Information

Why your phone is slow – and how to speed it up

You probably don’t have to ditch your phone just yet – try these simple tips and tricks to make any Android device or iPhone run faster Mobile phones are so present in our lives that they have become just as important as our wallets; in fact, they have also become our wallets. Unfortunately, no matter how powerful the chip or the amount of RAM available, there’s a point at which all devices feel the strain…

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S3 Ep106: Facial recognition without consent – should it be banned?

by Paul Ducklin WE’RE SCRAPING YOUR FACES FOR YOUR OWN GOOD! (ALLEGEDLY) Click-and-drag on the soundwaves below to skip to any point. You can also listen directly on Soundcloud. With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by Edith Mudge. You can listen to us on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and anywhere that good podcasts are found. Or just drop the URL of our RSS feed into your favourite podcatcher.…

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New York Post ‘Hacked’ in Tweets Calling for Assassination of Biden, Lawmakers

The New York Post said Thursday it had been “hacked” by an employee after the tabloid newspaper’s Twitter account posted a series of antagonistic messages, including a call for the assassination of US President Joe Biden. The rogue tweets were removed late Thursday morning.  “The New York Post has been hacked. We are currently investigating the cause,” a message on the tabloid’s account said. “The New York Post’s investigation indicates that the unauthorized conduct was…

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5 tips to help children navigate the internet safely

The online world provides children with previously unimagined opportunities to learn and socialize, but it also opens them up to a range of hazards. How can you steer kids toward safe internet habits? The way our digital lives have become entangled with our physical world has brought new, major challenges for parents, caregivers and teachers. Not only because it is essential to teach children how to read and understand information online and generally navigate the…

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What to consider before disposing of personal data – Week in security with Tony Anscombe

A major financial services company has learned the hard way about the importance of proper disposal of customers’ personal data The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced that Morgan Stanley has agreed to pay a penalty of $35 million for exposing the personal information of 15 million customers. According to SEC, the financial services company failed to properly dispose of hard drives and servers that contained the personal data of its customers. The…

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Parcel delivery scams are on the rise: Do you know what to watch out for?

As package delivery scams that spoof DHL, USPS and other delivery companies soar, here’s how to stay safe not just this shopping season Where there are users to be scammed and money to be made, cybercriminals won’t be far behind. So it was during the pandemic, when internet users eager to get hold of the latest COVID news were susceptible to scams. At one point, Google claimed to be blocking 18 million daily phishing emails…

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Online ticketing company “See” pwned for 2.5 years by attackers

by Paul Ducklin See Tickets is a major global player in the online event ticketing business: they’ll sell you tickets to festivals, theatre shows, concerts, clubs, gigs and much more. The company has just admitted to a major data breach that shares at least one characteristic with the amplifiers favoured by notorious rock performers Spinal Tap: “the numbers all go to 11, right across the board.” According to the email template that See Tickets used…

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VMware Patches Critical Vulnerability in End-of-Life Product

VMware this week announced patches for a critical remote code execution vulnerability in VMware Cloud Foundation and NSX Data Center for vSphere (NSX-V). Tracked as CVE-2021-39144 (CVSS score of 9.8), the security defect exists in XStream, an open source library to serialize objects to XML and back. The bug impacts all XStream iterations until and including version 1.4.17. Only out-of-the-box versions are affected, but not those where XStream’s security framework was set up with a…

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What happens with a hacked Instagram account – and how to recover it

Had your Instagram account stolen? Don’t panic – here’s how to get your account back and how to avoid getting hacked (again) A friend – let’s call her Ellie – recently called me with a devastated tone in her voice. Her Instagram account had been hacked and she was locked out. Her panic was evident as she told me her password had been changed and that the hackers had added two-factor authentication (2FA) to the…

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Protecting teens from sextortion: What parents should know

Online predators increasingly trick or coerce youth into sharing explicit videos and photos of themselves before threatening to post the content online The digital world has provided countless opportunities for youngsters that their parents never experienced. It helped kids stay in touch with each other during the dark days of pandemic-era lockdowns. And now that the world is opening up again, the allure of the digital world remains undimmed. But the online world also exposes…

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