If I had said “Yes,” the entity on the other end would have recorded that response, and then edited it to make it sound like I had accepted their offer of a major purchase. I could have then been hit up with charges I never actually agreed to.
The Better Business Bureau reports that for the last few days of January, more than half of its Scam Tracker reports have been about this particular issue, which is rampant in both the U.S. and Canada. In many cases, the “Can you hear me?” comes right at the beginning of the call (again, before you may even realize it isn’t actually a human being calling). The BBB recommends not responding and hanging up ASAP if you’re asked “Can you hear me?” or a similar question.
Nancy Cahill of the Canadian Anti-Fraud Center went even further with her advice. “The best way to protect yourself is to not answer calls from unfamiliar phone numbers or any from unknown number,” she told the Winnipeg Free Press.
Source: dailydot.com
An Austrian hotel lost control of its door locks, keeping new guests stranded in the lobby. A police department in Cockrell Hill, Texas abandoned years of video evidence and digital documentation. In Washington, DC, the police couldn’t access its CCTV footage storage system days before Donald Trump’s inauguration. All of this news came out in the last week, stemming from a rapid escalation of how ransomware is deployed. And it’s only going to get worse.
Source: Wired
Trump’s Still Using His Old Android Phone. That’s Very, Very Risky:
AS PART OF a broader look at President Donald Trump’s acclimation to the White House, the New York Times noted on Wednesday that Trump still uses his personal, consumer-grade Android smartphone in the White House. That’s worrying.
Even if you’re not a security expert, some potential dangers of keeping an insecure device in the White House probably come to mind right away. There’s a reason President Obama had to make do with a heavily modified BlackBerry for most of his time in office, and why security officials reportedly issued Trump a locked-down device when he took office. One that he apparently doesn’t always use. If Trump does use his old Android smartphone in his spare time—which recent@realDonaldTrump tweets sent from Android seems to support—he’s leaving himself exposed to all manner of unsavory outcomes.
Source: Wired
Facebook Adds Support For Physical Authentication:
It’s abundantly clear at this point that passwords alone are not enough to protect online accounts, but adding a “second authentication factor” or additional element that helps prove you are who you claim can have pitfalls of its own. So this week Facebook added support for a strong “second factor” that has been gradually gaining momentum. Physical dongles that you keep plugged into your computer or carry with you are a quick and easy second piece of proof for logging into your account; Facebook will now support any physical security key that uses the open source Universal 2nd Factor standard developed by the FIDO Alliance. Sure, it’s possible to lose these dongles, but they’re robust because physical objects are hard to surveil and replicate remotely.
Source: Wired
Over the past half-decade, a growing number of ordinary people have come to regard virtual private networking software as an essential protection against all-too-easy attacks that intercept sensitive data or inject malicious code into incoming traffic. Now, a comprehensive study of almost 300 VPN apps downloaded by millions of Android users from Google’s official Play Market finds that the vast majority of them can’t be fully trusted. Some of them don’t work at all.
Source: Ars Technica
Hacker Steals 900 GB of Cellebrite Data
The hackers have been hacked. Motherboard has obtained 900 GB of data related to Cellebrite, one of the most popular companies in the mobile phone hacking industry. The cache includes customer information, databases, and a vast amount of technical data regarding Cellebrite’s products.
The breach is the latest chapter in a growing trend of hackers taking matters into their own hands, and stealing information from companies that specialize in surveillance or hacking technologies.