It’s accepted wisdom that credit cards are more secure than debit cards. A credit card purchase is a loan – you’re not out any money until you pay your monthly bill. Therefore, fraudulent charges (if caught) have no financial impact. But with a debit card fraud, that money is already gone from your bank account.
[Note: see related podcast and see affiliate stuff at the right] When I wrote up last year’s list, I didn’t expect we’d still be dealing with a pandemic in 2021. And yet, here we are. But the best gift you could give this year – to yourself and those around you – is to get
I’ve long recommended Firefox as the best browser for most people (read this article to understand why). All in all, I find that it’s both secure and private, and it runs on all major devices and platforms. But Google’s Chrome browser remains king of the hill, by a long shot. What you may not know
Apple just released a major update to it’s iPhone operating system: iOS 15. (Note that iPads will get many of these same features, too, from iPadOS 15.) As usual, there are tons of cool and useful features, but given my bailiwick, I’m going to focus on the security and privacy aspects. In this article, I’m
This past week saw two huge data breaches with cellular service providers in the US. According to two different reports, up to 100 million T-Mobile and 70 million AT&T customers’ data has been stolen and is available for sale. While both T-Mobile and AT&T are still investigating, both breaches look pretty real and serious. Data
We’ve all come to rely heavily on access to the internet. Our smartphones, in particular, are mostly useless without it. Even games that have no need to connect to the internet to function still require access anyway (pssst: probably because they want to track you to make money). But we also have Kindles and laptops
Smartphones and ubiquitous internet access have paved the way for digitizing most of our daily lives. We can surf the web and steam movies from anywhere. But modern technology has also managed to supplant much more mundane analog and physical things, like all the crap we’re used to carrying in our purses and wallets: ID,
Today I’m going to introduce you to Apple’s radical, internet-destroying new privacy technology: informed consent. What is App Tracking Transparency? Apple is calling its new program App Tracking Transparency (ATT). And it’s basically just what it implies – it makes ad tracking transparent to the user. Because ads are what makes the digital world go
It’s long since time that companies and customers adopt a much more pessimistic security and privacy stance. Data is not the new oil, it’s the new toxic waste. And while we need to get better at trying to contain it, it still seems to find ways to leak. And so we need to assume that
I don’t do book reviews often. (If you’re counting, that’s two.) But I’m utterly compelled to write about Privacy is Power by Carissa Véliz. I’m truly not prone to hyperbole, but I feel this is one of the most important books of our time. You need to read it. Our privacy is under assault like
