Its been just under three weeks since February 19th, when Lenovo became entangled in a web of controversy over its preinstallation of Superfish’s Visual Search adware on some of its popular consumer laptops during last year’s holiday shopping season.
The post Superfish: Lenovo goes on the bloatware offensive appeared first on We Live Security.
Phone hacking ruined the lives of celebrities, and – in at least one case – almost drove a victim to suicide.
The post The human cost of phone hacking appeared first on We Live Security.
Ride-sharing taxi apps Uber, Lyft and Sidecar have been asked by US lawmakers to adopt fingerprint-based background checks for their drivers,
The post US lawmakers want taxi apps to check driver fingerprints appeared first on We Live Security.
The account, which had more than 285 million “loops” to date, was compromised and hackers deleted every video linked to the account.
The hack comes just days after Phillips was in the news for making a living off sponsored Vines. A report on the BBC claimed that he was making as much as £12,000 per six second clip.
While Phillips is working with Vine to try and restore his lost videos, it’s worth remembering that you don’t have to be a celebrity to be hacked.
Here are a couple of things you can do to help keep your online accounts safe from hackers.
Use Two-Factor Authentication
Two-Factor Authentication is a great way to protect your online accounts. By using a randomly generated code, sent to your email or phone, it makes it very difficult for hackers to gain access.
Don’t use the same username across all accounts
Make sure that you use a different usernames across all your accounts so that if your credentials fall into the wrong hands, the risk is limited to only one site.
Also try not to use your real name in your username as this can help attackers verify your identity and be sure the account belongs to you.
Use a strong password
Passwords play a crucial role in protecting your online accounts from hackers. Here is a simple guide to creating a strong one:
how is 2015 shaping up in security? We caught up with ESET researcher Mark James to get his take on threats, security and how people should ensure their year is free of malware.
The post ESET’s Mark James on 2015’s security trends appeared first on We Live Security.
Open Whisper Systems is phasing out support for encrypted SMS and MMS messages in its TextSecure messaging product. The move does not spell the end for encrypted messaging for users of the Android app, as the company plans to switch to its own transport protocol to address some of the security and performance issues inherent […]
The way that National Security Letters are approved and used is one of the government’s more opaque processes. Now, you can add some more confusion into the mix, courtesy of some new comments from the FBI about when recipients are able to disclose the fact that they have received an NSL. More than a year […]
Would you know if your employer is stalking you online? Fortunately, I do.
There’s nothing shady going on though. I agreed to be the subject of an experiment conducted by AVG CEO Gary Kovacs for his keynote speech at Mobile World Congress 2015.
In the keynote he highlighted the growing need for consumers to understand the great wealth of their personal data that is available online.
I offered to be the victim of this experiment as I consider myself a fairly private person online. I rarely use Facebook and Instagram and when I do, the accounts are very much set to friends only.
Other than my very public profile and work for AVG, there should not be a huge amount of information on me as I’m very conscious of not sharing too much.
The team set about looking for me and sure enough, old articles from the print era and other public sources gave them a good picture of who I am, where I have lived, how much my house is worth, and a whole lot more.
Much of this data is a matter of public record. For example, my property in the UK is listed on the electoral register and a scan of Companies House shows I have held company directorships.
Once these little snippets are discovered, they can be used to search with more specific terms that meant relevant articles started to appear at the top of search results.
Before long, the team had built out a profile of me including pictures, data, family, assets, arrests (fortunately none for me) and many other personal details that we generally consider private or safe from public view.
So what can you do to help keep your data private and under control?
In today’s world, there is little chance of us avoiding a digital footprint short of disconnecting and living in the woods. But what we can do is better understand what is being shared and how we can control what appears in public.
Here are FIVE simple tips that you can follow to help you ensure your data doesn’t appear where it shouldn’t:
Much of the information found online about us as individuals is found on social network. Photos, posts, groups and comments can be a great way to find out more about a person so make sure that your privacy settings are set so that only the activity you want shared is made public.
Google Alerts are a great way to stay on top of any sites or news that may mention your name (or any other term). Setting one up is very simple and you can learn how in this video.
When setting up an online account or email address, carefully consider whether it should include parts of your real name. Having an email address with your full name such as [email protected] makes it much easier for snoopers to build out a profile of your details. The same goes for account names on web services.
When we stop using old web accounts, a forum for example, see if there is a way to disable or delete your account. While you may not be using the service any more, the data will remain there almost indefinitely and can be discovered with just a simple search.
When giving out your personal details be sure to understand what the company or organization collecting them may do with them. Where possible tick the box (or uncheck in some instances) to keep your data private and do not allow personal data to be shared with third parties.
The Indian government has changed the way in which its officials are allowed to operate when working, it has been announced.
The post India blocks third party email services to government officials appeared first on We Live Security.
Mozilla has issued a hot fix for Firefox that removes the Superfish root certificate from the browser’s trusted root store. The patch only removes the certificate if the Superfish software has been removed from the machine already, however. The Superfish adware performs SSL interception–essentially running man-in-the-middle attacks on connections to secure sites–in the name of […]
