Amid the headlines and hearings about a British tabloid hacking cellphones, you may be curious about how that was done. You may also be curious about phone security for kids – I'll get to that in a moment. My ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid explained in the Huffington Post how easily those hacks can happen. He writes of default PIN numbers (used sometimes by criminal hackers when people … [Read more...] about How cellphones get hacked
social engineering
Beware ‘free public wi-fi’
Don't be tempted to use "free public wi-fi" when you or your kids want to go online waiting for a flight or in other public places. I certainly have been. But when I've yielded to temptation once or twice, I've closed right out of it, put off by the strange new symbol that turned up – different from the usual connected parallel curved lines where my MacBook's AirPort icon usually is. Turns out my … [Read more...] about Beware ‘free public wi-fi’
More spam in Facebook, Twitter
Don't be socially engineered. Tell your kids that social Web users really need to think before they click, because writing malicious code isn't cybercriminals' only skill. Increasingly it's social engineering, which usually involves being tricked to click on a link that is not what it appears. Attacks on Facebook and Twitter, the two social-media services on which malicious hackers are focusing … [Read more...] about More spam in Facebook, Twitter
Social gaming’s social engineering
Zynga, creator of Farmville, claims 70 million active players in all of its social-Web games a day (Farmville getting nearly half of them), reports eModeration CEO Tamara Littleton in iabUK.net, and Zynga's just-launched Treasure Isle "gained an extraordinary 5.4 million players in its first week." Littleton says Zynga CEO Mark Pincus chalks it up to meeting three basic criteria: "interaction with … [Read more...] about Social gaming’s social engineering