The Fraud Blog with Tracy Kitten

A Look Back at 2010

A Year of Phishing Attacks, Card Skimming and WikiLeaks
A Look Back at 2010

As the year comes to a close, I thought it might be interesting to take a look back at some of the perspectives we've shared with you, our readers, about financial fraud in 2010.

Not surprisingly, some of our most-read blogs of the year related to card skimming, ATM hacks, EMV, authentication, ACH fraud and mobile banking. All of those topics have been widely covered and discussed throughout the industry over the last 12 months. And, as we embark upon 2011, I expect discussions around those topics to continue.

On the skimming front, while vulnerabilities at the ATM are widely known, 2010 saw a significant uptick in skimming at other unattended self-service terminals, namely, pay-at-the-pump. The problem got so bad over the summer that one Florida county police department went so far as to advise consumers to only use cash when paying for gas at self-service stations.

Phishing, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and the security risks they pose, also caught our readers' attention during the year. Even my personal story of a debit breach I suffered over the summer seemed to stir interest.

But some other topics that we don't blog about so often received a lot of views, too. Things like fraud schemes targeting would-be mystery shoppers and the often untold side of the individuals who are pulled into the money-mule circuit.

And how could we forget the WikiLeaks debacle and the subsequent distributed denial of service attacks launched after payments providers cut their support of the WikiLeaks team?

Those stories and perspectives will inevitably set the tone for 2011 and the topics we'll discuss.



About the Author

Tracy Kitten

Tracy Kitten

Former Director of Global Events Content and Executive Editor, BankInfoSecurity & CUInfoSecurity

Kitten was director of global events content and an executive editor at ISMG. A veteran journalist with more than 20 years of experience, she covered the financial sector for over 10 years. Before joining Information Security Media Group in 2010, she covered the financial self-service industry as the senior editor of ATMmarketplace, part of Networld Media. Kitten has been a regular speaker at domestic and international conferences, and was the keynote at ATMIA's U.S. and Canadian conferences in 2009. She has been quoted by CNN.com, ABC News, Bankrate.com and MSN Money.




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