Entries by Robert Siciliano

Shred your Boarding Pass

Apparently there are people who take pictures of their airplane boarding pass…and post it online. I’m dead serious. I’ve heard of toddlers getting excited over scraps of paper, but full-grown adults posting images of their boarding pass online? Don’t get me started. Let’s just only say that this is incredulously absurd. Like, who cares about…

IRS Identity Theft Prevention Tool hacked

The Identity Protection PIN tool on the IRS.gov site has been temporarily suspended—because it was recently hacked into. The tool provides retrieval of forgotten or lost IP PINs to users who want an extra layer of protection against identity theft. But some users who received the IP PINs recently via the online tool learned that…

How Parents can de-motivate Sexting in their Teens

Whatever the appeal of sexting is to kids (attention), it’s definitely there, and won’t be going away too soon. Of all the things that teens can do in their daily lives, why spend time sexting? To feel cool To get a crush’s attention To make a relationship seem more serious To harass the recipient Peer…

Change Passwords or not; that is the Question

We’re told to change our passwords often to minimize getting hacked. Now we’re told this is a bad thing. But not for any inherent techy reason. It’s because frequent password changing makes many people lower their guard when it comes to creating new passwords. They get lax and end up with passwords like Bear1, Crazy4u…

Xfinity Home Security Flawed

Bad news for users of the Xfinity home security system: It can report locked doors and windows that have been bypassed by an intruder and miss an intruder’s movements, says an article on wired.com. The intruder circumvents the system by using a radio jammer to block the 2.4 GHz radiofrequency band of the alarm system.…

Protect Yourself from Phishing

Everyone has received very obvious “phishing” e-mails: Messages in your in-box that have outrageous subject lines like “Your Account Will Be Suspended,” or, “You Won!” While some phishing attacks are obvious, others look harmless, such as those in a person’s workplace in-box, seemingly from their company’s higher-ups. Researchers point out that an e-mail may appear…

Prevent Child Identity Theft

Here’s one for the know-it-alls: Kids are 35 percent more likely to become victims of identity theft than are adults. Betcha didn’t know that! This startling news comes from a 2015 Javelin Strategy & Release study. Needless to say, the bulk of parents aren’t on top of this problem, unaware that thieves go after children’s…