Cardtronics’ sales organizations and develop market strategies to increase Cardtronics’ per ATM and fleet wide transaction volume. Bringing with him extensive marketing strategy and communications experience, Peirce most recently served as VP, Marketing Strategy for FIS payment and financial technology after having filled marketing leadership positions with Metavante Corporation, Wausau Financial Systems, and Journal Sentinel. He holds a Bachelors degree in journalism from Marquette University and has been an active member of his community with involvement in numerous charitable and community organizations.
As ID Theft Increased in 2010 Resolution Time Decreased 30%
While the bad economy
drove identity theft up, the time needed for resolution decreased 30%. Financial services companies continue to
excel in detecting fraud and alerting their customers. This, according to
“The Javelin Strategy& Research 2010
Identity Fraud Survey Report”, also shows more than
one-third of victims first learned about the fraud from their financial
institution. Javelin confirms that solutions like ITAC that integrate consumer
protection and education into a boarder program to combat identity theft
are the most effective. Only with such continued efforts can consumers
stay one step ahead of fraudsters and protect their information â
stopping fraud preemptively before it occurs or detecting it in
real-time, the report states.The Javelin research also revealed a need for better consumer education
for consumers ages 18 to 24: it takes young adults nearly twice as many
days to detect fraud, compared to other age groups, and thus are fraud
victims for longer periods of time. They are less likely to monitor
accounts regularly and the least likely group to take advantage of
monitoring programs offered by financial institutions. They are also
more likely to be victimized by people they know.
Six New Trends in ID Theft Emerge
A new report finds six new trends. The Identity Theft Assistance Center found an emerging breed of cyber bank robber; fewer silos and more collaboration on cyber security; expanded use of identity management solutions to address identity theft, data breaches, and cyber crime; a bumpy start for âRed Flagâ rules; stiffer sentences for identity theft; and possible federal regulation of breaches of consumer data. ITACâs victim assistance service â which has helped more than 60,000 consumers recover from identity theft.
FTC Charges Catalog Credit Card Issuers
The FTC has filed a complaint in federal court against
Low Pay, Inc.d/b/a as LPC Inc., lowpaycard.com, and mylpcard.com; LP
Capital Holdings, Inc.; Century Luxury, Inc.; the
Mardan Afrasiabi Living Trust; Mardan M. Afrasiabi; and Ramin Rahimi.
alleging that their catalog credit card operation deceptively marketed
its card.
The defendants are charged with violating the FTC Act and the FTCâs
Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) by falsely representing that the card
could be used to
fully finance purchases; that it would provide access to a no-fee, low
cost, or
guaranteed cash advance benefit; and that consumers could improve their
credit ratings by using the card. They also failed to disclose that they
would
debit from consumersâ bank accounts the advance fees, a non-refundable
annual fee,
and 30% of a productâs price plus shipping costs. In addition, the
defendants falsely claimed that they would refund the $120 activation
fee to
consumers who returned the card and catalog in timely fashion. The
defendants also
allegedly violated the TSR by charging an advance fee for a guaranteed
extension
of credit.
ChoicePoint Fined for Turning-Off Security Tool
Data broker ChoicePoint has agreed to strengthen data security
requirements and to pay $275,000 to settle FTC charges it failed to
implement a comprehensive information security program protecting
consumer information and resulting in a 2008 data breach. Subsequently the
personal information of 13,750 people were put at risk of identity
theft. The incident could have been avoided if a representative of
ChoicePoint hadn’t turned off a key electronic security tool used to
monitor access to one of its databases for four months. During that
period, an unknown person conducted unauthorized searches of a
ChoicePoint database containing sensitive consumer information for 30
days, after which the company brought the matter to the FTC. The FTC
then concluded if the security software tool had been working,
ChoicePoint would have detected the intrusions earlier, thus minimizing
the extent of the breach. The FTC is subsequently requiring ChoicePoint
report to the FTC every two months for two years detailed information
about how it is protecting the breached database and records containing
personal information.