In 2014 Ebola has claimed over 4,000 lives in Western Africa and caused ONE death (of a person who contracted the disease in Africa) in the United States. Many Americans are in a proper panic about it and it continues to be front page news. In typical fashion, we have found something to worry about while conveniently ignoring other, “less sensational” but more critical topics:
According to the CDC, Influenza kills about 3,000 people in this country in a good year (1986-1987) and up to nearly 50,000 in a bad one (2003-2004). Yet during the 2013-2014 flu season, only 46 percent of Americans received vaccinations against influenza.
Seat belts have saved an estimated 255,000 lives since 1975. Yet each year more than 50 percent of people killed in car crashes were not wearing a seat belt.
Did Edward Snowden Actually Comment on the Dropbox Breach? No.
Almost as fast as every media source out there could jump on the “Yet Another Breach” bandwagon and report that Dropbox had been hacked, the company was denying it. So let’s play a little game of true or false to try to sort out fact from fiction:
Statement: Hackers were able to accesslogins and passwords of Dropbox users and then leaked 400 account passwords and usernames on to the site Pastebin.
True.
Statement: The usernames and passwords referenced in these articles were stolen from unrelated services, not Dropbox. Attackers then used these stolen credentials to try to log in to sites across the Internet, including Dropbox.
True. (In fact that is a direct quote from the Dropbox blog of October 13, 2014 in which they bluntly proclaim “Dropbox wasn’t hacked”.)
Home Depot Data Breach Exposes Our Growing Complacency
When Target suffered a data breach back in December of 2013, you couldn’t look at a news source without seeing a new story about it. Yet when the Home Depot data breach was revealed recently, it received almost a ho-hum reception in the news. This, even though, it was the biggest data breach in retailing history and has compromised 56 million of its customers’ credit cards! It seems we have come to expect these data breaches to the point where we have become almost complacent.
Consumers, like the companies that breach our data, have become apocalyptic zombies, staring unquestioningly forward as we are attacked from all sides.
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.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or haven’t been on the internet in the past 24 hours), you most likely know that intimate photos of celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton have been exposed (pardon the pun) to the public.
While it is not yet verified, Apple has said it is “actively investigating” the possibility that iCloud accounts have been hacked. The photos surfaced immediately after an Apple “Find My iPhone” exploit was revealed, so Apple’s own security is being questioned. As of now, Apple is saying that iCloud has not been systematically hacked, but that the breach of celebrity photos was a limited, targeted attack. Whether or not iCloud was exploited in any way for these pointed attacks hasn’t been determined.
When JP Morgan was recently asked about reported cyber attacks, their spokesperson replied that they were “closely safeguarding information and would notify anyone affected” and went on to add that companies of its size experience cyber attacks “nearly every day”. It seems a rather casual reply for an event that may have resulted in the theft of multiple gigabytes of sensitive data!
Yet that is the reality today. In fact, the financial industry, and most of the business world, has been described as being in a state of almost perpetual cybersiege. Cyber attacks have become so commonplace that most businesses have almost come to expect it.
Which is why we have stopped paying attention, because breach is so normal. And breach is so normal because corporations don’t train their employees correctly on how to avoid it.
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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