Evidently there is a message circulating on Facebook stating that everything you’ve ever posted will become public tomorrow. People are even encouraged to copy and paste the text jargon and repost it. This message and the content in it is a hoax and no such deadline exist. So there is no need to repost the message. It is believed that the post originated from when Facebook got its IPO in 2012. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have also made the statement that they have made no such deadline.
For some long time now, scammers have been calling or displaying a popup message on PCs with the threat that their computer access will be restricted if they don’t call a number and make a payment. According to the New York Times, this official looking message has been traced to a scam operation in Mumbai, India – which is the main hub for call centers. Real tech support people are moonlighting with this scam. Microsoft says that 20% of users actually call the number, and 6% actually give them money through a credit card, along with giving them remote access to their computer. And that’s when the real malware gets installed. Thankfully police have shut down many of these operations in recent days.
Marriott just announced this past week that they learned about a security breach from four years ago. On top of that, 500 million users are affected. For 327 million guests, the exposed information include names, phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers, and arrival and departure information. For millions of others guests, credit card numbers and expiration dates were compromised. Marriott says that it will begin emailing guests that were affected by the breach.
If you go to answers.kroll.com, you can read their story and what they’re doing. They are also going to give users free monitoring for a year.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a bitcoin scam happening on twitter. Scammers were hijacking the twitter account of celebrities and various people claiming they were giving away free money. All you had to do was submit a small payment to verify who you are and of course, it was a scam.
Now this scam is back in different forms on Facebook. One example is an ad on Facebook looking like it is from CNBC promoting an investment opportunity in a new crypto-currency. All you have to do is submit our credit card information in order to invest. Of course there is no new crypto-currency. Beware of these ads and similar ones. It all goes back to that expression that if something is to good to be true, then it probably is.
Quick Tip: As you start diving into Cyber Monday, be aware of the various scams that are sure to be out there. This is the time of year where hackers and scammers will really throw out fake links and offers in order to get you to click and get your personal information. They can come in the form of too good to be true offers, emails saying that you spent $1000 on something that you didn’t in order to get you to click on a link, or idiots pretending to be legit companies like Best Buy just to get you to submit your credit card number. These cons know how naive people are and will use to Cyber Monday to take advantage of that fact.?Beware, be careful, and above all have fun shopping!!
Yahoo has recently agreed to pay $50 worth of damages to 200 million people in the US and Israel, whose personal data was breached. On top of that, Yahoo has to provide credit monitoring services for two years. Since 2013, Yahoo has had a history of being hacked and breached on multiple occasions. Since Verizon purchased Yahoo last year, Verizon will have to pay half of the settlement.
United States Pentagon recently experienced a security breach in their systems. Items such as military weapons systems have been compromised. As this point, U.S. government officials are trying to figure the source of this attack and how to prevent it from happening in the future. I feel the moral of the story is we should always take every precaution to protect ourselves and our data. The fact of the matter is if the U.S. Pentagon can get hacked, then any one of us can get hacked.
