Everyone’s heard of spam as it pertains to emails. Spam isn’t necessarily a malicious message designed to trick you into revealing your credit card number or PayPal login information. But spam is an unsolicited message, sometimes referred to as junk mail. Spam can be very annoying and relentless in nature, often attempting to convince you to buy…
Burglars don’t usually depend upon the light of the moon to break into homes; they depend on the daylight—because that’s when they know most homes are empty! The kids are in school, the adults are at jobs or shopping…duhhh, even a halfwit burglar knows this is an opportune time! Therefore, you should get a home…
Yes, it’s possible: preventing fraudsters from getting you via online trickery and other stealthy actions. Yes, it’s possible to be thinking one step ahead of cyber criminals. Let’s begin with e-mails—the conduit through which so many cyber crimes like ID theft occur. Imagine snail-mailing vital information like your SSN, bank account number, a duplicate of…
Well, you know that old saying: The viciousness of an online bully’s attack is inversely proportional to the size of his (you fill in the blank), I was thinking ego. Many online bullies are female, but in the case of former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling’s daughter, the trolls are collectively male. Recently Schilling tweeted…
It’s up to the potential victim—the user—YOU—to make your computer or smartphone very difficult for Joe Hackster to infiltrate. Passwords Being that cyber crime has been a fixture of modern living for over a decade, you’d think that everyone and his brother would know to use strong, long passwords, and a different password for each…
Why are so many burglaries hounding the town of Los Altos in California? There were 79 reported in 2013, but 118 for 2014. This past January and February there were 36. At that rate, by Christmas 2015, it’s unthinkable what the total number of burglaries will be. In a report on mercurynews.com, the Los Altos…
If a home invasion doesn’t leave you dead, it might leave you permanently paralyzed, like it did Richard Potorski, who was shot two years ago and can’t move from the chest down. On January 8, 2013, Potorski went to his Maine home for lunch after work. Moments later he saw a gun pointing at him;…
“On the Internet, you can be ANYBODY!” Not quite. Remaining anonymous in cyber space isn’t as easy as it used to be. Your browsing habits can be tracked, leading to your true identity. But there are things you can do to remain as anonymous as possible. Don’t feel you must use your full, real name…
You have a master password, from your password manager, for 28 accounts. Life has been so easy since! But then you lose this master password. First off, you can’t fix this like you would if you forgot your password for PayPal or your credit card’s site. Plus, each password manager service has a different solution.…
Have you ever had the chicken pox? This common childhood illness has another name—the varicella zoster virus. Like all viruses, varicella replicates itself, spreading though the body, and eventually appearing as itchy red blisters all over the body. But the virus doesn’t stop there; it can spread to other people through physical contact and through…
