Here’s one to watch out for: The U.S. FTC is warning consumers and businesses to be aware of scams stemming from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The scams are likely to come in the form of real world (including phone calls, door-to-door collections, and flyers) as well as online dangers (including e-mail, websites, and social networking sites).
In its monthly advance notification, Microsoft told us that it planned to release a gigantic Patch Tuesday this week.
The June 2010 security updates, now here, are the largest patch push for Microsoft so far this year, with 10 bulletins – fixing 34 vulnerabilities, including critical flaws in DirectShow and the Internet Explorer browser.
The FIFA World Cup, known to be the world’s most widely-viewed sporting event, begins this week, on June 11.
A growing trend seen by online security experts is for scammers to take advantage of the latest breaking news and major worldwide events to distribute malware and con potential victims. And, unfortunately, the World Cup is a prime opportunity for cyber criminals to do just that.
How can you avoid becoming the latest victim?
It’s been a busy few weeks in terms of cyber justice.
Just last week, news broke that three men were indicted in connection with an online fraud operation that sold $100 million in rogue anti-virus software to victims in over 60 countries.
As Facebook privacy concerns continue to grow, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded with public comments in a column published yesterday in The Washington Post, acknowledging that missteps had been made and reaffirming that the social networking site will si
Here’s the latest in social media privacy news –
The Wall Street Journal, citing an AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute paper, has reported that a “privacy loophole” found on social networking sites, including Facebook and MySpace, allowed for data to be shared with advertisers that could potentially be used to identify users – in spite of promises from the companies that user information is not shared without specific consent.
Last June, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) broke the news that it had shut down a notorious rogue Internet service provider that was accused of actively participating in hosting and distributing spam-spreading botnets, phishing sites, spyware, child pornography and other illegal content.
Facebook, the world’s largest social networking site, has taken a lot of heat recently over its attitude towards the privacy and security of its 400 million users around the globe. Criticism has been prompted by changes to the site’s privacy settings, including an ‘instant personalization’ feature that allows approved third party sites (like Yelp and Pandora) to automatically import profile information.
The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), a non-profit group committed to wiping out Internet scams and fraud, released a new phishing analysis this week showing some interesting trends in online crime.
Microsoft has said that it will be releasing two security bulletins today, on Patch Tuesday, to fix vulnerabilities in Windows and Office.
Here’s what we know from Microsoft's advance notification for May: both of the updates are rated critical, and will address remote execution vulnerabilities; the bulletins affect Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2003 and Server 2008, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Visual Basic for Application and Visual Basic for Applications software development kit.
Need help on understanding patches, and updating your system? Learn more in the latest issue of Lavasoft News, where we take a look at why it’s important to keep your system and software updated – and how to do it.
Consumer Reports has unveiled the findings of its annual “State of the Net” report, a survey of 2,000 online U.S. households.
What did this year’s report find? Overall, more people are using social networking sites (almost double the amount from last year’s findings), but are doing so without enough thought to privacy and security (more than half of social network users share private information about themselves online, opening themselves up to a variety of online risks, like identity theft).
Here are a few of the key findings from the State of the Net 2010: