Yahoo says 500 million user accounts have been compromised, and they are telling users to change their passwords. That’s good advice, and below you’ll find better advice from security firm Sophos. But first: For the next several days, or even weeks, beware emails that appear to come from Yahoo. Now will be [Keep reading]
It’s not the big one, but it’s close. Yahoo confirmed on Wednesday long-suspected reports that a hacker had accessed millions of customer passwords. The number, however, is a bit shocking even to a reporter who’s been writing this same story for the past 10 years. Five Hundred Million. For many [Keep reading]
America is being ripped apart right now by one video after another showing unarmed African Americans killed by police. The videos often turn into Rorschach Tests, with viewers seeing what they want to see; taken as a package, however, the depth of the problem is both obvious and undeniable. Thank goodness we [Keep reading]
You’re busy, so I’ll say this fast and loud: DON’T OPEN UNEXPECTED ZIP FILES THAT ARRIVE AS EMAIL ATTACHMENTS. Suddenly, there’s a lot of them around. That advice is nearly as old as email, but as they say, everything old is new again. And the Internet is newly awash in [Keep reading]
Q: When is the only time in life that you can’t wait to get older? A: When you’ve used up all your cell phone data for the month and can’t wait for a new month to arrive. I exceeded my monthly cell phone data last month, I believe for the [Keep reading]
Whenever I get in a dispute with a customer service agent, I try to humanize the dialog. “Do you think this is fair?” I’ll ask. And if I can pierce the corporate-speak at all, I usually saying something like, “Look, you are I have way more in common than you and [Keep reading]
One of the saddest chapters of U.S. higher education closed on Monday, as ITT Technical Institute suddenly announced it was shutting down. ITT has been hit with numerous legal actions, and just last week it finally received what amounted to a death penalty from the Department of Education — which [Keep reading]
How persistent and brazen are phantom debt collectors? Last month, when I emailed a firm named Advance Cash Services asking for comment on collection harassment allegations, the firm replied by saying I owed them $935.76 for an unpaid payday loan. A few days later, I wrote about Susan Marquardt of Chicago, who [Keep reading]
Another day, another reminder that companies don’t really have to abide by promises to NOT share your personal information. They have a big “but” in their contracts. Last week, it was WhatsApp and Facebook. We’ll get to that in a moment. This week, millions of Sports Authority customers began receiving notices [Keep reading]
The FBI has issued a warning that state board of election websites are being targeted by hackers, and in at least one case, voter data has been stolen. Yahoo News Michael Isikoff first reported the attack and posted the FBI warning online (against the FBI’s wishes). It’s very serious. Clearly the FBI [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan