Identity Resolution Daily

By the Infoglide Team

New York Times: Name Not on Our List? Change It, China Says

“By some estimates, 100 surnames cover 85 percent of China’s citizens. Laobaixing, or “old hundred names,” is a colloquial term for the masses. By contrast, 70,000 surnames cover 90 percent of Americans. The number of Chinese family names in use has tended to shrink as China’s population has grown, a winnowing of surnames that has occurred in many cultures over time.”

OCDQ Blog: All I Really Need To Know About Data Quality I Learned In Kindergarten

“When you present the business case for your data quality initiative to executive management and other corporate stakeholders, remember the lessons of show and tell.  Poor data quality is not a theoretical problem - it is a real business problem that negatively impacts the quality of decision critical enterprise information.”

BTNonline: Secure Flight Roils Booking Tech

“To facilitate the implementation of Secure Flight’s new data requirements for the travel industry, officials from the International Air Transport Association and Department of Homeland Security this year decided to use passenger data fields already used to transmit visa and passport information. TSA noted those IATA standards go into effect May 1.”

Security Systems News: Retail industry to ’speak with a single voice’

“There will now be a single entity both helping to establish best practices for loss prevention and lobbying state and federal government in regard to major security issues like organized retail crime.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Background Now: AG Seeks Injunction Against Contractors Asset Protection Association, Inc. (ConAPA) and Eugene Magre

“‘This company falsely promised its clients that if they gave their employees empty titles and worthless shares of stock they could avoid tens of thousands of dollars in workers compensation premiums,’ Attorney General Brown said. ‘But you can’t simply call a security guard a vice president and avoid complying with the law through a sophisticated and fraudulent scheme.’”

DailyTech: New Bills Target Stolen Merchandise Sold Online

“Under the new legislation, the brick and mortar retailers would score a major coup in that they could order eBay.com, Overstock.com, and Amazon.com to remove numerous goods without any proof.  Under the proposed laws, failure by the online retailers to ‘expeditiously investigate’ and remove the items would result in criminal penalties.”

BeyeNetwork: Business Drivers and Master Data

“Is the actual business need for a single version of the data, or just multiple versions, each of which is of higher quality? Drill down into this a little bit and you may need additional information from your business customers. What constitutes a requirement for master data? A situation in which two business processes need to have a fully shared view of the same representation of a data item?”

Web of Data: Report on Data Discovery by Bloor Research

“…there are now a number of products on the market that can discover data relationships that do not fall within the category of either data profiling or data quality. As a result, it is time to consider the importance of data discovery, and its requirements, as a market in its own right.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Benefit Fraud: Where are the deterrent sentences for benefit fraud?

“A repeat offender pedophile is on incapacity benefit [workers comp]. Why, one wonders. He seems to be well enough to assault 13 year old girls but not well enough to work.”

ebiz: While Business Intelligence Needs to Move from Passive to Active

“So, the difference is that you’re looking at information that tells you where you made mistakes, and perhaps how to avoid them in the future. Or, that you’re looking at information that tells you you’re about to make a mistake, perhaps in the context of historical information, and takes corrective action immediately without human intervention. Which seems more productive to you?”

Portland Press Herald: Hit-and-run thieves strike Maine stores

“Loss-prevention specialists say eBay, Craig’s List and other online auction and free advertising sites have fueled the increase in retail crime because they provide a new and anonymous way for shoplifters to resell stolen goods. ‘The best thing to happen to shoplifting is the Internet,’ said Strong.”

North Country Gazette: Self-Employed Plumber Nabbed For Scam

“While receiving benefits, Hogdin attested in signed statements that he had not returned to any form of work.  An investigation carried out by the New York State Insurance Fund’s Division of Confidential Investigations revealed that Hogdin, in fact, was self-employed repairing small engine machinery.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Does Data Matching Qualify as Identity Resolution?

“Any true identity resolution engine must not consist simply of a mathematical matching equation, nor must it rely upon data-deterioration processes such as ETL and data warehousing. Math cannot tell a user that Ian is an acceptable nickname for John, nor can simple mathematical equations point to similarities between the colors grey and charcoal.”

Fiscal Policy Institute: Building Up New York, Tearing Down Job Quality

“As buildings go up in New York City, more and more construction work has gone underground, signifying violation of several employment and tax laws. An estimated 50,000 New York City construction workers—nearly one in four—are either misclassified as independent contractors or employed by construction contractors completely off the books.”

SearchDataManagement: Enterprise-wide customer data quality still elusive at most organizations

“So why do so few organizations use data quality tools for customer data enterprise-wide? The reason, according to some, is that most companies collect and store customer data in numerous data sources spread throughout the organization with no way to connect them. Put another way, lacking a single view of the customer through a master data management (MDM) system or customer data integration (CDI) initiative, organizations lack any realistic way of applying data quality tools enterprise-wide.”

WorkersCompensation.com: Rome Man Accused Of Double Dipping

“A 58-year-old Rome man discovered working after he claimed a job-related injury prevented him from doing so was arrested Thursday on charges that he fraudulently collected $17,940 in workers’ compensation benefits.”

Multichannel Merchant: Retail Crime Up Thanks to Down Economy

“According to the National Retail Federation’s 2008 Returns Fraud Survey, released in November, retailers will see a total of about $219 billion in returns from sales made in 2008 – a 19% increase over the $178 billion in returns recorded in 2007. Of those returns, about $11.8 billion will be fraudulent – an increase of about 8% over last year’s figure of $10.9 billion.”

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By the Infoglide Team

[Post from Infoglide] Identity Resolution Daily: If Only Data Quality Were That Simple

“The most effective approach blends several best-of-class techniques, and it scales without compromising performance. A multifaceted solution combines an extensive rules base for nicknames and abbreviations, heuristics, semantics, and a large array of public and proprietary algorithms and other types of analytics.”

MarketWatch: Fraudulent Doctor Surrenders License, Repays $144K to Texas Mutual

“Between January 2003 and March 2006, Shanti and his clinic over-billed workers’ compensation carriers for pain management services in excess of hours actually attended by patients, according to the indictments.”

IT-Director: The problem with data quality solutions part 4

“A typical case might be where one application required a five digit numeric field and another application requires the same five numbers plus an additional two alphabetic characters. So, here’s a question for data quality vendors: can your software tell the difference?”

SecurityInfoWatch: Police, private security given access to ORCIN database

“‘Right now information sharing between loss prevention security and police officers is very limited to who you know,’ said ORCIN Founder Rudy Bravo ‘This way, if you go onto the Web site and post information (about a retail crime) and send it, it will be sent out to all our members.’”

KARE11.com: Retailers report rise in ‘organized’ shoplifting

“What isn’t clear is whether the apparent rise in organized shoplifting is due mostly to the Internet, where auction sites offer sellers an easy way to make money on never-before-used products, or if the shoplifting is rising as the economy gets worse.”

TravelAgentCentral: ASTA Alerts Agents to 2009 Secure Flight Changes

“ASTA said it is essential that travel agents take steps now to prepare for this new set of procedures and offered specific guidelines agents can use to comply with the new data collection rules.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Windsor Star: OLG coughs up cash

“The insider policy is to guard against fraud, such as a retailer who tells a customer a ticket is not a winner and then tries to claim the prize. In the spring of 2007, a provincial ombudsman issued a scathing report on the OLG and said Ontario store owners and their families had collected tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent claims.”

MarketWatch: Worldwide thefts cost retailers US $104 billion annually - Survey

“This year’s survey, the most complete analysis of global shrink ever conducted, reports key findings on retail shrinkage and crime in 36 countries and on five continents, based on data from a confidential survey of 920 large retailers with combined sales of U.S. $814 billion and 115,612 operating retail outlets…’This sum represents a tax imposed on honest people by retail criminals of $229.73 per household or $71.12 for every single person in the 36 countries surveyed,’ said Professor Bamfield, Director of the Centre for Retail Research.”

Jackson Citizen Patriot: Kids learn online dangers

“Internet predators lurk on networking Web sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, or in chat rooms, looking for young victims. ‘Everybody you meet online is an Internet stranger,’ Malik Williams, an Internet-safety presenter from the Michigan Cyber Safety Initiative, told more than 50 fifth-graders Tuesday at Concord Elementary School. ‘That’s why it’s important to keep yourself safe.’”

Bucyrus TelegraphForum: Bucyrus experiences rash of break-ins

“‘There is a new trend in what we call e-fencing. Thieves are selling their stolen items on the Internet versus just selling them outright. They can get up to 70 percent or more of the value if they sell on the Internet versus selling them on the streets, where they only get about 30 percent of the value,’ Teets said.”

SFGate: Ex-S.F. firefighter’s workers’ comp problem

“Indeed, if Hijjawi were trying to hide her fitness quest, she wasn’t doing a very good job. Our own Google search turned up records showing her running in marathons in Lake Tahoe, Los Angeles, Honolulu and elsewhere. From 2001 to 2006, according to records on the Web site Athlinks, Hijjawi ran in no fewer than a dozen marathons. And her biography on another site shows she was taking on even bigger challenges, including the Canada 2005 Ultraman super triathlon competition - in which competitors swim 6.2 miles, ride a bike for 170 miles and run 52 miles, twice the distance of a marathon. Completing it took her more than 33 hours.”

Bunker Blog: Update On Cops Involved In Major Shoplifting Ring

“Kevin Burchell and Clifford Barber, both police officers, worked with two others, one of them an employee at the Walmart the items were taken from; to get up to $200,000.00 worth of merchandise out of the store and onto an eBay site. According to the latest report, Barber was the mastermind behind the scheme, and sold the items on eBay and to friends and acquaintances.”

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By the Infoglide Team

CIOZone: What To Do About Bad Data

“The amount of data is doubling every 12 to 18 months—but much of it is inaccurate, incomplete or otherwise flawed. And bad data costs organizations between 10 to 20 percent of revenue. But there are steps CIOs can take to fix the data problem.”

ZDNet: Data Quality - Upstream or Downstream?

“How come most companies start worrying about the quality of your data only when it’s already dirty and in use? How come it doesn’t occur to them that the quality of data needs to be thought through before it’s actually captured? Even at the early stages of data capturing, data quality already plays an important role in the future of the company.”

Star-Ledger: eBay makes bid to oppose limits on online sales

“The big-box retail chains say they are concerned eBay and similar online sales sites offer professional shoplifters a largely anonymous venue for e-fencing their stolen goods. But eBay says brick-and-mortar retailers are using the argument as a ploy to try and stifle competition from online sellers. Coming as it does at the threshold of the holiday shopping season, there is a lot at stake for both sides in this Goliath vs. Goliath battle for the hearts and wallets of American consumers.”

CNW Group: Protecting lottery customers

“Over the past 12 months, OLG has taken significant action toward protecting lottery customers from theft and fraud.”

Your Industry News: Stopgap Bill Includes $101B For DOD Procurement

“The $630 billion-plus stopgap spending bill signed into law by President Bush includes $487.7 billion to fund the Defense Department and more than $40 billion to fund the Homeland Security Department through the end of fiscal 2009.”

Vancouver Sun: The war on retail crime

“Technology is becoming sophisticated enough to recognize when conventional patterns are broken, such as a door that is only entered by employees coming from a certain direction.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Lottery Scam: Lottery Scam Watch - Keep Track of Your Tickets

“The ticket was bought in May. When the ticket holder came to the store for verification, the clerk allegedly told him he was mistaken and kept the ticket. A police report contends that Melissa Trahan, 27, sent the winning slip to her mother in Mississippi. That woman, Gwen Landry, drove to the state capital, Baton Rouge, and cashed it in for the $800,000.”

Hub Solution Designs: Customer Data Quality

“Sometimes, attempts are made to programmatically improve data quality within a customer record, but because of tight deadlines, data quality across the file is usually not given serious attention.”

CT.gov: Waterford Town Employee Charged with Workers’ Compensation Fraud

“The warrant alleges that Mr. Hall ‘intentionally misrepresented his claimed injury and intentionally failed to disclose his employment and wage earnings while collecting disability benefits.’”

Homeland Security Watch: Senate Introduces its First DHS Authorization Bill

“The Senate bill elevates the assistant secretary for policy to the position of Under Secretary for Policy, to ensure policy coordination across the Department, it strengthens the authorities of the Office of International Affairs at DHS, and it authorizes the National Cyber Security Center, along with a private sector board to advise the Secretary on cyber security policy.”

Workers Compensation: California Fines Auto Body Shops Without Workers’ Comp Insurance

“Failure to carry workers’ compensation insurance is fraud, plain and simple. This is a form of workers’ compensation fraud – not having the appropriate coverage – is more common than you might think.”

Central Coast News: Santa Cruz police crack large commercial burglary case at Safeway

“Safeway loss prevention officers notified Santa Cruz police on Sept. 9 that the company’s store on Morrissey Boulevard had lost a significant amount of merchandise to theft and store managers suspected that an employee, Emanuel Anthony Ruiz, 30, was stealing merchandise. He allegedly took cosmetics, shoes, clothing and over-the-counter pharmaceutical items, including medications, from the store, police reported. Ruiz, with the help of the three others arrested, was then selling the items online, police said.”

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Department of Homeland Security: Homeland Security and State Departments Announce WHTI Land and Sea Final Rule

“The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Department of State (DOS) announced today the final rule for the land and sea portion of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), a core 9/11 Commission recommendation. The WHTI final rule requires travelers to present a passport or other approved secure document denoting citizenship and identity for all land and sea travel into the United States.”

Retail Solutions Online: Real-Time Loss Prevention: Changing The Game In Fraud

“Aberdeen selected three key performance criteria to distinguish Best-in-Class companies from industry Average and Laggards that are frequently measured within the retail industry. . . . In addition to the specific recommendations in Chapter 3 of this report to achieve Best-in-Class performance, companies must:

• Impliment Business Intelligence(BI) tools and predictive analytics to measure, analyze, and report theft and fraud data trends;
• Improve the focus on cash asset protection and access control systems to prevent internal theft incidence”

Evolution of Security: Checkpoint Changes Coming

“Technology is a wonderful thing but it’s not an overnight process - it must be invented, funded, built, tested, bought, and deployed.”

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Rocky Mountain News: ‘E-fencing’ bill to target organized retail crime

“Baby formula, gift cards and cold medicine could not be sold at online auction Web sites in Colorado under a proposal that will be introduced in the legislature today that’s intended to crack down on Internet fencing rings. . . . Retailers say ‘e-fencing‘ laws are needed to combat organized retail crime, which racks up an estimated $522 million a year in losses in Colorado alone and $37 billion nationwide. Internet sites such as eBay, the world’s biggest online auction site, are particularly good outlets for thieves because they can sell the stolen items anonymously, said Chris Howes, president of the Colorado Retail Council. . . . Congress last year held hearings on eBay’s role in monitoring itself for stolen goods. The Coalition Against Organized Retail Crime, whose members include Wal-Mart, Target and Macy’s, has been lobbying for legislation to require online auction sites to disclose more information on ‘high-volume’ sellers and post serial numbers for products.”

newsday.com: 61 People Arrested In NYC Stolen Car Insurance Fraud Sting

“Sixty-one people, including a New York City police officer, were charged Thursday in a $1.7 million insurance fraud sting. New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said those charged paid a middleman to dispose of their vehicles and falsely reported them stolen to collect large insurance settlements.”

PogoWasRight.org: One year later: Five takeaways from the TJX breach

“One year ago today, The TJX Companies Inc. disclosed what has turned out to be the largest information security breach involving credit and debit card data — thus far, at least. . . . Here, on the one-year anniversary of the breach becoming known, are five takeways for security managers.”

PRWeb: Employees Trump Organized Crime as Source of Retail Shrink, Study Finds

“It’s incredibly hard to create a customer-centric store when your core belief is that your employees, who are your company’s face to the world, will steal from you at the first opportunity. Nonetheless, according to a new RSR Benchmark report, sponsored by Micros Retail and Sensormatic, “Winning Trends in Loss Prevention: Benchmark study 2008″, this is the pervasive retailing condition. . . . ‘New Loss Prevention initiatives have to be cost-effective in both human and financial terms’, said Paula Rosenblum, Managing Director and author of the report. ‘Retailers are looking to add business intelligence to existing technologies and provide exception-based reports from video and text-based data to the responsible party. They believe new LP initiatives can reduce their shrink by 10-25%.’”

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