Author: Jared Howe

News & Features

Facebook’s Nearby Friends: Building ‘IRL’ Connections While Undermining Your Privacy

Nearly two years ago we reported that Facebook was planning to launch a new feature that would help users locate their friends “In Real Life.” And now “Nearby Friend” is a reality, allowing mobile users to see which of their contacts is in their current vicinity. This tool is optional, and you can also set it for specific groups of friends.

Before turning it on, let’s take a deeper look into the privacy repercussions of using the feature.

News & Features

Justice Department Shuts Down Two Notorious Web Viruses

While law enforcement believes they were able to hunt down and destroy all instances of both GameOver Zeus and Cryptolocker — two of the most notorious web viruses operating today — there is no way to know for sure. Even if they did destroy all copies of both viruses, there will certainly be more of this kind of malware released by other hackers in the future. Keep reading to learn things you can do to protect yourself from botnets and ransomware.

News & Features

Online Apathy: Heartbleed Bug Only Convinced Half of Us to Change Our Passwords

According to a Lifelock survey, despite all the news stories about the Heartbleed security bug and how it may have compromised our online accounts, only half of us actually got around to changing our online passwords.

The survey asked a simple question: after people heard about the Heartbleed bug, had they changed their passwords for their online accounts?

News & Features

WifiForward and the Future of WiFi

According to WifiForward, a group of companies concerned with making WiFi better, we are in for a WiFi crunch in a few years. Having better WiFi connections can only lead to a brighter future, but as we move into this WiFi-centric world, we would do well to keep online security issues in mind.

News & Features

Hacker’s Treasure: NYC’s High Line Gets Free WiFi

As if New York City’s popular elevated park, the High Line, needed another reason to draw even more people, it’s now the latest and greatest location to access a public WiFi hotspot.

While we all can agree that it’s nice to have WiFi hotspots available (including when we’re walking around New York City), how many of the people accessing these hotspots know that anything they do online while using them can be intercepted and viewed by hackers?

News & Features

Smartphones and the Rise of Contextual Apps

One way to think about your mobile phone is that it’s basically a tracking device. The new thing in the app world is something called “contextual apps.” Contextual apps are mobile apps that can figure out where we are or what we are looking at and then present us with all kinds of information about that spot. Does that sound dangerous? Keep reading to learn more.

News & Features

EBay’s Data Breach Exposes 145 Million User Records

In what is one of the largest data breaches in history, eBay has gone public with the news that they have been the victims of a data breach that resulted in 145 million customer records being exposed.

Click to find out whether the user information exposed — perhaps even your personal information — had been encrypted by eBay.

News & Features

Hotel WiFi is a Favorite Place for Hackers

When we are traveling, there’s nothing more convenient than hotels offering WiFi so we can check our email and possibly even get a little work done. Since we usually pay a premium to access the hotel’s WiFi network, many of us probably assume that it must be secure.

News & Features

Lookout Study Highlights Our Dependency On Our Smartphones

Did you know that while 94% of us are concerned about losing our phones (including 74% who feel panicked at even thinking about it), 6% of us actually feel relieved when we lose our phones, perhaps because we subconsciously want to unplug. Check out other interesting stats from a new survey that highlights just how addicted we are to our smartphones.

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