“Sharenting” – Parents & Online Sharing: Infographic

July 17, 2017 | By: John Burcham
Posted in: Personal Protection

Parents, Kids, and Online Sharing  Sharenting, or the act of parents sharing information about their children online, is a phenomenon that began in the early 2000s. Parents began posting media of their children playing sports, taking their first steps, singing in the car and more. While social media is a great tool to keep in touch …

Business ID Theft (Part 2): Public Info, Easy Access

July 14, 2017 | By: Laura Bruck
Posted in: Business Protection

Business ID Theft 101: Part 2 In Part 1 of our Business ID Theft series, we looked at how business identity theft is much like personal identity theft. Let’s review some key points:Business identity theft and data breaches are not the same. Business identity theft requires the “actual impersonation of the business itself.”Stealing your business’ identity allows criminals …

Stay Smart About Fake Smartphone Apps

July 10, 2017 | By: Eugene Bekker
Posted in: Personal Protection

Fraudsters go mobile Our smartphones send, receive and store tons of sensitive information about us. This includes the information-rich apps we have on our devices. With over 6 million apps to choose from across Apple, BlackBerry, Amazon, Android and Windows, a smartphone can virtually perform any function and can hold as much (or more) data as a …

Educational Institutions “Schooled” By Data Breaches

June 20, 2017 | By: John Burcham
Posted in: Breach and Scam News

Educational Institutions Take on Data Breaches In 2016, 9 percent of all data breaches came from the education sector. While hackers may not be interested in snooping through your old grades, they’re looking for any personal information the institution has on file to commit any number of identity crimes.Educational institutions are targeted because they hold large …

200 Million Voters Exposed by Marketing Firm Breach

June 20, 2017 | By: John Burcham
Posted in: Breach and Scam News

What happened? Deep Root Analytics, a marketing firm hired by the Republican National Committee, experienced a massive data breach that exposed nearly 200 million U.S. voters.Scope of BreachCyber risk analyst Chris Vickery from UpGuard initially discovered the exposed data available on a publicly accessible cloud server. UpGuard’s Cyber Risk Team found that names, birth dates, addresses, …

Business ID Theft (Part 1): SMBs Have Identities Too

June 15, 2017 | By: Laura Bruck
Posted in: Business Protection

Business Identity Theft 101 Identity theft comes in all shapes and sizes. Despite the effort we put into protecting our financial accounts, Social Security numbers and online login credentials, we’ve seen identity crimes continue to grow.We know it’s important to protect our personal identities. But when was the last time you thought about protecting your small …

Synthetic IDs: Great For Fraudsters, Bad For Victims

June 8, 2017 | By: John Burcham
Posted in: Personal Protection

Identity theft… without your full identity It’s called synthetic identity theft. Whether by a phishing scam, data breach, hack or physical theft, your information becomes compromised and falls into the wrong hands. Criminals use this stolen information to mix and match names, birthdays, Social Security numbers and addresses with other fabricated information to create synthetic IDs. Once …

Ransomware & Small Business: Infographic

May 23, 2017 | By: Eugene Bekker
Posted in: Business Protection

Ransomware surges Ransomware can be particularly threatening to both your business’ security and funds. Instances of ransomware have increased 167 times since 2015. Hackers gain access to your company’s networks, compromise sensitive business data and then hold those files at ransom. Until you pay the ransom, your infected devices are virtually useless. 

Phishy Google Docs Expose 1 Million

May 17, 2017 | By: Eugene Bekker
Posted in: Breach and Scam News

What happened? On May 3, 2017, Google confirmed that a crafty phishing email disguised as a Google Doc invite was actively targeting Gmail users.Experts noted that the sophisticated nature of this phishing campaign is what made it so tough to detect. The scam managed to affect 1 million accounts before Google was able to address the …