An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet:
Kyle Milliken, a 29-year-old Arkansas man, was released last week from a federal work camp. He served 17 months for hacking into the servers of several companies and stealing their user databases. Some of the victims included Disqus, from where he stole 17.5 million user records, Kickstarter, from where he took 5.2 million records, and Imgur, with…
Tag: Spam
Is Silicon Valley Building a Chinese-Style Social Credit System?
schwit1 shared this thought-provoking article from Fast Company:
Many Westerners are disturbed by what they read about China’s social credit system. But such systems, it turns out, are not unique to China. A parallel system is developing in the United States, in part as the result of Silicon Valley and technology-industry user policies, and in part by surveillance of social media activity…
Verizon’s Anti-Robocall Service Will be Automatically Enabled on Android Phones
Verizon on Tuesday said it’ll begin automatically enrolling eligible Android phones in its free Call Filter service. The company said it’s making the move after the Federal Communications Commission in June voted to give wireless carriers greater power to “aggressively block” unwanted robocalls. From a report: “We know our customers are sick and tired of the endless onslaught of robocalls,” Ronan…
Phone Companies, State Attorneys General Announce Broad Campaign To Fight Robocalls
Twelve of the country’s largest telephone companies on Thursday pledged to implement new technology to spot and block robocalls, part of an agreement brokered between the industry and 51 attorneys general to combat the growing telecom scourge. From a report: The new effort to be announced in Washington commits a wide array of companies in the absence of regulation to improving…
Google Criticized For Vulnerability That Can Trick Its AI Into Deactivating Accounts
In July Google was sued by Tulsi Gabbard, one of 23 Democrats running for president, after Google mistakenly suspended her advertising account. “I believe I can provide assistance on where to focus your discovery efforts,” posted former YouTube/Google senior software engineer Zach Vorhies (now a harsh critic of Google’s alleged bias against conservatives). He says he witnessed the deactivation of another…
Robocall Blocking Apps Caught Sending Your Private Data Without Permission
Robocall-blocking apps promise to rid your life of spoofed and spam phone calls. But are they as trustworthy as they claim to be? From a report: One security researcher said many of these apps can violate your privacy as soon as they are opened. Dan Hastings, a senior security consultant cybersecurity firm NCC Group, analyzed some of the most popular robocall-blocking…
‘There is No Evil Like reCAPTCHA (v3)’
An anonymous reader shares a post: Like many things that starts out as a mere annoyance, though eventually growing into somewhat of an affliction. One particularly dark and insidious thing has more than reared its ugly head in recent years, and now far more accurately described as an epidemic disease. I’m talking about the filth that is reCAPTCHA. Yes that seemingly…
GermanWiper Ransomware Hits Germany Hard, Destroys Files, Asks For Ransom
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: For the past week, a new ransomware strain has been wreaking havoc across Germany. Named GermanWiper, this ransomware doesn’t encrypt files but instead it rewrites their content with zeroes, permanently destroying users’ data. As a result, any users who get infected by this ransomware should be aware that paying the ransom demand will…
AT&T Will Automatically Block Fraud Calls For New Customers
AT&T will start automatically blocking fraud calls and issuing suspected spam call alerts for new phone customers at no extra cost. “You’ll have to opt out if you don’t want the company to screen calls this way,” reports Engadget. “Existing customers, meanwhile, will see the feature automatically reach their accounts in the ‘coming months.'” From the report: If you like the…