Daily Archives: November 18, 2011

Technology

Crew Systems Adopts Guardtime Keyless Signatures to Add Tamper Evidence to Daily Reports and Accident Videos for Monitored Vehicles

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Crew Systems Inc, have established a strategic alliance by which Crew will adopt the GuardTime Keyless Signature Service to add tamper evidence to its daily and monthly reports and recorded video files.

Tokyo, Japan, Wednesday – November 16, 2011 — CREW SYSTEMS INC. (“Crew”), a video telematics cloud service provider, and GuardTime Japan,Inc., have established a strategic alliance by which Crew will adopt the GuardTime Keyless Signature Service to add tamper evidence to its daily and monthly reports and recorded video files as they are stored in the telematics cloud known as “HARVEST”. The HARVEST service is scheduled to be released on December 1, 2011.

HARVEST is an integrated safety driving support system which consists of a drive recorder, digital tachometer, and a real-time dynamic object management system. In HARVEST, the communication system uses built-in drive recorders mounted on vehicles to capture the behaviors of drivers, to record video images of traffic accidents as they occur, and to collect real-time information from the global positioning system (GPS). As the data is gathered, it is automatically sent to the HARVEST server in the Cloud. The server then processes, analyzes, and safely stores the data where it can automatically produce regular reports. The analysis and assessment of the data generate “safe driving” rankings. The system can also produce forensically-sound recorded video images capturing any traffic accidents that have occurred, or even recorded acts of unsafe driving.

By signing all of the digital data collected with GuardTime’s Keyless Signatures, Crew can provide proof that the data has not been tampered with in any way since it was signed, regardless of how it is transmitted to and stored in the Cloud. When submitting reports and associated video images for investigational purposes, Crew will significantly increase the reliability and credibility of the evidence with the addition of the unique GuardTime data integrity service.

Companies that own five or more vehicles for business use are required by safety driving management laws to produce daily reports on the driving habits of their employees. Systems that provide the automatic digitization of daily driving reports are increasingly used for operating efficiency. However, the integrity of the digitized and stored data has been left as a pending issue. In particular, video images capturing traffic accidents are increasing lybeing used as evidence in legal cases and for insurance claims. The admissibility of such data as evidence requires proof that the data is tamper-free.

Says Crew CEO Katsuhiko Hirayama,”The data in connection with a vehicle and a person’s safety requires high reliability and integrity. We decided to utilize GuardTime Keyless Signatures with our cloud service because it is easy to administer. The Keyless Signatures are extremely affordable in terms of integration and maintenance as compared to conventional time stamping-only or PKI-based services.”

Several thousand units of HARVEST drive recorders have been sold mainly to daycare service centers, construction companies, and logistic companies. It is expected that 10,000+ units will be sold annually to industrial waste disposal operators, companies leading reconstruction projects in disaster-stricken areas, and other enterprise organizations that own many business vehicles. This forecast holds true not only in Japan, but also within other markets overseas.

ABOUT CREW SYSTEMS, INC.
CEO: Katsuhiko Hiryama
Established : January, 2008
URL: http://www.crew-sys.com

About GuardTime:
A Red Herring Global 100 Winner and Frost & Sullivan Product Innovation Award Winner, GuardTime was founded with the goal of solving one of the biggest problems in computing: trust. GuardTime’s Keyless Signatures provide proof of data integrity, signing authority, and time. The verification of the signature can be done offline without reliance on keys, secrets, or the existence of a trusted third party. GuardTime’s mission is to change the world to one in which Keyless Signatures are ubiquitous and a natural part of the everyday data lifecycle, whether on disk, in transit, or in the Cloud. Visit http://www.guardtime.com for more information about using Keyless Signatures for signing your data.

All company names are trademarks of their respective owners.

GuardTime PR Contact:
Victor Cruz
MediaPR.net Inc
Tokyo, Japan
+1-978-594-4134
vcruz@mediapr.net
http://www.guardtime.com

Internet & Online

Scam Prevention Site Nears 150,000 Page View Marker

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Craigslistscammer.blogspot.com, a blog dedicated to helping people unmask scammers who prey on Craigslist advertisers, will surpass 150,000 page views at the end of November.

Austin, TX (USA), Wednesday – November 16, 2011 — Craigslistscammer.blogspot.com, a blog dedicated to helping people unmask scammers who prey on Craigslist advertisers, will surpass 150,000 page views at the end of November, according to its publisher Joe Gimenez.

The site receives between 400-600 visits per day from people who search the email address or other information contained in correspondence they’ve received from a person responding to their advertisement on Craigslist.

Since its inception on May 4, 2008, the blog has received 140,100 pageviews and is projected to hit 150,000 on November 29. The site has more than 3,200 comments from viewers who either confirm that a scam was attempted on them or adds information about other scams in their posts.

Typical comments might read like this one: “drjamesrobbert08@gmail.com posing as Melinda Robbert responded to a craigslist ad I posted for video tutor for daughter, sent two checks for almost $3K each, from two different addresses and two different banks, with instructions to take out my portion ($250)and send the rest by Western Union to the daughter’s nanny in Florida. I am in Maryland. So red flags went off left and right. I googled the nanny’s address and called to find no nanny at that address. Sent an email to “Melinda” and asked her to phone me. ‘She’ responded by telling me that she ‘has a little problem with her phone.’ Uh-huh . . . ”

Or this posting by a reader: “Add JohnWeb234@gmail.com to your list of scammers. The person just contacted me about sending his dog to board with me for the month of December using exactly the same MO [modus operandi] as with the tutor inquiries.”

The blog site started as Gimenez’s reaction to a scammer who was responding to his advertising a white couch for sale. The scammer said they’d send their movers to pick it up and that he was sending a check by FedEx.

When the check arrived, things started to seem a bit more fishy and then the scam really began. The check was $4,000 greater than the amount agreed upon for the couch and the scammer emailed to say that his secretary made the mistake, would Gimenez kindly deposit the check and wire the overage back to a Western Union address, less $100 for the inconvenience.

Gimenez’ reaction was “I mean really, who has a secretary these days and is looking on Craigslist for items.”

Upon further research, Gimenez found newspaper articles that described the exact same scam – the check was fraudulent, but close enough to real that his own bank would have credited his account and sent it out for delivery. Then, when the bank found, maybe two weeks later, the check to be fraudulent they would charge Gimenez’s account for the amount that he had wired out. The scammer would have received those funds and been long gone, but Gimenez would be out the money. You can read about the original scam attempt and Gimenez’ reaction here.

“Thank God I Googled something in that check that was already on the web,” Gimenez said. “And thank God so many people have responded in the same way over the years so that they might not fall for this evil trick.”

“Craigslist is very good about warning people about these sorts of scams, but few people understand why the warning is necessary or how they can be scammed. This site seeks to get the Craigslist scammers through the combined effort of thousands of people and its working,” Gimenez said.

The name of the blog is Let’s Get the Craigslist Scammers.