Consumers may erroneously assume data brokers and credit reporting agencies have top-notch data security for all the sensitive and important data they store about us. To the contrary, these brokers and firms pose a huge risk to our data security. Investigative reporter Brian Krebs did an exposé last year on Experian. His follow-up post now is […]
Consumers who have Google accounts that haven’t been used in a while may have received emails from Google telling them their accounts will be purged if they don’t sign in to them soon to keep them alive. While those emails may look like phishing attempts, they may be real emails from Google. The Sun reports: […]
Jack Wallen explains that the little QR codes that ads tell you to scan can be weaponized in phishing attacks to steal your information, aka “quishing:” What is quishing? Consider the QR code aired during the Super Bowl. Now, imagine the company behind that commercial had malicious intent (just to be clear, the company behind […]
Google wants to help users secure their accounts better and more easily. They are now making the use of passkeys the default option on your Google accounts. In a blog post this week, they explain the reason and how easy it is to take advantage of this option: …. the next time you sign in […]
Sabrina I. Pacifici writes: WSJ via MSN: “How do consumers respond when their online accounts are exposed to hackers? Many of them simply don’t. Data breaches at major firms have become all too common, with more than 110 million user accounts exposed in just the second quarter of 2023. Yet our research found that nearly […]
Odessa American reports: EL PASO FBI El Paso is warning the public of a new scam dubbed “The Phantom Hacker.” Scammers are impersonating technology, banking, and government officials in a complex ruse to convince a typically older victim that foreign hackers have infiltrated their financial account. The scammers then instruct the victim to immediately move their […]
Sharing private information could lead to penalties, agency says after Markup investigation By: Colin Lecher The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has warned five tax preparation companies that they may face civil penalties for sharing confidential data from taxpayers through tracking pixels and other means. The move from federal regulators follows an investigation by The Markup […]
Researchers have noted two new types of ransomware that appear to be hitting Windows users — Windows users like Mom and Pop on their home computers. They, too, can wake up to find that all of their personal files have been locked and there’s a ransom note demanding hundreds of dollars or $1,000.00 to get […]
Car manufacturers are engaging in a “privacy nightmare” by scraping sensitive user data and potentially selling it to unknown actors, according to a new report on the widespread terrible practices in the industry. Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included found 25 major car brands are “terrible at privacy and security” of user data, and their policies allow widespread […]
The Los Angeles Times reports that legislation being considered in California would make it easier for consumers to get every data broker to delete their personal information with just one request. Tech companies and other big businesses are fighting the bill. The bill, known as the Delete Act, faces a critical vote this Friday as […]
