The Human Story of Scammers Trapped and Forced to Scam
The MIT Technology Review has published a compelling long-form article summarizing the experience of people tricked and enslaved in a scam compound. I'd recommend giving it a read. It details how pig butchering scams work, who does them, and how to protect yourself. An excellent article.
The Bottom Line: When you make new friends online, insist on a video call. Video calls are the best way to verify that your new contact is who they say they are. Scammers may spend months or years building a relationship before they attempt to get money out of you. Be especially wary of anyone offering investment advice.
France Does Phishing Test on 2.5 Million Students
Last week, more than 2.5 million French students were subjected to a phishing test by their government. The test was conducted by placing a link on the students' digital workplace that advertised video game cheat codes and free games. France's privacy watchdog, CNIL, reported that around 210,000 students clicked the link, which led to a video about phishing awareness. So, if you ever feel silly falling for a phishing scam, just know that even tech-savvy teenagers are susceptible to these types of scams.
The Bottom Line: This kind of harmless training seems like a great way to improve public awareness of phishing scams.
Data Breach Contains 2.87 Billion X User Profiles
X (formerly known as Twitter) has suffered a major data breach thought to have originated from a disgruntled employee who was laid off. The leak, thankfully, does not contain user email addresses. Rather, it includes a sort of time capsule of 2.87 billion users' profiles and activity from 2021. However, a user on Breach Forums merged the data from this leak with one from 2023, which did include email addresses, and matched around 201 million emails to the user profiles. While the leak does not appear to contain sensitive data, such as passwords, it's still a major breach of privacy for any X user.
The Bottom Line: The data from this leak will go into databases to help scammers profile potential victims. While X profile information is not secret, moving millions of profiles into a searchable database will make things easier for scammers. Once they have your information, it is not possible to force them to destroy it. We recommend freezing your credit.
Protect Your Online Activity Through 2027
A VPN service is a crucial part of your online security toolkit and if you don't have one, now is the time to get one. Even smart devices can be a risk to your home network, and a VPN can protect you from hackers. Sign up for NordVPN and get 77% off in an exclusive iPhone Life deal!
How Secure Is Gmail? Not Secure Enough for Michael Waltz to Be Using
Gmail is one of the most popular email providers on the planet, but email is not encrypted end to end, and can be intercepted fairly easily. Gmail has reasonably good account protections to stop hackers from logging in. It will let you use a security key to secure your email account. It lets you sign in with a passkey, so your account is fully protected from phishing. It notifies you when a new device is authenticated to your account so you can shut down unauthorized access right away. But despite these and other features, emails sent from Gmail may be intercepted at multiple points of transit, including Google's servers. The common phrase in information security training is: "email is sky writing." You can use PGP to secure email, but that is not practical for personal email addresses. I reiterate these points about the security of Gmail because the Washington Post reports that Michael Waltz, the current National Security Advisor, has been using his personal Gmail account for some sensitive communications.
The Bottom Line: Gmail is a good email service for consumers, but no matter how convenient it is to route work emails to personal accounts, high levels of security always require strict compartmentalization of secure and insecure channels. Security is only as good as its weakest link.
Genetic Information Sharing Site Shuts Down, Will Delete Data
A consumer genetic information sharing site called openSNP will shutter its business and delete all its data. OpenSNP is an aggregating platform where customers of companies like 23andMe could voluntarily upload their test results to contribute to a database for use by scientific researchers. The site's founder, Greshake Tzovaras, a resident of Germany, explained his logic to Tech Crunch.
The Bottom Line: If you have voluntarily visited openSNP and uploaded your genetic data, this move means that you can rest easy knowing that the records will be destroyed.
Curious About Cell Phone Interception? Electronic Frontiers Foundation Releases Tool for Detecting Interception
A stingray is a device that pretends to be a cell tower. Nearby cell phones connect to it instead of to a real cell tower, then the stingray passes the cell phone's signal along to the real network, but not before intercepting all of its traffic. Devices like the stingray are called Cell-Site Simulators (CSS), and activists on all sides of the political spectrum have long suspected that they are used by law enforcement to interfere with lawful protest by tracking the phones of protesters. But very little hard data exists about the use of CSS. The Electronic Frontiers Foundation has released a new tool (it's really an instruction manual for how to make the tool) to scan for CSS nearby, record their use, and hopefully build a database to help study the function and prevalence of cell phone interception technologies.
The Bottom Line: We don't know how common cell-site simulators are, or even how effective they are against modern encryption like HTTPS, but we do know that they exist, and may be used to intercept cell phone traffic, especially in highly surveilled areas like sports arenas or protests.
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