Identity

This is interesting: http://www.entrepremusings.com/index.php/2008/11/16/are-your-childrens-identities-safe/

Have you experienced anything like this? What do you do to protect your children?

It seems PayPal makes it's own rules whether or not to accept that a customer has experienced unauthorized payments from his or her account. Not a good policy, IMO.

Take this story from Chris Pirillo.
A summary: someone was able to retrieve his iTunes password thanks to lax password retrieval security over at Apple. (Apple have now resolved the issue, according to the story). Using Chris' account, the fraudster was able to deduct US$450 from Chris' PayPal account - cash spent on iTunes Gift Cards.

With this background, and the backing by Apple, you would think Chris would get his funds back, right?

Wrong!

As it turns out, PayPal deems the deduction was


and decides that they will NOT return the funds stolen.

What should PayPal do? Should they turn around?
Perhaps it is time to use the Marketing Power, and stop using PayPal until they reach a better vetted stand?

And - is this the first time PayPal does this, or is Chris' case the last in a long row?

Can we trust a banking service that does not care for it's customers?

Do you think PayPal is taking the side of the fraudsters in this case?

Identity theft has been on the news for a while. TJX, CitiBank and many others have been exploited in the past. Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace all adds to the information available. Combining the sources of information on search engines like Zoominfo and Naymz makes it so much easier to make a complete profile on just about anyone – and use that information in social engineering. 

Igor is the CEO and founder of Cronto, a UK-based information security company. As the name implys, with a degree in Engineering gained at the top university in Moscow, Russia, Igor went on to the University of Cambridge, UK, where he graduated in 1999. In 2005, he co-founded Cronto to deliver secure authentication that normal people can use As you can see in his blog, Igor is a strong believer in transaction authentication as a means to avoid phishing.