Posts Tagged ‘fraud’
Student Loans Company warns of phishing attack
The Student Loans Company is contacting customers who it believes may have had their personal details compromised as a result of a phishing attack.
The email attack was designed to steal students’ personal details and the company is advising students that a genuine email from the company would never ask them to divulge personal or financial information such as bank details.
The Student Loans Company handles government loans taken out by students at UK universities and colleges, to support them in their studies.
It has not confirmed how many customers may have been affected by the latest scam, which follows a number of earlier phishing attacks.
Attacks often take place in September, January and April, the months when most students pay the instalments on their loans.
Heather Laing, fraud prevention and detection manager for the Student Loans Company, said: “We are currently contacting a number of students by telephone who we have identified as being at risk of having their details compromised, to advise them of the necessary security steps they should follow to ensure their details are protected”.
Earlier this week it was announced that the Metropolitan Police Service has arrested six people over a phishing scam which targeted UK students in August.
The suspects are believed to have stolen more than £1 million through the scam which involved an email asking the Student Loan Company’s customers to update their loan account details.
A link in the email directed the students to a bogus website which appeared genuine but allowed the phishers to steal personal details and take large sums of money from bank accounts.
The suspects were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, for money laundering offences and under the Computer Misuse Act.
NY FED: We Were Worried About MF Global Back In 2009
Thomas Baxter, general counsel of the New York Federal Reserve, is scheduled to testify at an MF Global congressional hearing on Thursday.
According to written remarks, Baxter will reveal that back in 2009, the New York Fed was reluctant to approve MF Global’s application to become a primary dealer due to concerns related to the brokerages internal controls.
These concerns were tied to an investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which was investigating an rogue trading incident.
This led to delays in MF Global’s application. At one point, the firm even requested a meeting with NY Fed President William Dudley, reports Reuters. That was denied.
Jon Corzine, who became CEO of MF Global in March 2010, eventually met with NY Fed officials in June 2010 to talk up his firm.
The NY Fed finally approved MF Global’s application to become a primary dealer in February 2011.
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See Also:
- JON’S SPIN MACHINE: How Corzine Dodged The MF Global ‘Fraud’ Question
- Here’s What You Can Expect From Today’s MF Global Hearings
- Now You Can Have Your Own "Don’t Be A Corzine" T-Shirt For $18.50!
Courts too lenient with uninsured drivers
AA Insurance has warned that uninsured drivers are being let off too lightly by the courts, even though they may be putting people at serious risk.
According to the motoring organisation, honest drivers are being let down because uninsured motorists are being given fines and sanctions that fail to reflect the seriousness of the offences they have committed.
Driving without insurance against third party risk is an offence which carries a fixed penalty of £200 and six penalty points.
The police will often prosecute uninsured drivers but the AA believes the fines imposed by the courts fail to adequately discourage repeat offences.
Uninsured drivers are estimated to cost other motorists around £380 million a year, including bumping up the cost of motor insurance by around £30 for honest drivers.
Simon Douglas, director of AA Insurance said: “I believe uninsured drivers should pay the equivalent of the unpaid insurance premium, which can easily be calculated, in addition to a fine.
“What’s more, the fine should be sufficiently great to make them think twice before offending.”
In related news, an investigation by Money Mail has revealed that drivers are having their insurance claims rejected because insurance companies are failing to carry out simple checks on drivers’ past claims.
This means that drivers who fail to mention a minor accident, which they may have forgotten about, could have a subsequent claim rejected.
Insurance companies are able to check customer details with the Claims and Underwriting Exchange (Cue), but instead of doing so when a customer applies for cover, checks are only being made following a claim on the policy.
However, according to the Association of British Insurers, Cue was established to help prevent fraud and there is no requirement for insurers to check details when a customer takes out a policy.
Google’s New Music Store Favors Artists And Users, Not The Record Industry (GOOG)
Google just took the wraps off its new music store, which the company has been hinting at for more than 18 months now.
Check out our walkthrough here→
It’s a pretty traditional download store on the lines of iTunes (which has been around for eight years now) and Amazon MP3, but with a few interesting twists, like free music sharing via Google+.
The biggest difference, though, is that Google will allow any artist to create an artist page and upload and sell music through the store. That’s a huge switch from how iTunes and other stores do it.
This could create some logistical nightmares for Google: it will have to deal with customer support issues from potentially millions of musicians, including things like copyright (say a band uploads an unauthorized cover version or a recording that they didn’t even make) and fraud (where scammers use stolen credit cards to “buy” millions of copies of a song they uploaded themselves).
But on the whole, it’s a pretty bold move in favor of independent artists.
Here are the details:
- Songs will be available through the Android Market. The entire service will also be on the Web at music.google.com.
- Users can share songs via Google+. As we previously reported, any purchased song can be shared with an unlimited number of connections via Google+. All shared songs can be played at least once for free, and indie artists can also grant additional free plays. (Note: sharing doesn’t work with songs uploaded from your personal collection.)
- All purchases are stored in the cloud. All songs are stored in the Google Music database, where users can also upload up to 20,000 tracks from their own collection. (This feature has been available since May as part of the Google Music beta.) Then, users can stream these purchases to up to 10 devices.
- Redownloading is now supported. Before, once songs were up in the cloud, users could only stream them to devices. Now, they can redownload them — nice in case of hard drive crashes, for instance.
- Warner is not included. EMI, Sony, and Universal — three of the big four labels — are included. There are also a lot of indies including Merlin (an aggregator representing thousands of labels around the world) and Beggars’ Banquet. The store will have 13 million tracks at launch.
- Self-released artists can upload their own music. Artists can pay a $25 one-time fee to submit their music to the store through the Artist Hub. There, they can create an artist page, upload content to sell, and set pricing. Google takes a 30% cut of each sale, just like iTunes, but there’s no recurring fee.
- T-Mobile customers can pay for songs on their phone bills. This kind of carrier billing makes perfect sense for a SUBSCRIPTION service, but is kind of a strange feature here. But it will let customers with no credit cards buy music. That’s great for T-Mobile and Google, not so good for the parents of teenagers who are still on their cell phone plans.
There are also going to be some exclusives at launch, including live concerts from the Rolling Stones and new tracks from Coldplay.
The updated service is available on the Web now, and will be coming to Android devices in coming days.
Update: Here’s Google’s official blog post announcing the service, and a video in which a bunch of indie artists explain why it’s so hard to make a living in rock and roll and how Google Music will help:
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See Also:
- What To Expect From The Big Google Music Announcement Tomorrow
- WALKTHROUGH: Google’s New Music Store
- THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: Google+ Is Key To Cloud Strategy And Going Beyond Social Networking
These Are The Biggest Retail Thieves In Europe
According to the annually published Global Retail Theft Barometer, Europe has seen an increase in theft of 7.8 percent over the past year.
The survey, derived from questioning shop owners in each respective country, calculates the “shrinkage” within the retail industry. Shrinkage in this case, refers to the monetary value of goods that are stolen from or lost by retailers through a variety of avenues.
Shrinkage is caused by two main factors: shoplifting and dishonest employees. Internal administrative errors and fraud on the part of suppliers also play their part.
Interestingly, one conclusion that the study made was that while dishonest employees were the main cause of shrinkage in North and South America, the main source of shrinkage in Europe was shoplifting.
Overall, India has the top shrinkage value in the world. The top European nation is in second place globally.
We’ve ranked our countries according to what percentage of total sales shrinkage accounts for. We’ve also provided how much retail-related crime cost the industry in each nation during the past year while showing how much damage shop-lifters did to the industry in each country.
NB: For some reason the survey grouped the Baltic States together. It also provided joint figures for Belgium and Luxembourg.
#20 Denmark
Shrinkage as percentage of total sales: 1.29 percent
Cost of retail related crime: €414 million ($577 million)
Shrinkage attributable to shoplifting: €193 million ($269 million)
SOURCE: Global Retail Theft Barometer
#19 Netherlands
Shrinkage as percentage of total sales: 1.30 percent
Cost of retail related crime: €1.45 billion ($2.02 billion)
Shrinkage attributable to shoplifting: €633 million ($883 million)
SOURCE: Global Retail Theft Barometer
#18 Portugal
Shrinkage as percentage of total sales: 1.33 percent
Cost of retail related crime: €410 million ($572 million)
Shrinkage attributable to shoplifting: €182 million ($254 million)
SOURCE: Global Retail Theft Barometer
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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See Also:
- Here’s What You Need To Know About ETA
- These Are The Best European Countries To Start A Business In, According To The World Bank
- Here’s What You Need To Know About The Big Corruption Probe Into Europe’s Largest Consumer Electronics Chain
