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Month: March 2018

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Podcast: ‘Breach,’ an investigation of history’s biggest hack — listen now

March 26, 2018 Bob Sullivan 0

  You probably had a Yahoo account. And you probably know that account was hacked. After all, the firm admitted about a year ago that 1 billion accounts had been compromised. Check that…it was actually 3 billion. Every Yahoo account created since, essentially, the dawn of the Internet.  What you [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

New investigative podcast: Behind history’s biggest hack, at Yahoo (the ‘other’ Russian hack)

March 22, 2018 Bob Sullivan 1

  You probably had a Yahoo account. And you probably know that account was hacked. After all, the firm admitted about a year ago that 1 billion accounts had been compromised. Check that…it was actually 3 billion. Every Yahoo account created since, essentially, the dawn of the Internet.  What you [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Hackers now selling your selfies on dark web, security firm says

March 22, 2018 Bob Sullivan 2

You are probably fully aware that criminals have been selling your user names, passwords, addressees, credit card numbers, etc., in the Internet’s darkest places for a long time.  Still, it’s creepy when you see it happen in real-time. Add to that creepy factor this finding from Israeli security firm Sixgill: [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Facebook data, a powerful weapon, has been stolen and used against us. That’s the real threat

March 19, 2018 Bob Sullivan 4

You like a cute dog photo. You click a link to get NCAA basketball scores.  You comment on a friend’s new job. You download an app to navigate a conference, or a family wedding.  And suddenly you are dropped into buckets like “a neurotic introvert, a religious extrovert, a fair-minded [Keep reading]

Everyday economics

The high cost of being sentimental, or why you think that old Mustang is worth more than buyers do

March 18, 2018 Bob Sullivan 1

Wasting time recently on a discussion board for rabid sports fans, my eyes stopped on a phrase that shocked me: “endowment effect.” Dropped casually in among the emotional discussion of who’s the best offensive or defensive player was a high-fallutin’ term from economics. I thought it out of place for [Keep reading]

Gotchas / Consumer

‘Neighbor spoofing’ robocalls continues to ruin dinners, weekends; FCC in new push to stop phone spam

March 8, 2018 Bob Sullivan 2

The FCC is issuing fresh warnings about so-called “neighbor spoofing” as the agency plans a fresh push to tamp down illegal robocalls — and scammers continue to perfect their tools of evasion. Neighbor spoofing involves spam calls that arrive appearing to come from a nearby phone number. If your number [Keep reading]

Gotchas / Consumer

Hate Gotchas? Read a free excerpt of the all-new Gotcha Capitalism here

March 5, 2018 Bob Sullivan 0

“You’ve been hacked. But there’s hope. Let me explain.” Writing a book is a very long journey. Re-writing a book, 10 years later, is an even longer journey. But that’s where I have arrived, and I invite you dear reader to come along with me.  More than a decade ago, [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

The kind of ID theft that really hurts your credit score is soaring

March 5, 2018 Bob Sullivan 0

We’ve heard about the identity theft epidemic for so long that many have become numb to the news, and the large numbers — 50 million stolen credit cards here, 150 million stolen Social Security numbers there. But this is no time for complacency. There were two bits of very bad [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Here’s why that new IRS tax ID theft scam is so convincing

March 1, 2018 Bob Sullivan 3

If you receive an unexpected deposit from the IRS into your bank account in the next few weeks, don’t celebrate. You are likely a victim of a nasty, ingenious new form of ID theft designed by criminals to evade updated IRS security protections. In other words, in this cat and [Keep reading]

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About me

BOB SULLIVAN is a veteran journalist and the author of four books, including the 2008 New York Times Best-Seller, Gotcha Capitalism, and the 2010 New York Times Best Seller, Stop Getting Ripped Off! His latest, The Plateau Effect, was published in 2013, and as a paperback, called Getting Unstuck in 2014. He has won the Society of Professional Journalists prestigious Public Service award, a Peabody award, and The Consumer Federation of America Betty Furness award, and been given Consumer Action’s Consumer Excellence Award.

Bob Sullivan