Helpful Resources
« Previous EntriesPG&E’s smart meter security concern
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010A top cybersecurity firm recently tested 5 different brands of smart meters for vulnerabilities, and found that they all could be EASILY hacked into, allowing someone to remotely shut down your power, inflate your bills, tell if you’re out-of-town (making you a target for burglary), commit identity theft, or even bring down [...]
Tips for organizing your identity theft case
Friday, April 23rd, 2010Accurate and complete records will help you resolve your identity theft case more quickly.
Have a plan when you contact a company. Don’t assume that the person you talk to will give you all the information or help you need.
Prepare a list of questions to ask the representative, as well as [...]
How to prove you have been a victim of identity theft
Friday, April 23rd, 2010Identity theft is stealing money and today you need to think of money as data either on paper or in cyberspace. Keep all documents and collect the paper trails in the real world and in the cyber world.
Get and keep all applications or other transaction records related to the theft of your [...]
Medical identity theft startling stats
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010Jennifer Leuer from Protect my ID.com worked with Ponemon Institute and found some starling statistics around medical identity theft. I was shocked to discover the average cost to victims is $20,000.00 while the average bank identity theft cost is $5,000. The reason–it goes unnoticed for a long time–on average it takes a [...]
Collaborating cyberspace security
Sunday, March 21st, 2010On March 16, 2010, I had the opportunity to spend the day with the Fourth Annual IT Security Entrepreneurs’ Forum (ITSEF IV) — part of the Security Innovation Network (SINET) at Stanford University. The organization was created by Robert Rodriguez, a former secret service agent wanted to increase the collaboration between [...]
Steps to protect your business against cybercrime
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009It is estimated business losses from cybercrime are as high as $1 trillion a year worldwide.
Fail-safe protection doesn’t exist. Even the Pentagon, with a brigade of the best computer specialists, gets hit repeatedly.
Crooks will go where the taking is easiest, just as car thieves will grab a radio from an unlocked car before going through [...]
Avoid phishing scams
Sunday, August 9th, 2009Phishing has been around a while now and I’m sure almost all of us have heard the term.
Phishing is email scams that try to get you to divulge your personal information; such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, date of birth, etc to steal your money or identity.
They are getting more sophisticated [...]
12 things you can do to keep your child safer online
Friday, July 31st, 2009A quick checklist to get you started on the road to Internet safety.
1. Buy all the safety software you need and use good filtering tools.
Keep them current and use them unfailingly—as automatically as locking your door when you leave the house.
2. Discuss online safety with your family and friends.
Decide together how you will help [...]
One technique for producing the prefect password
Sunday, July 26th, 2009Everyone knows it’s bad to use the same password for different sites. People do it anyway because remembering different passwords is annoying. Remembering different difficult passwords is even more annoying.
Here is a foolproof technique for creating passwords, that are hard to crack and easy to remember. Plus, it takes just minutes to learn.
Step 1:
Start [...]
Koobface worms attacking social networks
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009As social networks become a mainstay, attacks targeting them continue to gain momentum.
The Koobface worms (over 575 new variants identified):
• Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.a
• Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.b
• Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.c
• Etc
Targeted social networking websites (detected):
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Hi5
• Bebo
• Tagged
• Netlog
• Twitter
The Koobface worms come through social networks and transform victims’ machines into zombie computers to form botnets.
It spreads through the legitimate user’s account to their friends. Comments and messages sent by the [...]