Not long ago, I was approached by someone to help write a book about the race to cure cancer. It was an intriguing idea, and it sent me down a rabbit whole of research so I’d be able to understand what I’d be getting into. What I found was one […]
A young Canadian hacker hired by Russian FSB agents to help with the biggest hack in history will spend five years for his role in the crime, a U.S. federal just ruled today. Karim Baratov, one of the key figures in my podcast about the Yahoo hack, Breach, was spared […]
It’s Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer vacation season, which means it’s my annual chance to remind you that far too few of you are actually taking vacations. It’s also a good time to let you all know that I am now writing stories for a cool website named […]
I’ve been asked to write some pieces about consumer and security issues at IBM’s SecurityIntelligence site. The first one was released today. There’s a quick abstract below, but you can read the whole piece on IBM’s page. Even I was surprised by two things working on this story: First, few […]
Two-thirds of all jobs in the country are low-paying at less than $20 an hour or $40,000 a year About 43% of households, or about 51 million, don’t earn enough to cover the basics. Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, or ALICE, is a worrisome group for America What’s the minimum amount of money you […]
It’s an age-old question: Is life harder or easier for today’s young people? Well, score a “win” for the millennials. Younger adults are spending a stunning amount of money on rent — $93,000 by age 30, according to a new study. More important, rent sucks up about 45% of their […]
There’s still a lot of interest in stories of fraud at Zelle, the banks’ Venmo-like instant money-moving app. To review, sending money with Zelle isn’t much different from sending someone cash — there’s no buyer’s protection, and it’s essentially not possible to get your money back if something goes wrong. […]
You’re going to get a lot of advice, graduates, as you embark on whatever journey you are about to take. You probably won’t hear the advice I’m about to give you, however. Don’t worry about $5 lattes and $9 avocado toast. Folks who pick on you for that are living […]
By now you’ve heard that Twitter has suggested to all users that they change their passwords. I’m here to tell you you can do more to make yourself much safer with very little effort. Now is a good time to turn on two-factor authentication at Twitter — and at Facebook, […]
I’ve been raging about Facebook-style privacy invasions for a long time, so I’m glad that folks *seem* to be listening now –though the distance between noise and action is quite far. I’m not a Luddite, however. My complaints are a lot more practical. I’ll often make this point: On one […]
Bob Sullivan