It’s a sad day when we have to warn people about medical charity scams, or tax fakeouts, or even have a week dedicated to foiling charity fraud—but here we are. With so many natural disasters occurring, from wildfires in California to tornadoes in Dallas, disaster donation scams remain a top resource for scammers looking for free cash. Unfortunately, disaste

We recently examined how robocall scams are a serious threat to privacy, alongside the astonishing rate at which their volume continues to increase. Forty-three billion calls in 2019 with an average of 131 calls per person in the US alone is not something to be sniffed at. No matter how careful you are with your number, no matter which security measures you

We recently highlighted new steps Instagram is taking to try and clamp down on scammers sending fake messages on their platform. It turns out, other social media giants are walking a similar path for a variety of bogus ads and other attacks. Facebook scams in particular have taken off, despite the company’s efforts to stamp them out. Facebook is now ex

Instagram accounts will always be a popular target for scammers. You might not think it’s a big deal if someone has their account swiped, but it’s often the vanguard of many online businesses. A takeover, or a deletion, can be absolutely devastating. Smart hacking crews are always in the background, waiting to see what they can get away with—and it’s not jus

Someone recently asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year, and I had to think about it for a few minutes. I certainly don’t need any more stuff. However, if I could name one gift that would make me absolutely giddy, it would be getting a chunk of my privacy back. Like most people, the internet knows way too much about me — my age, address, phone

BEC scams (business email compromise) are big business for cybercriminals. According to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), these scams generate around $301 million every month, or $3.6 billion a year. The aim of a BEC scam is to trick an employee into carrying out a fraudulent bank transfer. To do this, cyberattackers send an email impersonat

A new visa scam has come to light targeting international students from China studying in the UK. At least, it’s being presented as new. In truth, it comes around every so often and has been on the radar for a few years. The scam works by presenting a threat to students’ immigration status and uses various techniques to extract sizable payments from the vict

The internet is a great way to stay informed about what is going on in the world around us. News, celebrity gossip, personal updates from friends, almost everything we want or need to know is available online – usually via social media. In between all the useful information is a lot of misinformation however. Hoaxes and scams continue to circulate onli

Smartphones have become a crucial part of our everyday lives; we shop, bank and network using our phones. But with so much valuable personal data being stored on these devices, they have become a top target for cyber criminals. If they can crack our phones, they can steal our identities, blackmail us for cash, or empty our bank accounts using scams. As a res

All Hands to the Pump (and Dump) Posted by David Harley on April 19, 2017.A few years ago, even before I started working directly with vendors in the security industry, ‘Pump and Dump’ scams were a major nuisance. Here’s a description from a paper Andrew Lee and I wro

If you’ve got an email account or social media profile, it’s likely you’ve come across phishing of some kind before. In a sentence, phishing is the fraudulent attempt to steal personal information by social engineering: the act of criminal deception.Verizon’s latest Data Breach Investigations Report notes that “social engineerin

In a recent article, I discussed how HDDCryptor, Cerber, and eight other families dominated the ransomware scene in 2016. It was a good year for ransomware authors. But they weren’t the only ones who closed out 2016 in the black. Scammers also made a killing off unsuspecting users. They did so partly because 2016 saw such a dramatic spike in scams.Back

Accommodation scams targeting Australian users and shared economy platforms have tripled in number from 2015 to 2016.So far this year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has received 150 reports of scams on websites like Airbnb tricking unsuspecting travelers out of a total of $80,000. That’s triple the number of reports in 2015, which

Robocalls: Automating Nuisance Calls Posted by David Harley on August 8, 2016.Recently I received an email from Nikki Courtney of Radio KTRH, in Houston, requesting a radio interview on robocalls. Why me, I’m not sure, unless it was because of an article I wrote earlier this year

With the 2016 Olympic Games opening on August 5, hundreds of thousands of tourists will soon be traveling to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Although major international events like the Summer Olympics boost tourism and economic transactions, they also present lucrative opportunities for cybercriminals.Rio visitors and Olympic travelers alike have been targeted by c