More consumers than ever before are buying smartphones. A smartphone is an Internet-enabled mobile phone with the ability to purchase and run applications. Smartphones are generally equipped with voice, data, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS functions. Operating systems include Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and Windows’ Mobile 7. Most function on a 3G wireless connection and can…
The Wall Street Journal reports that digital items within games and social networks accounted for $2.2 billion in sales in 2009, and are expected to account for $6 billion in sales by 2013. Billions more are spent on music and other downloadable digital media. “Digital goods” are any products that are stored, delivered, and consumed…
Epsilon is a marketing company that has millions of emails on file of consumers who have made purchases or are affiliated with various banks, retailers, hotels etc. Epsilon sends over 40 billion emails out a year and was recently breached in a hack attack. Consumers are now receiving breach notifications from the likes of financial…
A recent study of more than 150 organizations conducted by Aberdeen Group(1) found that the average total cost to remediate a single application security incident is approximately $300,000. As security incidents can happen at any point in the application life cycle, modernization initiatives can prove especially costly if they are not proactively secured from development…
Twitter’s numbers are astounding. In the physical world, when communities become larger and more densely populated, crime rises. The same applies to online communities. CNET broke down Twitter’s recent blog post, which celebrates their significant numbers: “It took three years, two months, and one day for Twitter to hit 1 billion tweets; now, a billion tweets are posted…
This week consumers are receiving messages from trusted companies such as 1-800-Flowers, Chase, Hilton HHonors and others, letting them know that their e-mail addresses have been exposed due to the recent Epsilon data breach. This provides a perfect opportunity for cybercriminals, who may try to take advantage of the breach to send out phishing e-mails…
The trial and sentencing of a New Hampshire home invasion that goes back to 2009 where a gang of late teens and 20 somethings broke into a home while the mom and daughter were sleeping is over. The dad was away on business. In the course of events, the mom died of a machete wound…
While there are some mean and nasty people out there, generally people are nice, kind and cordial. We are conditioned from birth to be civil towards each other. However, those mean and nasty’s seem to pop up all the time and ruin someone’s day. One scam in particular that has always intrigued me revolves around…
The recession may have waned, but we aren’t out of the woods yet. The unemployment rate is still a staggering 9.5%. That’s millions of people without a job. Many who were displaced eventually got lower paying jobs, and are barely able to get by. Jobseekers’ desperation for employment makes them vulnerable to work-from-home scams and…
The Federal Trade Commission recently released the list of the most common consumer complaints in 2010. Identity theft topped the list for the eleventh year in a row. The FTC received 1,339,265 in 2010, and 250,854, or 19%, involved identity theft. In second place, there were 144,159 debt collection complaints. For the first time, “imposter…
