According to the IRS, taxpayers who filed federal returns last year from Georgia, Florida, or D.C. are eligible for an Identity Protection Pin that will help protect them from tax-related identity theft. This is part of an IRS effort to stop all identity theft through taxes, but is currently being tested in those areas first since all three areas report the highest amount of tax-related identity theft. Get the full article here:: IRS taking extra steps, including Identity Protection PIN, to fight identity theft
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Avoid Phishing, Avoid govt.br & govt.cn URLs
After analyzing over 72,000 phishing URLs they have collected, researchers found that out of the 195 compromised government-administered servers, sites belong to the Brazilian and Chinese governments were the most successfully targeted. This suggests that countries with fast-growing economies are having trouble keeping up their cyber-protection as they grow. For a full story on this, click here:: Brazilian, Chinese govt sites host the most phishing pages
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Jailbreaking is Not a Crime (Aside From Breaking Out of Actual Jail)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation said in that it would fight to the keep legal any procedures that allow consumers to customize their smartphones or tablets. They filed a petition with the Library of Congress and Copyright office to extend and expand exemption to all consumers to “jailbreak†their phones without contradicting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This is a frustrating process since the EFF has to reargue their case every three years in order to keep the exemption.
Despite it’s name, “jailbreaking†is beneficial when it comes to security. After a device has stopped being supported by a manufacturer, jailbreaking can allow users to install security updates from third parties that will allow them to use the device without worrying about it becoming compromised. Sadly, as the DMCA stands for protecting the copyright of the device software, it has gotten in the way of creating secondary uses, discouraging competition. Reform must be in place and the exemption must be extended indefinitely in this case. Otherwise, it’s just buying a tool and getting sued for making the most use of it.
For more on this story, click here:: EFF: ‘Jailbreaking is not a crime’ and we will fight to keep it that way’
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TerraCom, YourTel America, Your Information, Your Trust
Recently, telephone companies TerraCom and YourTel America left the personal details of 300,000 people out and ready for cybercriminals to access. Social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, addresses, and other information were exposed because the companies put the data on an open web server rather than destroying it after the data had been verified. As icing on the cake, the companies wrote a “cease and desist†letter to Scripps Howard News Service to prevent word from getting out.
Fortunately, the FCC didn’t let it slide and had fined the companies $10 million. However, punishment after the fact isn’t the issue. Consumers expect their information to be protected when it is shared with professional organizations. When a company holding that many accounts doesn’t have the basic concept of protection or elementary security in place, it makes consumers second-guess everything. It is time for all of us to double check and ask companies what safeguards they have in place when we share our personal information. Based on this incident, no one can be too careful. For a full article on this story, click here:: Private Consumer Data Leaked After Being Left On Publically Accessible Server
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Open Source Security Tools to Consider
Many major companies such as Netflix, Google, and Facebook have offered up in-house security tools that are open for community use. Netflix’s Security Monkey monitors and provides analysis for Amazon Web Services configurations. Etsy’s engineering team built an anomaly detection system dubbed Skyline. To learn more about these and other security tools to consider, read the full article here:: 10 Cool Security Tools Open-Sourced By the Internet’s Biggest Innovators