Phishing of course is when you receive a fraud based email designed to trick you into clicking links and entering your personal information. In some cases when clicking those links you may download a virus. Their intention is to bypass your computers security. Phishing is emerging as sophisticated due to ways in which the phish…
The Guardian reports, “South Korean police recently arrested five people who allegedly collaborated with North Korean hackers to steal millions of dollars in points from online gaming sites. Members of the gang, which included North Korea’s technological elite, worked in China and shared profits after they sold programs that allowed users to rack up points…
This title of this post is a security industry axiom. In other words, we can strive for security, and by making this effort we put ourselves on a path to security. But while we may achieve a relative degree of security, we can never be 100% secure. Even Fort Knox is vulnerable. We can, however,…
I know the last four letter word you want to hear is SNOW. But everyone needs to know the Snow Shovel Bandit has been sentenced to 6 years in prison!! This guy generally broke into homes without home security alarms occupied by single women. For a small time crook, this guy had a pretty solid…
More than ten years ago, when I began speaking to organizations about personal security and identity theft, headlines often read “Utility Worker Steals Identities” or “Human Resource Officers Steal Identities” and even “Police Officer Steals Identities.” Back then the primary concern was insider identity theft, perpetrated by those who had direct access to victims’ data.…
Who is responsible for financial losses due to fraud? The bank, or the customers whose accounts have been drained? One Michigan judge recently decided in favor of Comerica Bank customers, holding the bank responsible for approximately $560,000 out of a total of nearly $2 million in unrecovered losses. A copy of the bench decision is available from Pierce Atwood…
We are increasingly reliant on online calendars and address books, but when you store everything in the cloud, there is the possibility that your essential data could evaporate. Some insist that you have nothing to worry about but what if you got hacked and all your data was deleted? What if you temporarily lost Internet…
I’m a little more than a casual online shopper, so I make lots of electronic payments. I prefer to avoid stores, so I buy almost everything aside from food via the Internet. I frequently use eBay. I’m also something of an airline mileage fanatic, so I prefer to pay with a credit card that earns…
Has your computer ever refused to turn on when you hit the power button? Or maybe it turned on, but only to display a blue screen? The best (really the worst) is when you’ve been working on a document or presentation all day, and your hard drive crashes. If this has yet to happen to…
The most basic advice for protecting your own identity is to protect your Social Security number. The obvious solution is simply never to disclose your number, but this is silly, since, depending on your age, you have probably provided it to hundreds of people, on hundreds of forms. It now sits in hundreds of databases,…
