“My house was hacked!” Had you said this 25 years ago, people would have thought a burglar vandalized it with an axe. Say it today and nearly everybody will know what you mean: A thief or prankster “broke” in to your house via its connected-to-the-Internet gadgets. If something’s connected, like your refrigerator, the possibility of…
Having a house run like the Jetsons’ is becoming increasingly possible: It’s called home automation. If you’re not familiar with the futuristic cartoon family, the Jetsons, just about everything in their house was automated. Today, we can have the following: Sensors that make noise when a door or window opens are nothing new, but real-time…
Would you give up your bank account and credit card numbers to a stranger on the street after he approaches and asks for them? Of course not. But that’s essentially what people do when they’re tricked by online crooksters into revealing sensitive personal information, including their Social Security numbers. One of the most common ways…
What if you knew there existed a possibility that some company, without your knowledge, grabbed a photo of your child and put it on their product and then put their product online for sale? Koppie Koppie sells coffee mugs with photos of kids on them—and YOUR child could be one. Though this begs the question,…
Billions and billions—it’s only a matter of time before this becomes the number of hacking incidents in a single year, because just in 2014, over one billion records were hacked out of 1,500 different hacking incidents, says a recent report. Some other findings from the report: A little over half the breaches involved credit card…
At the start of the year, we all made our resolutions for 2015. Now it’s March—how are you doing on your resolutions? If you’ve already broken a few, no worries; New Year’s doesn’t have the monopoly on making goals to better yourself. This is especially true with digital safety. At a time when there are…
Spring is here (at least in some parts of the world in the northern hemisphere)! The bees are buzzing, the flowers are blooming, and the accountants are working late because for those in the U.S., it’s tax season! Scammers love tax season—there is a lot of money moving around as people pay taxes and receive…
Whether you’re an animal person or not, you have to admit that puppies are pretty darn cute. So cute that there are YouTube Channels, Facebook accounts, and Buzzfeed newsletters devoted to the subject. Unfortunately, there’s a not so cute PUP out in the world, and it wants access to your device. What I’m talking about…
It’s easy to scam someone who did something wrong by telling them they need to fix their mistake. This is why thousands of people get scammed into paying back taxes to the IRS—the IRS has nothing to do with these scams, of course, but the predators prey on peoples’ fear of Uncle Sam. It all…
I remember my teachers always telling me there are no stupid questions. When it comes to identity theft, this is especially true. The more you know about identity theft, the better prepared you will be to prevent it from happening to you. Here are some commonly asked questions about identity theft.
