Consumers routinely turn to Google Maps when they are looking for a locksmith, an urgent care facility, home repair services, or other local businesses. However, what they find may be fraud. Experts say that hundreds of thousands of false listings appear on Google Maps each month, adding up to about…
When you use your face or your fingerprint to unlock your phone, you are using biometrics. Today many employers are using biometrics for “providing secure building access, tracking employee time and attendance, activating machinery, and authenticating users’ identities for increased computer and mobile device login security.” According to a 2018…
As more medical devices go online, there are more dangers of the data being hacked or compromised by bad actors. Researchers at Ben Gurion University demonstrated this by developing malware that could infect CT and MRI scanning machines used to diagnose cancer. Their intent, of course, was not to infect…
Although email and telephone scams are nothing new, as consumers have caught on to the tricks used by scammers the bad guys have gotten more creative. Scams are now more personalized to trick victims into falling for them. Instead of sending the same badly-written email to millions of people, criminals…
The proliferation of new digital platforms has created an abundance of information sources. As of 2017, 93 percent of Americans said they receive news online. This increased access to news sources has also led to the dissemination of disinformation and hoaxes, aka “fake news.” This issue is especially important with…
Communication companies claim that new 5G networks could be up to a hundred times faster than current wireless networks. This speed would also reduce or eliminate latency (i.e., the time between instructing a computer to perform a task and its execution). As a result, there will be demand for and…
Whether you are traveling for work or pleasure, it is important to secure your data and protect your privacy when you are on the road. In this podcast, we talk about safely using Wi-Fi away from home, how to keep your data from prying eyes when crossing international borders, whether…
Robocalls are ubiquitous. There were nearly 48 billion robocalls made nationally in 2018—that’s 146 for every person in America! Although some robocalls are legal, the vast majority are illegal telemarketing spam and outright scams. Legal (and harmless) robocalls include appointment reminders or other calls from your doctor’s office, pharmacy and…
Recently, a law school professor who teaches information privacy gave an optional assignment to her students: The students were to “try to determine a stranger’s identity, in a public place, using only Google search on your phone, based on things the stranger said loudly enough for lots of others to…
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Office Depot and its sister company, Support.com, have agreed to pay fines totaling $35 million to settle complaints that they tricked customers into buying computer repair and technical services after deceptively claiming they had found malware symptoms on the customers’ computers. Office Depot…
The Trump administration recently proposed new rules to give consumers greater access to their health information. The rules could become final later this year and they are intended to help unlock digital data held in hospitals’ health records as well as some health insurance claims. “It is removing friction points…
What do criminals do with all of those passwords they steal? One answer is credential stuffing. The bad guys know that most people reuse logins and passwords at multiple sites, so when they get credentials from one site (e.g., from a data breach at Yahoo or any one of thousands…
Apple has announced that they will be releasing a new credit card in the summer of 2019. This card promises to be different from most other credit cards in several ways, and it will offer a number of benefits, including cash-back rewards, no fees, a promise of lower interest and…
If someone close to you has passed, you may discover that you do not have access to important files stored on their computer, tablet, phone or social media accounts. There may be financial records, personal documents and emails or treasured family photographs that will be lost forever if you cannot…