Our mobile phone numbers today have become our unique identifiers, even more so than our full names. While you’ve probably run across at least one other person who shares your name, our mobile numbers are guaranteed to be globally unique. And since we can port these numbers to any service, we tend to keep these
[This article is part of a Beginners Week blog series from my publisher, Apress.] While humans have had several millennia to adapt to the dangers of the natural world and many decades to react to the advancements of the modern age, the virtual world of the internet is relatively new. The risks of the physical
A critical vulnerability has been found in older versions of Microsoft Windows. If you’re affected, you need to patch your operating system immediately (see below). If you know anyone with an older PC, you need to make sure they’re aware of this ticking time bomb. But what you really need to do, frankly, is update
I’ve written a comprehensive guide to choosing the best web browser (which you should definitely read), but the choice just keeps getting clearer. If you’re not already using it, you really need to switch to Firefox. Privacy vs Security The main point of my browser guide is that there is a big difference between security
Credit cards and debit cards are so similar that people often feel they are interchangeable. They look the same, swipe the same, and work in almost all the same places. But there is one huge difference between debit cards and credit cards: debit cards directly access your money. Credit cards are loans – they can
A little more than a week ago, we saw perhaps the single largest data breach dump in history. This followed another massive data disclosure from the same group just a couple weeks prior. Dubbed “Collections 1-5”, together these data dumps represent literally billions of unique user email addresses and passwords. While many of the records
What follows is a cautionary tale about a technology I’ve been recommending for years: two-factor authentication, or 2FA. Citizens of the Internet, hear me out! This could happen to you… The Case of the Missing Codes Last month, Apple offered a killer deal on iPhone trade-ins: they doubled the value of your old phone as
With 2018 in the rear view mirror, it’s time to look ahead to 2019! And that means it’s time to make your New Year’s Resolutions! Sure, you’re going to join that gym and lose weight and quit smoking … yada, yada, yada. But what about your cyber goals for 2019? You do have them, right??
Marriott announced last week that as many as 500 million of their Starwood Guests had their customer data exposed. In this post I’ll go over what we know about the Marriott breach, what you can do about it, and how to mitigate damage from the inevitable future breaches. Details of the Marriott Breach Here are
The US Postal Service (USPS) has an interesting service called Informed Delivery that allows you to see what pieces of mail are heading to your mailbox before they arrive. You can use it to see what mail you should have received, as well – if you were expecting something but didn’t get it. When you
