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Inspector General: IRS identified 1.1 million cases of The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) issued a report Tuesday which found the IRS had identified 1.1 million cases of employment-related identity theft since 2011 but failed to notify the victims. As the IG’s press release makes clear, TIGTA pointed out this same problem to the IRS in a previous audit: Why is the IRS so hesitant to deal with this problem? Because most of the people committing the identity theft are illegal immigrants.

The IRS has discovered more than 1 million Americans whose Social Security numbers were stolen by illegal immigrants, but officials never bothered to tell the taxpayers themselves, the agency’s inspector general said in a withering new report released Tuesday. Investigators first alerted the IRS to the problem five years ago, but it’s still not fixed, the inspector general said, and a pilot program meant to test a solution was canceled — and fell woefully short anyway. As a result, most taxpayers don’t learn that their identities have been stolen and their Social Security files may be screwed up. “Taxpayers identified...

The U.S. Social Security Administration announced last week that it will now require a cell phone number from all Americans who wish to manage their retirement benefits at ssa.gov. Unfortunately, the new security measure does little to prevent identity thieves from fraudulently creating online accounts to siphon benefits from Americans who haven’t yet created accounts for themselves. ... “People will not be able to access their personal my Social Security account if they do not have a cell phone or do not wish to provide the cell phone number,” the agency said. ... Also, as one reader already pointed out...

The hack affected providers such as Google, Yahoo, Hotmail and MicrosoftCybersecurity professionals are warning anyone with a personal email account to change their passwords after stolen user names and passwords were being offered up for sale on the Internet, NBC News reported. Some 272.3 million accounts were stolen - and involve some of the biggest email providers, including Google, Yahoo, Hotmail and Microsoft, according to Alex Holden of Hold Security. "We know he's a young man in central Russia who collected this information from multiple sources," Holden told NBC News. "We don't know the way he did it or the...

States can impose their own stiff penalties on illegal immigrants and others who steal identities to get jobs, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, upholding Arizona’s law and dealing a setback to immigrant rights advocates. The decision is yet another victory for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and more broadly for Arizona, which has been a pioneer in trying to find ways to punish illegal immigrants, stepping into a void left by the Bush and Obama administrations. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said there are still some questions about how police and prosecutors use the identity theft laws,...

The Internal Revenue Service will start notifying victims of employment-related identity theft in a shift of policy that comes after criticism from Congress. "We’re still working out the details of the policy change to advise people of possible misuse of their Social Security number, and we will have more details to share in the near future," the IRS said in a statement. During a Senate Finance Committee hearing earlier this month, Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), expressed concerns about the fact that the IRS doesn't inform victims when illegal immigrants use their Social Security numbers to obtain employment and then file...

Millions of public school students will soon have their personal information and school records handed over to a nonprofit community organization. The Concerned Parents Association fought for the data in federal district court and won over the objections of the California Department of Education. SDUSD Alerts Parents to Student Info Release. The nonprofit said it needs the information to see if California schools are violating the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and other related laws. The database it will have access to includes all information on children, kindergarten through high school, who are attending or have attended a California school...

The Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday that it identified an automated attack on its computer systems aimed at getting information that could be used to steal tax refunds. The agency said identity thieves last month used personal data of taxpayers that was stolen elsewhere in an attempt to generate e-file personal identification numbers to file fraudulent returns and claim tax refunds.

It seems like every other day there is a report about another cyber intrusion that compromises personal data. There are multiple companies that promise to help protect that information but one, LifeLock, has found itself under fire from the federal government. Let's talk about that:First, what is LifeLock?The proliferation of hacks that have compromised consumer's personal information have many people turning to identity protection through companies such as LifeLock. The Tempe, Arizona-based company was founded in 2005 and went public in 2012. It has offices in San Diego, San Francisco, Irvine and Mountain View, California. The company provides a variety...

Big-three credit bureau Experian is the target of a class-action lawsuit just filed in California. The suit alleges that Experian negligently violated consumer protection laws when it failed to detect for nearly 10 months that a customer of its data broker subsidiary was a scammer who ran a criminal service that resold consumer data to identity thieves.

The Department of Education is threatening to dock Willie Chaney’s social security check again for outstanding “student loans.” The problem? Chaney claims he never took the loans out and has never even enrolled in college. The 74-year-old told FOX 5 in Atlanta he never even graduated high school, let alone take out loans to attend college in Arizona – a place he said he’s never been, either. He tells the station he believes he is the victim of identity theft. “Everything they send me I already done did,” Chaney said. “They want me to read this paper and, uh, check...

The Office of Personnel Management is under fire again today after it was revealed hackers, allegedly Chinese, stole 21 million social security numbers during a massive data breach discovered last month (which officials originally said only impacted 4 million people). The social security numbers belong to Americans who have, or who currently are, working for the federal government. This new information comes on the heels of news hackers were able to obtain extremely sensitive information, including classified background check information that can be used for blackmail, belonging to tens of millions of government employees. More bad news: Here’s the kicker:...

Just when you thought you were safe, a new hacking toy comes along and rocks your world. Imagine a tool exists that lets hackers pluck encryption keys from your laptop right out of the air. You can’t stop it by connecting to protected Wi-Fi networks or even disabling Wi-Fi completely. Turning off Bluetooth also won’t help you protect yourself. Why? Because the tiny device that can easily be hidden in an object or taped to the underside of a table doesn’t use conventional communications to pull off capers. Instead it reads radio waves emitted by your computer’s processor, and there’s...

The National Archives and Records Administration recently detected unauthorized activity on three desktops indicative of the same hack that extracted sensitive details on millions of current and former federal employees, government officials said Monday. The revelation suggests the breadth of one of the most damaging cyber assaults known is wider than officials have disclosed. The National Archives' own intrusion-prevention technology successfully spotted the so-called indicators of compromise during a scan this spring, said a source involved in the investigation, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the incident. The discovery was made soon after the Department of Homeland Security's...

As we learn more about the recent cyber-attacks on U.S. federal employee records by Chinese hackers, it is becoming increasingly clear that the problem is much worse than many previously thought. In testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, officials within the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) admitted on Tuesday to major lapses in basic cyber-security protocols that left government systems vulnerable to at least two attacks. Those attacks allowed hackers to breach sensitive personal data about nearly all employees of the federal government and millions of persons with security clearances, according to a report by the Associated...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/06/encryption-would-not-have-helped-at-opm-says-dhs-official/

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/06/14/federal-records-hack-china-pearl-harbor-column/71210018/

Those of us who have had security clearances in the past endured plenty of lectures on the need to secure sensitive material. The Office of Personnel Management in the Obama administration apparently needed to listen a little more carefully. A hack by China’s intelligence service not only exposed four million current federal employees, but also thirty years of data from security clearances, with the most personally sensitive information possible now exposed to foreign spies:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Data stolen from U.S. government computers by suspected Chinese hackers included security clearance information and background checks dating back three decades, U.S. officials said on Friday,...

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was in the hot seat on Capitol Hill yesterday over a massive data breach and hacking of highly sensitive taxpayer information, including social security numbers. A number of taxpayers whose information was stolen have also lost their identities. Information and testimony given by Inspector General Russell George revealed the IRS was given multiple warnings and recommendations about how to prevent an attack or breach. The IRS failed to implement all of the recommendations given.

Hackers broke into the U.S. government personnel office and stole identifying information of at least 4 million federal workers. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday that at the beginning of May, data from the Office of Personnel Management and the Interior Department was compromised.