more on Forget your bank balance? It's available on the Internet

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Laurence Berland <laurence () isp northwestern edu>
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 02:44:39 
To:dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] Forget your bank balance? It's available on the Internet

Dave,
        This is a new way to get information that's always been way too easily
accessible.  There are many ways your myriad creative readers might devise
that would lead to an account number.  Once you do that, go down to a branch
of that person's bank and fill out a deposit slip.  Give your friend a
dollar.  They need no ID or other information because, as I was told when I
asked this back in 2000, "we don't care if people want to give you money."
My mother deposits checks for me all the time, since I have an account in
New York but go to school in Illinois.  On the receipt she, or anyone, gets
for this transaction, is the bank account balance.  It's possible this is
even how these online firms are doing it.  I complained to my bank, but they
refused to be of any help.

Laurence Berland


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ip () v2 listbox com [mailto:owner-ip () v2 listbox com]On Behalf
> Of Dave Farber
> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 2:19 PM
> To: ip () v2 listbox com
> Subject: [IP] Forget your bank balance? It's available on the Internet
>
>
>
> From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
> Subject: Forget your bank balance? It's available on the Internet
>
> Eric F. Bourassa, a privacy advocate at the Massachusetts Public Interest
> Research Group, knows how difficult it is to keep personal financial
> information personal. But even he was surprised at how easy it
> was for *The
> Boston Globe* to obtain his private bank account information.  Trafficking
> in confidential financial information is commonplace on the Web, with a
> quick Google search turning up more than a dozen sites selling everything
> from Social Security numbers to bank balances.  *The Globe* tested one of
> the sites in September, paying $125 for Governor Mitt Romney's
> credit report
> and in the process discovering a major security weakness in the nation's
> credit reporting network.
>
> In November, with Bourassa's blessing, the Globe began to explore the
> shadowy world of asset search firms, which advertise that they can unlock
> the financial secrets of virtually anyone. The mystery is where
> these firms
> get their information. Does it come directly from financial
> institutions? Or
> does it come through more indirect, possibly illegal, methods?
>
> The Globe agreed to pay Ohio-based I.C.U. Inc., whose Web address is
> Tracerservices.com, $475 for Bourassa's bank account information and his
> stock and bond holdings. Not all of the information the Web site provided
> was accurate, but the bank account information, with the balance listed
> right down to the penny, was so close that it made Bourassa feel violated.
>    [Source: Bruce Mohl, *The Boston Globe*, 4 Jan 2004]
>
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