Turns out that all of Facebook’s privacy limitations make it difficult to remove your personal information even when you’ve passed from the living world and go to the big social network in the sky.

Search Engine Watch had this little blurb about a well known journalist’s profile and his sister’s fight to have it removed from the social networking giant.  Sadly it seems to be another hiccup in a set of privacy policies that are highly inadequate for a Facebook platform that aggregates an eye-popping amount of personal data and then surfaces it to external applications, mashup sites and advertisers.  If you want to step up your privacy on Facebook take a look at our recommended Facebook privacy settings.

Ah, the cleverness of a credit card fraudster has no limits!  This week brings news of a potential new scam that’s intended to siphon away your money by adding small, relatively innocuous charges to your credit card.  Charges appear from Adele Services in Melville, NY for amounts as small as $0.20.  The catch is that there is no such company as Adele Services, the Boston Globe reports.

The gig seems to be that Adele — or whoever these fraudsters really are — will make millions of dollars by quietly attacking many millions of unsuspecting credit users.  If I am being optimistic, I might guess this means that the average credit fraudster has realized that the days of pulling off conspicuous spending sprees on stolen credit have come to an end.  But if I am being more realistic, I know that this more likely spells the start of a time when thieves try to skirt the detection systems set up by running smaller frauds over a larger base of customers.

We founded Reputation.com to help people stop certain kinds of fraud before it has a chance to hurt them.  Since our business offers different types of subscriptions, we always want to make sure people know what types of charges appear from us on their credit cards.  Our transaction will always say “Reputation” right on them, alongside our 1-800 number and our home state of California (marked by CA).  If your charge doesn’t look like our example below, it’s not us!  Feel free to give us a call and we’ll make sure you get to the bottom of the problem immediately.

We also encourage you to check out our credit card loss prevention tips.  Follow these and you should have a healthy, fraud free credit card life.

Credit Card fraud is big business, both for the people who perpetrate it and for the companies that build software to try and stop it from happening in the first place.  The Secret Service (the governmental agency tasked with stopping this type of crime) describes the total losses to businesses and consumer as in the “billions of dollars.”  Here at Reputation.com, we’re often asked to test or review many of the top software solutions designed to stop credit fraud.  And though I have seen a lot that I like, I really think that the best prevention really come down to some basic sleuthing performed by the individual.  Here are my top 5 tips for how to make sure you don’t become a victim of credit card theft:

1.  Make sure to review your credit card statement, regularly. 

I recommend that you take the time to do this online, at least once a week.  Many of the credit card companies also allow you to set up alerts for certain types of charges, or to get emails with balance updates.  You may also want to set up an aggregation tool to help you review data quickly across all of your accounts.   I like the security features and the ease of use that Aaron Forth and his team have built at mint.com.

2. Shred your paper statements as soon as you’ve reviewed them. 

Better yet, save some trees and don’t receive paper statements (you can also do this through your online account).  Simply discarding your paper statements in the trash without shredding provides a rich target for thieves who want to mine you personal information and transaction data.

3. Watch out for imposters who pretend to be affiliated with your credit card or banking institution. 

You should be very skeptical when you are receiving a phone call or an email from somebody claiming to be from your bank or credit card issuer.  Unless they can positively identify multiple pieces of information that are personal to you (e.g., the kind of card you have, recent transactions, your last payment amount, etc.) you should not provide additional information to the person.  It’s not good enough for them to simply know your name and address – this information is all too easy to get from the web.  When in doubt, it’s better to be safe and call the number on the back of your card to verify if there are any issues on your account.

4.  Be prepared to act if there’s a problem.

Most card issuers can cancel you account instantaneously if you call them.  Keep a file with the numbers of your credit card issuers and/or banks and make sure you bring this when traveling.

5.  Stay aware of your rights and benefits as a card holder. 

Federal law protects unauthorized use of credit cards for any amount over $50.  The better card issuers actually offer complete protection from any fraudulent charge at any time.  You should inquire to see what your protection is.

6. A bonus tip from Reputation.com! 

If you want to protect the data that most identity thieves use to pose as you, we think you should check out MyPrivacy.  The product sweeps the web for public evidence of your address, age, income data, names of your relatives and other sensitive personal information and then we allow you to lock down those records through our proprietary protection.  The best defense!  I’d be happy to let readers of this post try it for a month for free.  Click this link and you’ll automatically have a code for a free month of MyPrivacy.  Stay private, stay protected.

Ars Technica is reporting that a federal judge has ruled to allow social security numbers to be posted on public websites, citing the First Amendment and freedom of speech in the ruling.

This decision comes about as a result of privacy advocate Betty Ostergren’s efforts to keep Social Security numbers off of the web. Quoting from the page:

For several years, Virginia has been making the real estate records available for a nominal fee from a commonwealth website. Ostergren, wanting to give public officials a taste of their own medicine, began reproducing the records of legislators and court clerks—Social Security numbers and all—on her website.

[SNIP]

[The Virginia] legislature changed the law to prohibit private parties from distributing individuals’ Social Security numbers even if they are simply reposting the very same records available from the government’s own website. Ostergren viewed this last clause as censorship, and with the help of the Virginia ACLU, she sued to block its enforcement against her.

This ruling evinces the importance of privacy and free speech in current internet case law. As the courts continue to rule about what can be posted online (see, for example, Viacom v. Google), internet privacy concerns will continue to grow.

My recommendation?  Be very careful of who you share your personal data with, and make sure you have a service that monitors where your data appears on the web.  MyPrivacy scans the internet for you each month.

We’re a low key crew here at Reputation.com.  We don’t order fancy lunches.  We wear a lot of company t-shirts around the office and our highly-caffeinated sodas are mostly the Costco variety.  So you can imagine our surprise when our friends over at VentureBeat called to inquire about the funding that we took back in January from Maples Investment and others!  Well, I guess it’s no longer much of a secret that we’ve really tapped into something important and worthy of attention from a group of smart investors.  We’re delighted by the coverage from VentureBeat and are glad for the capital.  We will continue to build the best reputation and privacy management tools for the web.  Congratulations to our team and to our customers for this exciting step forward.