National Preparedness Month is happening right now. It’s the perfect time to take action for you and your community. It’s all about making plans to remain safe, and when disasters do strike, to keep communications going. September 30th is the culmination of NPM, with the National PrepareAthon! Day. If a burglar sees your Facebook status…
It sounds almost like science fiction, even in this cyber age: A thief hacks into your computer and encrypts your files, meaning, scrambles the information so you can’t make sense of any of it. He demands you pay him a big fat payment to “unlock” the encryption or to give you the “key,” which is…
Darkode anyone? Not anymore. This underground bad hackers’ forum was recently demolished by the FBI, says a report on www.justice.gov. The dozen hackers associated with Darkode are facing criminal charges. Though there are about 800 of such forums, Darkode was among the worst (or shall I say “best”?), presenting a serious threat to worldwide computers.…
You take your car to the mechanic; it’s been making a funny grinding noise when you press on the gas pedal. The mechanic tells you what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed, then socks you with the estimate. How can you tell he’s not embellishing a lot of the “diagnosis”? You know nothing about…
It is September and it’s National Preparedness Month—a great time to get involved in the safety of your community. Make plans to stay safe, and this includes maintaining ongoing communications. National Preparedness Month culminates September 30th with National PrepareAthon! Day. I learned in high school biology class that one of the things that distinguishes life…
Some of us remember college dorm days, when students were envied if they had their own typewriter. These days, college students must have a personal laptop computer, and a smartphone, and their lives revolve around these connected devices. Such dependency should be proactively protected from loss or theft. Campus security now means more than just…
Wow, it’s true: The monster under the bed really does exist! Recently in New Jersey a man broke into a home and hid under a bed in a spare room for possibly five days before being arrested. Margaret Adamcewicz reportedly stated that the man, Jason Hubbard, had dated her daughter five years ago, and it…
Hackers with big skills and a big ego will be drawn to Facebook and Twitter as their targets. But they’ll also target dozens of other companies, reports an article on arstechnica.com. One group in particular stands out as the attackers, using zero-day exploits. They are known as Wild Neutron and Morpho, says the article, and…
About 7 a.m. on a Saturday a burglar entered a home through an unlocked side door (how anyone can sleep overnight while a door stays unlocked is a whole new article). The dumb criminal saw an iPhone and unknowingly triggered a video selfie—showing him standing in the living room during this recent L.A. crime—while three…
You’re sitting on your front porch. You see a stranger walking towards your property. You have no idea whom he is. But he’s nicely dressed. He asks to come inside your house and look through your bank account records, view your checkbook routing number and account number, and jot down the 16-digit numbers of your…
