Whaling And Wailing

By Guy Bunker | August 21, 2008 | 1 Comment 

Guy Bunker

The Chief Executive of HBOS has been a victim of fraud after a thief stole his identification details – probably from a bank statement. What does this show? Well, anyone can be targeted and everyone needs to be careful. Whaling is the practice of targeting the people at the top of an organization, OK so its usually done by phishing rather than theft – of course the rewards are still the same for the cyber-criminal, money, with the benefit that (hopefully) the man at the top has more than those further down.

What to do? It all comes down to one thing, protect those paper based items from the bin rustlers (or dumpster divers) by shredding them. It doesn’t take much to buy a cross-cut shredder and then it is just a case of getting into the habit of shredding anything and everything with names, addresses and important numbers (bank account details, credit card details, etc) as well as any of those very annoying ‘you have been pre-approved’ applications for credit cards. Put the shredder somewhere where you open the post or where you store old statements so you do it immediately.

It may sound daft, but you need an Information Protection policy for home (as well as at work), protecting both electronic and paper based information. It doesn’t have to long and complex – just a set of simple rules for you and your family. Go out and buy a cross-cut shredder today – you can even get one that will mash up old credit cards and CD ROMs!

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One Response to “Whaling And Wailing”

  1. Presidents, Senators, You And Me : View From The Bunker on October 20th, 2008

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