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With all the hundreds of quests from our survey, it's a Hass Associates pleasure to answer those today! As what we have observed, identity theft is on the top where individuals get so interested. In fact, identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America, affecting on the average of 500,000 new victims each year, for the past decade. And so, we are glad to discuss this for you to be well- informed and have preventive measures, such as reducing and reporting scams and prosecuting scammers. These topics are followed by: -online security and hardware concerns; -earning money from legitimate work-at-home programs and work-at-home scams; -credit cards and consumer issues; -Nigerian and lottery scams; -viruses and spyware; -phishing scams; -investment scams; and -urban legends. Obviously, many subscribers are interested in knowing out about new scams in these areas. This seems quite related to what we have been writing about. With all your exciting and terrific questions, Scam Busters will become even better. Today, we'll answer five of your biggest questions about identity theft: Answers to Our Subscribers' 5 Biggest Identity Theft Protection Questions 1) How big of a problem is identity theft and how long does it typically take to recover it? With victims' losses amounting to about $1.1 billion a year, identity theft reached the top of FCS's yearly list of consumer complaints for seven years in a row. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimates more than the average victims that devote 170 to 300 hours trying to recover his or her identity and to resolve theft-relates issues. More than 110 million people in the US reported since January 2007 that have been packed letters from the different government branches, universities, corporations, banks, medical professionals, credit unions, no non-profit organizations and others notifying them that their personal information had either been stolen or lost. (Check out more statistics at our Identity Theft In

The website Songsrpeople.com looks a lot like other amateur-video sites. It is wallpapered with clips featuring "the most insane amusement park ever" and "your girlfriend's six friends." The site draws tens of thousands of visitors a month, according to audience measurement firms. It also has ads for national brands, including Target Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and State Farm. But Web-security investigators at a firm called White Ops contend that most of the site's visitors aren't people. Rather, they are computer-generated visitors, or "bots," designed to fool advertisers into paying for the traffic, says White Ops, which has blacklisted the site-and thousands more like it-so that ads from clients such as Zipcar don't land there. An anonymous representative for Songsrpeople declined to discuss the site's traffic but in an email called the White Ops methodology into question. State Farm said it was looking into the matter while Target declined to comment and Amazon didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Authorities and Internet-security experts say tens of thousands of dubious websites are popping up across the Internet. Their phony Web traffic is often fueled by "botnets," zombie armies of hijacked PCs that are controlled from unknown locations around the world, according to Internet security experts. The sites take advantage of the simple truth that advertisers pay to be seen. This creates an incentive for fraudsters to erect sites with phony traffic, collecting payments-often through middlemen and sometimes directly from advertisers. "When you walk into this world, you walk with eyes wide open," said Brian Harrington, chief marketing officer at Zipcar, which ran a recent ad campaign, assisted by White Ops to filter out bogus traffic. "You know stuff is not real." At their most sophisticated, botnets can mimic the behavior of online consumers, clicking from one site to the next, pausing at ads, watching videos, and even putting items in shopp

Data breaches can have a big effect on a merger's overall value. There appears to be a worrying level of complacency toward the assessment of cyber-risks during M&A deals, despite increasing awareness of the cybersecurity risks facing businesses. International law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer found in a survey shared with Infosecurity that 90% of respondents believe cyber-breaches would result in a reduction in deal value; and 83% of dealmakers believe a deal could be abandoned if cybersecurity breaches are identified during deal due diligence or mid-transaction. Yet, too few tie-up architects are addressing the threat. A majority (78%) say that cybersecurity is not a risk that is currently analyzed in-depth or dealt with in deal due diligence. "It's surprising that dealmakers recognize the growing threat of cyber-attacks to businesses, but generally aren't addressing that risk during deals," said Chris Forsyth, co-head of the firm's international cybersecurity team. "You wouldn't dream of buying a chemicals plant without assessing environmental risk, so why would you buy a data-driven business without assessing the risks its faces around data management and cyber-security?" The firm said that the effect of a cyber-incident on value would work both ways - a business with a good track record and robust processes could be worth more than competitors, while a business with a bad track record could be worth less.