Category: Personal security
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FBI director James Comey thinks FBI’s own online safety tips should be illegal
originally published in ConsumerAffairs Q: What does FBI director James Comey have in common with your average computer hacker? A: They both really, really hate the idea of secure encrypted data. When Apple launched its iPhone 6 in September, it bragged about the phone’s strong security features, including automatic data encryption. Which made Comey, who’s…
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Apple’s “warrant canary” died; did Patriot Act spy activities kill it?
originally published on ConsumerAffairs Photo: Library of Congress There’s possible bad news for privacy advocates and Apple customers alike: a sharp-eyed look at Apple’s two most recent Transparency Reports (more specifically, what’s not in them) suggests that, despite the company’s recent announcements affirming its strong commitment to protecting customers’ privacy, it might have been forced…
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Woman loses $150,000 in online dating scam
originally published in ConsumerAffairs You already know to be wary whenever you go online, so you don’t fall prey to the various types of scammers, thieves, con artists, hackers, malware-writers and other threats that proliferate on the Internet. And if you’re looking for love in an online dating site you must be extra-careful, because looking…
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The Walmart MoneyCard hacker strikes again: Cardholders from across the U.S. see their hacked cards drained at NYC Target stores
originally published at ConsumerAffairs UPDATE, Oct. 15: Walmart and Green Dot have responded; their statements are at the end of this article. Something criminally strange seems to be going on with Walmart MoneyCards, especially in New York City and its immediate suburbs, though any MoneyCard holder in America is apparently at risk. Ever since September 2013,…
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AT&T helped NSA spy on United Nations, foreign emails and 1.1 billion US phone calls per day
originally published on ConsumerAffairs This has been an especially rough summer for the poor devils working in AT&T’s public relations department (to say nothing of the poor devils who are actual AT&T customers). Two months ago, the feds levied a record-breaking $100 million fine against the company for its practice of throttling the connections of…
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Jobseekers beware: don’t fall prey to this advance fee scam
Originally published on ConsumerAffairs If you’re looking for work in this economy you know you must be careful, because there exist plenty of scammers, thieves, and con artists using fake job offers or help-wanted postings as bait to hook new victims. A California man named Ryan recently wrote us about a close call he had when…
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The “Car-Wrap” payment scam: an old form of fraud that refuses to die
Originally published on ConsumerAffairs Yesterday I got an email from a friend offering an amazingly lucrative part-time job opportunity (and who couldn’t use extra money in this economy?) — $350 per week, and all I have to do is let an energy-drink company put advertising decals on my car! Unless I don’t have a car, in…
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Scam alert: Virgin Airlines is not giving away a year’s worth of free flights on Facebook
Originally published on ConsumerAffairs If you’ve been on Facebook over the long holiday weekend, you might’ve seen posts promising 500 lucky people the chance to win a year’s worth of free flights on Virgin Airlines — and for a chance to win, all you have to do is “like” a certain Facebook page and “share”…
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Like-farming Facebook scams: look before you “like”
Originally published in ConsumerAffairs If you’re a regular Facebook user, you’re pretty much guaranteed to run across lots of “like-farming” scammers – maybe without ever even realizing it. At best, these like-farming pages clutter your friends’ feeds, crowding out content they actually want to see (and possibly making them annoyed with you, for drowning their…