Swimmers may be stealing the spotlight, but it’s scammers who are taking home the gold–in the form of stolen credit card numbers, PINs, consumers’ personal identities.

One familiar con trotted out this year (and every Olympics) is ticket fraud, including what Britons call ‘ticket touting’ (scalping) and its more sinister cousin, counterfeiting. Paying for tickets that are never delivered is another way unwary buyers are tricked into giving up personal and/or credit card information.

Beware the cyber threats

Acknowledging the widespread use of smartphones, tablets and similar devices to retrieve Games-related content, the UK’s national fraud reporting center, Action Fraud, cautions fans to browse wisely, warning that worms, viruses and other malware can penetrate mobile devices just as easily as PCs.

Top malware delivery threats listed on Action Fraud’s blog site include:

• Search Engine Poisoning – The most prevalent form of malware delivery (40% of all malware infections), in which attackers link what appear to be legitimate search result “bait” pages to malware infected sites.
• Drive-by-Downloads – Technique that automatically downloads malware when devices interact with an infected website, email, pop-up ad or other apparently authentic Olympic content.
• Information Phishing – Disguised links from Facebook and Twitter abound this year. When clicked, infected links, in the shortened bit.ly/ format, for example, can instantly extract, disable or destroy a device’s content or operating system.

Staying off the scammers’ scorecards

A fraudster’s goal is to rip you off in record time and disappear into the shadows with their
ill-gotten gains.  To avoid being victimized during the Olympics (or anytime) follow these common-sense rules for browsing and buying:

• Never click a link from someone you don’t know.
• Avoid giving personal or credit card information to anyone whose identity and organization you can’t positively confirm.
• For Olympics news or memorabilia, frequent only sites known to be credible and trustworthy, such as London2012.com.

Such simple precautions can make for a winning Olympics experience, and help send the fakes, frauds and phonies home empty handed.

Have you or a friend encountered scammers during the Olympics? Take a minute to briefly share your story.

As mobile banking grows in popularity, so do the dangers of data breach and identity theft.

In fact, these data security dangers are so significant they could threaten the future of the mobile financial services industry.

To get a better understanding of the industry’s cyber security woes, a powerful trade group conducted a comprehensive survey of mobile experts from 50 financial institutions. BITS, the technology division of the Financial Services Roundtable, conducted the poll to find out the top mobile data protection threats and the best way to combat them.

Here’s what they found:

1) Mobile data protection must keep up with the lighting-speed pace of innovation.

2) Consumers are scared to use mobile banking. Financial institutions must change public perception of data security measures, which means data protection measures must work.

3) Cooperation on mobile data protection and data security is a must. Everyone involved, such as device manufacturers, network operators, financial institutions and app developers, must work together to develop effective mobile data protection solutions.

4) Consumers must take greater responsibility for their own data security. Consumers need to be more careful about not losing their smart phones and protecting the data inside of them. They should guard their phones the same way that they guard their wallets.

5) Balancing data security and data privacy. As consumers want more convenience, financial institutions need to find the right balance between allowing them to conduct more transactions, but still making sure their personal data is protected from data breach and identity theft. Financial institutions need to educate their customers on data protection methods, like having them lock their smart phone with a password.

Do you have similar concerns? What are your biggest worries regarding mobile banking and data security/identity theft issues? Let us know. We’d like to hear them.

Mobile devices are important tools to efficiently manage a business and to quickly meet the needs of a customer.  Think about the hit in productivity you’d take if you lost your smart phone or PDA.  Several weeks ago I wrote about the importance of implementing a wireless data policy to protect employee account data from being used to defraud a company.  However, a recent warning issued by the FBI’s Internet Crime Complain Center points to another danger associated with mobile devices.

Cybercriminals have been increasing their attacks on mobile devices through SMS text messages and fraudulent voice messages.  These tactics are very similar to traditional email phishing scams and ask the recipient to respond to verify an address, credit card number or other form of PII.  For example, through a process called smishing, a mobile subscriber receives a text message stating, “ABC credit card is confirming your purchase” and asks the user to visit a URL or call a phone number to verify a credit card number.

Obviously these attacks have serious implications for employees on a personal and professional level.  The financial impact to a company could be huge if an employee innocently provided a corporate bank account number as a response to a fraudulent SMS text message.

Fortunately, there are several steps employees can take to prevent the chance of becoming a victim. For example, you can advise employees not to respond to text messages or automated voice messages from unknown or blocked numbers.

Advise your employees about these potential dangers before any damages are done.