Holiday Security Tips: On the third day of Christmas, the experts gave to me, 3 stymied hackers!
Although you may trust the baristas at your local coffee shop to make that perfect Gingerbread Latte, you can’t always trust the person sitting next to you. Hackers can easily tap into Wi-Fi connections at public hot spots to steal your identity information, including credit card and bank account numbers. This can be especially dangerous during the holiday season when “hotspot sniffers” come out of the woodwork using free monitoring apps like Firesheep.
Solution:Stop shopping online using free Wi-Fi hotspots.
If you must shop online while out in public, take the following precautions:
Holiday Security Tips: On the second day of Christmas, the experts gave to me, 2 shopping tips…
Black Friday and Cyber Monday will be here before you can say “Man, I ate a lot of turkey!” Malls, stores, restaurants and cafés are exceptionally busy places during the holidays. This breeds a perfect environment for data thieves to make off with your identity goodies while you shop, dine or relax. It only takes a second to steal a purse from a shopping cart, a briefcase from your car or a smartphone, iPad or laptop from an unattended café table. Solution: Lighten your load and leave excess identity at home.
Consider taking only your mobile phone, driver’s license and one or two credit cards with you shopping to minimize the number of identity storage devices you might misplace. If you can fit the items in your pockets, your security increases. If you must have a purse, use one that zips and hangs in front of you, or consider using a backpack that stays on you at all times.
Holiday Security Tips: On the first day of Christmas, my expert gave to me, the keys to secure my privacy.
If I could give the world a gift this holiday season, it would be to make the world a safer place to trust. You deserve to know whether or not you can trust the politicians you elect, the advice you receive from your doctor and whether or not you can entrust your privacy to the websites and businesses you use every day.
Identity theft, cyber stalking, and “big data” surveillance—these byproducts of the information economy make it hard to rest easy. Every day in the news we hear about another scam, another breach of corporate data that victimizes more than 11 million Americans a year. But you don’t have to be a statistic!
Solution: Give yourself a gift by paying attention to prevention.
Android flashlight apps harvesting your data for marketing & cyber crime.
You LOVE that flashlight app you have on your smartphone, right? Whether you’re in that dark restaurant with a size 2.5 font or wanting to share your love at a concert or finding your keys in your purse…you wonder, how did you ever live without it?
Well, it turns out the creators of that wonderful app love it, too, because it has become a way for them to get ahold of your personal data to use or sell.
Android devices seem to be especially vulnerable. Snoopbit studied the top ten Android flashlight apps and discovered that every one of them collects unnecessary user data and accesses areas of the device completely unrelated to the purpose of the app. This includes having the ability to read phone status and identity, view Wi-Fi connections, modify system settings, obtain full network access, and determine your precise location via your phone’s GPS, among other permissions.
The original notice on GameOver Zeus appeared on the US-CERT site. If you’d like to go directly to the tests for the GameOver Zeus virus, scroll down.
Overview of GameOver Zeus
GameOver Zeus (GOZ), a peer-to-peer (P2P) variant of the Zeus family of bank credential-stealing malware identified in September 2011, [1] uses a decentralized network infrastructure of compromised personal computers and web servers to execute command-and-control. The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), is releasing this Technical Alert to provide further information about the GameOver Zeus botnet.
Systems Affected by GameOver Zeus Virus
Microsoft Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, and 8
Microsoft Server 2003, Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, and Server 2012
Impact of GameOver Zeus
A system infected with GOZ may be employed to send spam, participate in DDoS attacks, and harvest users’ credentials for online services, including banking services.
Apple has us ooing and ahhing about the iPhone 6, it’s big brother the 6+ and finally the Apple Watch. But the biggest announcement of all didn’t even have to do with gadgets. The most significant announcement was about a new service that will be built into those devices…
It is Apple Pay, Apple’s own version of a “mobile wallet” that will allow Apple users to pay for items with just a tap or wave of their device. That is if those items happen to be in stores that have agreed to install the technology necessary to allow near-field communication (NFC – no not the football conference, the radio-wave technology) to work. Of course, Apple has done the background work to ensure a lot of big names (MC, Visa, AMEX and retailers such as Target, Macy’s and McDonald’s to name a few) are already on board, which is a significant mark in their favor. And with the upcoming mandatory implementation of EMV technology, Apple may have just timed this perfectly.
One of the quickest identity theft prevention tips is to protect your purse or wallet from being stolen. Here are three tips from ID theft expert John Sileo on protecting wallet identity.
John Sileo is an an award-winning author and keynote speaker on identity theft, internet privacy, fraud training & technology defense. John specializes inmaking security entertaining, so that it works. John is CEO of The Sileo Group, whose clients include the Pentagon, Visa, Homeland Security & Pfizer. John’s body of work includes appearances on 60 Minutes, Rachael Ray, Anderson Cooper & Fox Business. Contact him directly on 800.258.8076.
The so-called “Inheritance Scam” is resurfacing in Colorado, but it has a new look.
No longer do you simply receive an email claiming to be from the representative of a long-lost relative. The new format involves what security experts call the “Accomplice Ploy” in which the thieves attempt to engage you through a long series of queries (one method) reaching out to you as if they know who you might be.
We have developed five questions you should ask about any email or phone call you suspect might be a scam. They are called the 5 indicators of the inheritance scam:
It often amazes me to find out how many people shy away from implementing ideas that they KNOW will make them safer. There are a multitude of reasons I know:
Ignorance: “I didn’t know there was a helmet law in this state.”
Fear: “But if I put my money in a bank, there could be a run on it. It’s safer under my mattress.”
Misunderstanding: “Well, I thought that sign meant I could park here for free on Sunday.”
Laziness: “It’ll be okay to leave my laptop on the table while I run to the bathroom real quick.”
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Holiday Security Tips: On the third day of Christmas, the experts gave to me, 3 stymied hackers!
