What’s with the suddenly disappearing Presidential Executive Orders? Perhaps the Trump administration is growing more careful with the way it rolls out new orders. Or, perhaps there’s some other explanation for an entire day’s White House events calling attention to orders that then…seem to vaporize. It’s happened twice in the past [Keep reading]
Comcast Cable TV subscribers were throwing penalty flags all over Twitter on Sunday night when an apparent outage prevented them from watching the Super Bowl. It was unclear how widespread the troubles were. Comcast’s customer support account, @ComcastCares, confirmed outages in Virginia. Outages in that area were caused by [Keep reading]
A suspicious death related to a British spy. Accusations of treason. Arrests — including one, during a meeting, where the suspect was marched out with a bag over his head. Election interference and ‘Kompromat.’ These are some of the things that, while hanging in the air, weren’t mentioned in the [Keep reading]
NOTE: It’s been …gulp….13 years since I published my book on identity theft: Your Evil Twin. Yet here we are, more than a decade later, with the rate of ID fraud hitting an all-time high. That’s shocking. I think it’s important to note that the pain victims feel today is [Keep reading]
A top Russian computer security researcher has been arrested and charged with treason, Russian media has reported. Ruslan Stoyanov, Head of the Computer Incidents Investigation Team at respected security firm Kaspersky Labs, is under investigation, Kaspersky confirmed to me in an email. The timing of the arrest is curious, as it involves [Keep reading]
Those fraud-fighting, chip-enabled credit cards seem to be everywhere now and — credit card fraud activity is up dramatically. That might actually be a good thing, however. Retail fraud attempts rose 31 percent during the holiday shopping season, compared to last year, according to fraud-fighting firm ACI Worldwide. The firm [Keep reading]
“Keep your shoes on,” hawks the advertisements, with the image an elegant very-high-heeled sandal there to catch the eye. The ads urge weary travels on airport security lines to sign up for expedited screening, which is said to come with this major side benefit — no walking through security on [Keep reading]
I’ve long said that identity theft is a just marketing program for banks and retailers. Corporations make it easy for criminals to steal so they can sell convenience to consumers, and if a few customers get hurt along the way, well, that’s a shame. That can always be fixed later. [Keep reading]
Angry Starbucks customers keep writing me to say their bank accounts are being drained via the coffee giant’s popular mobile app, more than a year after I first reported the disturbing problem. Such a heist ruined Jenna Veeve Farag’s Christmas morning. “They were able to wipe out my checking account,” she [Keep reading]
Could Amazon’s Alexa be a tattletale? Yes, as could any Internet-connected device in your home, we were all reminded this week. News outlets lit up on Tuesday with news that Amazon had been served with a search warrant in a murder case, as detectives in Bentonville, Ark., want to know [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan