Tax ID theft is reaching epidemic proportions. Well, it did last year when the IRS issued seemingly endless warnings about it. That wasn’t enough to get state taxation agencies to fix their systems, apparently, as TurboTax announced it has taken the extraordinary step of “pausing” state tax return filings for [Keep reading]
Day 2 of the Anthem hack, and we don’t know much more than we knew yesterday. There are intriguing grain-of-salt reports that Chinese hackers stole the data as part of a never-ending quest to build intelligence on U.S. government agents. There are plenty of reports — which must be true, [Keep reading]
Another day, another massive computer hack that sets millions of people in a tizzy about something they can’t control. The Anthem health data leak isn’t the Big One — that’s still coming, believe me — but it’s pretty big. Perhaps 80 million people now have to worry that a criminal [Keep reading]
The next time a company tells you that it wants your information, but “Don’t worry, it’s anonymized,” don’t believe it. A group of researchers from MIT proved this week that it can identify almost anyone using just four pieces of information in a supposedly anonymized database of credit card transactions [Keep reading]
Technology is like money, it seems. You need some of it…a decent amount, really…to be happy. But at a certain point, it might do more harm than good. Microsoft released a fascinating global survey at Davos this week which unearthed another gap between the developed and the developing world. Poorer [Keep reading]
It’s back. School districts are again claiming the right to demand Facebook passwords from students. This, despite several states passing laws making the practice expressly illegal, and introduction of federal legislation that will do the same when Congress gets around to passing it. The Illinois Principals Association has posted a [Keep reading]
Progressive Insurance, and its TV personality “Flo,” have for years been urging consumers to install a small electronic device called Snapshot into their cars that allows the insurer to gather safety data on drivers. Supporters say the device, sometimes called a dongle, lets Progressive offer discounts based on the way customers [Keep reading]
Everything old is new again…that applies to computer virus attacks, too. Remember the good old days when booby-trapped emails contacting macro-infected Word documents and spreadsheets were the biggest threat to computer users? Well, they are back. Microsoft issued a pretty specific warning this week at its Malware Protection Center, saying [Keep reading]
If 2014 was the year of the credit card hack, what will 2015 be? Here’s an early look at candidates — the scams, hacks and hiccups that could trip up the most consumers next year. 1. Hacked Kitchen Appliances and the Internet of Things Even as our cellphones get bigger, technology [Keep reading]
The stakes in the Sony hack keep getting higher. We are all about to get a lesson in asymmetric warfare, and that has me really concerned. Now that the U.S. government has so openly accused North Korea of attacking America, and its way of life, the U.S. has a really [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan