As the title says, you can see this pretty long Slashdot thread for good and not-so-good tips on identity theft prevention One of the good ones,.

Burn the papers. Keep a pile of them, and once every few months, toss
them on a fire. It’s the only solution for the paranoid.

[Via Slashdot -]

Another review on "pharming" and how it slowly makes its way as a tool for obtaining personal and confidential information by posing as a legitimate site.

Recent pharming attacks have taken advantage of old and insecure
implementations of BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) technology, the
dominant DNS software used on the Internet, and vulnerable default
configurations on some versions of Windows 2000 systems that were
acting as DNS servers, according to the Internet Storm Center.

Although upgrading and plugging holes in DNS server software, a more robust and secure DNS infrastructure may be needed, according to Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of DNS and now chief scientist at
Nominum Inc., a provider of Internet name and address services based in
Redwood City, California

[Via eWeek, MA -]

Hackers are flexible and smart people When they sense mass (and not always technically savvy) consumers adopting new technologies which can be hacked for fun and protift - they shift gears as well.

Online criminals turned their attention to
antivirus software and media players in the first three months of 2005,
as they sought new ways to take control of peoples’ computers,
according to a survey released on Monday.

Hackers continued to poke new holes in Microsoft’s popular Windows
operating system, but they increasingly exploited flaws in software
made by other companies as well, the non-profit SANS Institute found.

[Via ZDNet UK, UK -]

The police are not immune from cyber-attack.

A UK police chief has been bombarded with
thousands of threatening emails in a denial of service attack aimed at
crippling his force’s computer systems.

At one point just before the bank holiday weekend, 2,000 emails an hour
were being sent to Greater Manchester Police (GMP) chief constable
Michael Todd.

[Via ZDNet UK, UK -]

A report by ZDNet quotes Webroot’s research, according to which, spyware was found on 88 percent of consumer computers and 87 percent of business computers scanned by Webroot between January and April.

"Our research shows that some form of spyware, adware or potentially
unwanted software can be found on 87 percent of corporate PCs," said
Richard Stiennon, Webroot’s vice-president of threat research. "This
figure is disconcerting from a security perspective and also from an IT
support perspective, as spyware can often slow down the performance of
an entire network."

Webroot research, however, can be questioned, at least as it was quoted by ZDNet, because they don’t describe how they define a "spyware." Many anti-spyware programs includecookes that are placed by advertisers or other web publishers in the "spyware found" count. If Webroot included these cookies as "spyware hit" then their research is misleading.

Another number proposed by Webroot is that spyware writers are generating $2 billion annually. Again, no methods for obtaining this number were given.

[Via ZDNet UK, UK -]