News and Events
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
September 9th 2019
June 6th 2019, USA Today
According to Neal O’Farrell, executive director of the nonprofit Identity Theft Council, the AMCA breach leaves affected patients vulnerable to hackers. Read more.
May 9th, 2019, Silicon Valley
Neal O'Farrell, author of Double Trouble, will be speaking about the convergence of identity theft and cybercrime, and the impact on business travelers, at the Silicon Valley Business Travel Association in Palo Alto California.
April 17th, 2019, Ohio
Spent a fantastic day with the educators and leaders at Butler Tech in Southern Ohio (four adult education campuses and 11 satellite school districts), learning about their vision of the future of education and talking about how we can engage more high school students, and especially foster youth, in discussions about cybersecurity careers.
April 11th 2019, Yahoo Finance
Neal O'Farrell, Leading Cybersecurity Expert and Executive Director of the Identity Theft Council, Joins the Taliware™ Advisory Board
"I believe that Taliware's biometric authentication and geo-presence verification app will be of great value in protecting consumers from fraud," states Neal O'Farrell. "Multi-factor identification is increasingly important and the far-reaching consequences of the 2018 General Data Protection Regulation makes this a critical feature for businesses as well," he added. Read more.
April 10th 2019, NBC News
Dark web monitoring: Useful way to fight identity theft or marketing hype?
Neal O’Farrell, executive director of the Identity Theft Council, is a long-time critic of credit monitoring services. He calls dark web scanning “a smoke and mirrors deal” that was created by credit monitoring services to justify their monthly fee. Read more.
Neal O'Farrell, author of Double Trouble, will be speaking at the Women In IT Summit and Awards at Cipriani's in New York, discussing the current and future state of cybersecurity. Read more.
September 28 2018, Naked Security
Robocallers slapped with huge fines for using spoofed phone numbers
Neal O’Farrell, executive director of the Identity Theft Council, says that neighbor spoofing isn’t just annoying – often, such calls are a means to identity theft: a lot of crooks figure that if they can get a live victim on the line, they’re halfway there. Read more.
Protecting your identity: the difference between a credit lock and a credit freeze
"For someone who’s arrested, they give your Social Security number, and suddenly you have a record for two DUIs in your name, which can be very, very hard to undo," said Neal O’Farrell, head of the Identity Theft Council, a nonprofit that helps businesses and people combat identity theft. Read more.
The Rise Of The Phone Scam Crisis
Neal O’Farrell, executive director of the Identity Theft Council and a fellow professional in the technology industry, explained that with such a rapid evolution of these crimes, robocalls are no longer just annoying, but very often a means to identity theft. Read more.
More than 1 million children were victims of ID theft last year
“I’m a big believer in credit freezes for kids,” said Neal O’Farrell, executive director of the non-profit Identity Theft Council. “It closes that file off to new credit, the same as an adult credit freeze. It’s not going to prevent criminal impersonation, employment fraud or tax fraud, but it will prevent the creation of a new account, which is what most identity thieves want to do.” Read more.
Here's exactly what you need to protect yourself from increasingly competent identity thieves
“There’s a level of ‘nightmare’ identity theft that’s rare now, but in the next few years could become the standard,” says Neal O'Farrell, Executive Director of the Identity Theft Council — not referring to the easy-to-shut-down scenario of a misappropriated credit card number, but something much more difficult to manage. Read more.
This former identity thief now fights the crimes he helped perfect
“After the Equifax breach, I was talking to some members of Congress about the possibility of new laws that would make a credit freeze mandatory for life; something that would be easy to switch on and off,” O’Farrell told NBC News. “All that [urgency] has gone away in just a matter of a couple of months. Read more.
“It was the one unique piece of information that would identify every consumer individually," Neal O'Farrell, executive director of the Identity Theft Council. Read More.
Neal O’Farrell, executive director of The Identity Theft Council, cautions that the industry has "over-promised and exaggerated the real strength of these products.” Read More.
"This is a new era," said Neal O'Farrell, executive director of the Identity Theft Council. Because the data stolen from Equifax was so massive and extensive, "now you must assume the bad guys have everything." Read More.
"Because big, bad, and in some cases lazy businesses hijacked it," said Neal O'Farrell, head of the Identity Theft Council. Read More.
NEWS ANNOUNCEMENTS
PR Web, September 2017
Neal O’Farrell, founder of the Identity Theft Council, today announced the launch of Operation Stop IT!, a national identity theft prevention initiative in partnership with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Identity Theft Resource center, the Credit Union National Association, the American Bankers Association, Civic, Transunion and others. More.