EFTPOS skimming has become increasingly prevalent over the past few years. EFTPOS skimming—which stands for “electronic funds transfers at the point of sale”—involves either replacing the self-swipe point of sale terminals at cash registers with devices that record credit and debit card data, or remotely hacking a retailer’s POS server. In one such case, Romanian…
Most of us have read the resume of a friend or family member and did a double take and asked “Is this really you?” Resumes are designed to express to a potential employer your work history and skill sets. They are designed as a guide for an employer to use as a checklist to evaluate…
Spammers send unwanted emails or texts that are both annoying and frightening. Most spam messages are useless advertisements selling stuff you don’t need or want. In 1995, 8,069 unique pieces of malware were detected. One out of 20 emails were spam, and the Melissa virus infected hundreds of thousands. By 2010, 54 million unique pieces of malware were detected…
Contrary to popular belief, cybercriminals are hard workers. They work long hours, often through the night. In fact, many are “third-shifters”—up late at night, into the early morning hours. For example, the number one online fraud offender does his best work at 1:00 am local time in Ghana, or 5:00 pm PST. For the number two fraud…
Phishing occurs when scammers send emails that appear to have been sent by legitimate, trusted organizations in order to lure recipients into clicking links and entering login data and other credentials. SMiShing is a version of phishing in which scammers send text messages rather than emails, which, as with phishing emails, appear to have been sent by…
Going “Green” isn’t a fad, it’s necessary to save the planet. If you have watched any of the documentaries on the Discovery Channel about how the polar icecaps are melting then you might have the same sick feeling in the pit of your stomach like I do. Conservatively, sea levels will rise around 2 feet…
Just about anyone can set up a fake account on just about any website. Facebook and other social media sites are popular targets due to the amount of traffic they get and the variety of scams that can be perpetrated against legitimate users. Facebook estimates that as of December 31, 2011, false or duplicate accounts…
Go through your smartphone right now. Look at each app and seriously consider whether you need it. If not, delete it. Then, determine which of the free apps are worth upgrading to the paid versions, since free apps that contain advertising that puts an additional drain on your battery. Using a special energy-profiling tool, researchers from Microsoft…
A week doesn’t go by where we see news reports of a single house fire, small or large multi family building go up in flames. Dozens of people are displaced and often, someone dies. But when you think about it, fires in businesses seem to be less common. This is probably due in part to…
For the 12th year in a row, identity theft complaints top the list of consumer complaints [PDF] received by the Federal Trade Commission. 15% of more than 1.8 million total complaints filed in 2011 involved identity theft. Javelin Strategy & Research estimates that nearly 12 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2011—a 13%…
