injuries from shredders by www.securityconsole.co.uk

As with any motorized cutting equipment, there is a risk of injury. As shredders migrated to home environments with children and pets, shredder safety became an important issue. As early as 1985, personal injuries have occurred as a result of consumers operating shredders. As the number of paper shredders per household increased, so did the number of accidents. From January 2000 through September 2005, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) received 50 reports of incidents involving finger amputations, lacerations, and other severe injuries from paper shredders. The majority of injuries happened to children under the age of five.
To increase consumer awareness of these potential safety hazards, two important safety alerts were issued:
Fall 2005 – Consumer Product Safety Council Shredder Safety Alert
February 2006 – American Academy of Pediatrics Shredder Safety Alert
Although designed with a narrow opening to the cutting wheels, shredders still pose a danger to pets and small children. Children as young as four months of age have the ability to imitate adults. As children grow older, this tendency to mimic adult behavior increases and parents might not anticipate the dangers of children accidentally activating a shredder. This puts children at risk for serious injury, even with adult supervision. Children’s fingers can easily be pulled into the paper entry through the force of the shredding mechanism.
Many new shredders on the market now feature improved safety features:
Safety sensor – new technology ensures the shredder automatically shuts off when hands are too close to the paper entry. The sensor around the paper entry senses the magnetic energy field carried by humans and larger pets. When this energy field is detected, the shredder instantly shuts down. As soon as the energy field is removed, the shredder starts up again.
Slimmer paper entry – this reduces the chance of fingers getting pulled into the shredding mechanism. The entry can also be made of an inflexible material to prevent the opening from widening under pressure.
Safety lock – this safety feature puts the shredder into a safe, inactive mode to prevent children from activating the shredder mechanism. The adult user simply locks the activation switch in the "off" position.
Safety flap – this flap covers cutters when the shredder head is removed from the wastebasket.
Safety interlock switch – this switch ensures the shredder will not activate when the shredder head is removed from the wastebasket.
Many home shredders can be left in a "stand-by" mode that will start the cutting process when anything is inserted into the feed slot. In homes with small children or pets, simply keeping the shredder unplugged while not in use can also reduce any risk

For more information on this or any other types of shredding please contact www.securityconsole.co.uk

Data Protection Act by www.securityconsole.co.uk

In the United Kingdom personal data is protected by the Data Protection Act of 1988. The Act covers all personal data which an organization may hold, including names, birthday and anniversary dates, addresses, telephone numbers, etc.
Under English (which extends to Wales but not necessarily to Northern Ireland or Scotland), the deception offences under the Theft Act of 1968 increasingly contend with identity theft situations. In R v Seward (2005) EWCA Crim 1941 the defendant was acting as the "front man" in the use of stolen credit cards and other documents to obtain goods. He obtained goods to the value of £10,000 for others who are unlikely ever to be identified. The Court of Appeal considered sentencing policy for deception offenses involving "identity theft" and concluded that a prison sentence was required. Henriques J. said at para 14:"Identity fraud is a particularly pernicious and prevalent form of dishonesty calling for, in our judgment, deterrent sentences."
Increasingly, organizations, including Government bodies will be forced to take steps to better protect their users' data.
Stats released by CIFAS on the 2nd of February 2010, show that in 2009 in the UK that there were 85,000 victims of impersonation and 24,000 victims of bank account takeovers. this represents a 35% and 15% increase respectively from 2008 levels. This is the understanding of www.securityconsole.co.uk and should not be construed as legal advice

medical identity theft by www.securityconsole.co.uk

Medical identity theft
Medical identity theft occurs when someone uses a person's name and sometimes other parts of their identity—such as insurance information—without the person's knowledge or consent to obtain medical services or goods, or uses the person’s identity information to make false claims for medical services or goods. Medical identity theft frequently results in erroneous entries being put into existing medical records, which may in turn lead to inappropriate and potentially life-threatening decisions by medical staff

information provided by www.securityconsole.co.uk

Synthetic Identity theft

Synthetic identity theft according to www.securityconsole.co.uk is variation of identity theft which has recently become more common is synthetic identity theft, in which identities are completely or partially fabricated. The most common technique involves combining a real social security number with a name and birthdate other than the ones associated with the number. Synthetic identity theft is more difficult to track as it doesn't show on either person's credit report directly, but may appear as an entirely new file in the credit or as a subfile on one of the victim's credit reports. Synthetic identity theft primarily harms the creditors who unwittingly grant the fraudsters credit. Individual victims can be affected if their names become confused with the synthetic identities, or if negative information in their subfiles impacts their credit ratings.

criminal identity theft

Criminal identity theft
According to www.securityconsole.co.uk when a criminal fraudulently identifies himself to police as another individual at the point of arrest, it is sometimes referred to as "Criminal Identity Theft." In some cases criminals have previously obtained state-issued identity documents using credentials stolen from others, or have simply presented fake ID Provided the subterfuge works, charges may be placed under the victim's name, letting the criminal off the hook. Victims might only learn of such incidents by chance, for example by receiving court summons, discovering their drivers licenses are suspended when stopped for minor traffic violations, or through criminal background checks performed for employment purposes.
It can be difficult for the victim of a criminal identity theft to clear their record. The steps required to clear the victim's incorrect criminal record depend on what jurisdiction the crime occurred in and whether the true identity of the criminal can be determined. The victim might need to locate the original arresting officers and prove their own identity by some reliable means such as fingerprinting or DNA fingerprinting, and may need to go to a court hearing to be cleared of the charges. Obtaining an clearing of court records may also be required. Authorities might permanently maintain the victim's name as an alias for the criminal's true identity in their criminal records databases. One problem that victims of criminal identity theft may encounter is that various data might still have the incorrect criminal records in their databases even after court and police records are corrected. Thus it is possible that a future background check will return the incorrect criminal records. This is just one example of the kinds of impact that may continue to affect the victims of identity theft for some months or even years after the crime, aside from the psychological trauma that being 'cloned' typically engenders

identity cloning

Identity cloning and concealment
In this situation, the identity thief impersonates someone else in order to conceal their own true identity. Examples might be illegal immigrants, people hiding from creditors or other individuals, or those who simply want to become "anonymous" for personal reasons. Unlike identity theft used to obtain credit which usually comes to light when the debts mount, concealment may continue indefinitely without being detected, particularly if the identity thief is able to obtain false credentials in order to pass various authentication tests in everyday life.

posted by www.securityconsole.co.uk

identity theft

Identity theft is a form of fraud in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name. The victim of identity theft (here meaning the person whose identity has been assumed by the identity thief) can suffer adverse consequences if he or she is held accountable for the perpetrator's actions. Organizations and individuals who are duped or defrauded by the identity thief can also suffer adverse consequences and losses, and to that extent are also victims.
The term identity theft was coined in 1964 and is actually a misnomer, since it is not literally possible to steal an identity as such - more accurate terms would be identity fraud or identity cloning but identity theft has become commonplace.
"Determining the link between data breaches and identity theft is challenging, primarily because identity theft victims often do not know how their personal information was obtained," and identity theft is not always detectable by the individual victims, according to a report done for the FTC.Identity fraud is often but not necessarily the consequence of identity theft. Someone can steal or misappropriate personal information without then committing identity theft using the information about every person, such as when a major data breach occurs. A US Government Accountability Office study determined that "most breaches have not resulted in detected incidents of identity theft" the report also warned that "the full extent is unknown". A later unpublished study by Carnegie Mellon University noted that "Most often, the causes of identity theft is not known," but reported that someone else concluded that "the probability of becoming a victim to identity theft as a result of a data breach is ... around only 2%". More recently, an association of consumer data companies noted that one of the largest data breaches ever, accounting for over four million records, resulted in only about 1,800 instances of identity theft, according to the company whose systems were breached according to www.securityconsole.co.uk