Entries by Robert Siciliano

How Does My IP Address Affect Different Services?

You’ve probably heard the term IP address before but you likely aren’t fully aware of all the ways it is used. Or misused by various entities. Or how you can turn an IP address to your own advantage by taking control of who gets to use it. An internet protocol (IP) address is a numerical…

Avoid Unwanted Credit Card Charges

I think it’s safe to say that all credit card charges are unwanted, but today I’m talking about so-called “grey charges”—those out-of-the-blue credit card charges that sneak up on us and require our time, attention, persistence and aggravation to get rid of. A study by BillGuard shows the average dollar amount lost by grey charges…

Simplify and Secure Your Passwords

It seems that almost every site on the Web requires a password. At least twice a week, I get an email from someone who wants me to join yet another site, which requires yet another username and password. You can cop out and use the same username and password combination, but that’s always possible since some…

Just One of Many Internet Scams

A good friend of mine called me recently to ask what I knew about scams from online sales. He had placed an ad on CraigsList for something he was trying to sell and had asked for $150 for the item. He had received a call from a woman and she offered to send him a…

FTC: Identity Theft Top Complaint Once More

Last year, 2012, marks the first year in which the FTC received more than two million complaints overall, and 369,132, or 18 percent, were related to identity theft—an increase of 30% over 2011. Of those, more than 43 percent related to tax- or wage-related fraud. As the internet grows ever more pervasive and essential, we…

How BYOD is Driving Innovation

One fourth of all global information workers use their own devices at home and at work for work purposes. A recent survey report, commissioned by Unisys and conducted by Forrester Consulting, involved 2,600 IT workers and 590 business and their IT executives. CIO Insight points out that these are the “mobile elite,” a class of professionals who overwhelmingly…

BillGuard: Grey Charges Equal Legal Fraud

Grey charge: When you buy something with your credit card and you get charged for something you didn’t want. Often a merchant will tack on additional products and services to a legitimate purchase you make, and you “sorta” know about the charge…but not really. For example, you might be in the process of purchasing something…

What Kind of Wireless is Secure…and What Isn’t?

Wi-Fi was born to be convenient—but not secure. More than anything, though, it depends more on what kind of wireless we’re talking about. Public. Free, unsecured Wi-Fi is the least secure. Shared Wi-Fi in public, at home or in the office lacks encryption of the data packets streaming from the connected devices. In other words, your…

3 Wi-Fi Myths That Put Your Data at Risk

The holidays are over, the Consumer Electronics Show has passed, and now you have all these new shiny wireless gadgets you’re just itching to play with. Now, before you go and connect to the internet, please understand that it’s all fun and games until someone gets hacked. And many times, this means when you are…