Well… 2021 wasn’t what we’d hoped it would be, at least at a macro scale. The pandemic is still raging and I daresay the global political situation has been generally crappy. But when that calendar rolls over to January 1st, we have this social contract of breaking with the past and taking a fresh, hopeful
I’m going to start a new annual tradition for the last blog of the year: I’m going to collect my favorite security and privacy resources for the year. Not just my own stuff, but from all sources. I have a Resources tab that’s chock full of stuff, but this article will be the best of
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] [UPDATED: Jan 8, 2022] 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
As of 9am this morning, I’ve seen one too many hair-on-fire “beware QR code” articles. I’m getting really tired of reading breathless, click-bait headlines extolling the dangers of these glorified bar codes. I need to set the record straight. It’s time to demystify these scary square symbols and debunk their mystical powers. What is a
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
I’ve talked before about freezing your credit and why it’s one of the your best tools for preventing identity theft. It might actually also reduce the amount of spam you get with credit offers. And it will have no effect whatsoever on your credit score. Most people think of the Big Three credit bureaus, but
I’m posting this earlier than usual, so you can prepare before the Labor Day weekend here in the US. But this applies to really any national holiday that creates a long weekend or other popular vacation period. Crime Takes Time Ransomware is malware that encrypts all your files, then asks you to pay money to
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
