Usually, we here at Privacy Council give you information about spam, scams and computer viruses that might compromise your personal privacy and the health of your computer. But in light of recent news, we’d like to devote this post to the Swine Flu and what precautions you can take to protect yourself and your family [...]

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Tomorrow is the deadline to file your taxes (or file for an extension – Huliq tells you how to do that here). This time of year always brings out the frantic procrastinators who scurry to the post office with 11 minutes to spare before the clock runs out, and it also brings out a fresh crop of identity [...]

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We at Privacy Council are tireless advocates of personal privacy and security. We counsel the public to be wary of scams, avoid clicking questionable links, and generally have a healthy skepticism for anything that sounds “too good to be true” or “completely trustworthy.” In short, we try to help people avoid being the victims of [...]

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Happy Spring! The weather is getting warmer, the flowers are blooming, and “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” as Tennyson said. Weddings are in the air this week, with celebrities such as Danica McKellar and David Letterman settling down, and “regular” people planning their own knot-tying events. It’s a time to celebrate, [...]

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After all of the articles I’ve written about privacy, security and avoiding the perils of the web, I have at last experienced some of the headache firsthand. My laptop caught a virus, and while it turned out to be nothing major (at least so far), my experience reiterates the need for good protection against what [...]

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Text messages on our cell phones make everything more convenient. Banking is no exception, and many banks now offer text message alerts and updates, such as notifications when our balances are low. Mobile banking makes many people’s lives easier. But of course, with this convenient technology comes another means of stealing your identity, and you must [...]

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Some good news on the spam front this month: worldwide spam was cut in half when a single web hosting firm was shut down, The Washington Post reported. McColo Corp, a company based in San Jose, California (but claiming a Delaware mailing address), allegedly operated servers that sent spam messages for various international groups. These clients, in [...]

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This week, I had the good fortune to see a presentation by Kevin Mitnick, the former hacker who now makes a living as a security consultant. I went into the talk expecting a 90-minute lesson on the latest tools and toys that hackers might use to steal my identity. Instead, Mitnick’s very engaging lecture was [...]

read more from " The tried-and-true identity theft technique: Talking you into giving up your information "

Have you ever been clicking your way through cyberspace, when suddenly, a very important-looking window pops up? It usually looks like it’s part of Microsoft Windows, and it says something like, “Warning! Your computer is at risk! Click ‘OK’!” Do you click on it? Is your computer really at risk? Is Windows trying to tell [...]

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This week’s security threat: clickjacking.
Clickjacking is the latest in a series of security threats to web surfers. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) issued a warning about clickjacking on September 26, and the news has spread quickly. This is a crime in which hackers hide behind harmless-looking websites so that people who visit them might be [...]

read more from " Clickjacking: Big Problem, Not Much Solution (Yet) "