• Hackers

    GMail's Achilles Heel: Terrible Customer Service

    Losing access to your GMail account is tantamount to banishment from the internet, but Google's non-existent customer support makes it nearly impossible for rightful owners to regain control of their accounts. The New York Times asked Google why they couldn't afford to offer phone-based customer support, a simple question Google needed three people to answer. More »

    9:45 AM on Sun Oct 5 2008
    By Carey
    34,972 views, 60 comments

    Most discussed timmus: Well, on one hand, you get what you pay for. more »

  • followups

    Ex-Countrywide Employee Sells Your Data, They Offer Credit Monitoring Service, Hang Up When You Ask For It

    Re: Countrywide Sends Fraud Alert Letters: 'Your Info May Have Been Sold," Reader Esqdork writes, "Yesterday, I phoned Countrywide to get them to extend the credit monitoring service [that they offered in their apology letter] to my co-borrower and was promptly hung up on." The only surprise here is that they even picked up in the first place.

    12:18 PM on Thu Sep 11 2008
    By Ben Popken
    5,684 views, 21 comments

    Most discussed grungyparadigm: But... they sent a letter just to the borrower, not the co-borrower. If it was just the borrower's information that more »

  • countrywide

    Countrywide Sends Fraud Alert Letters: 'Your Info May Have Been Sold'

    A Countrywide customer emailed to tell us he received an unpleasant surprise in the mail today: a former Countrwide employee may have sold his loan info.

    I received a letter from Countrywide today that says:

    "We are writing to inform you that we recently became aware that a Countrywide employee (now former) may have sold unauthorized personal information about you to a third party...

    More »

    6:57 PM on Tue Sep 9 2008
    By Chris Walters
    30,085 views, 56 comments

    Most discussed IamNotToddDavis: Speaking as an employee of a company who provides ID theft restoration services and consultation and as such has not more »

  • good business practice

    Redbox Shows Businesses How To Properly Handle A Data Breach

    Redbox rents DVD movies via vending machine in drugstores and supermarkets throughout the country, and on Friday they announced that they'd found credit card skimmers attached to three of their kiosks. What's surprising is that they 'fessed up so quickly, and in a highly public manner—they've got the text "SECURITY ALERT" at the top and bottom of their website, and the email they sent to their members is detailed, forthright, and helpful, and reposted in its entirety—along with photos of sample card skimmers—on their site. Attempts at identity theft no longer surprise us, but a competent handling of the issue by a company is pretty amazing. More »

    9:42 AM on Mon Apr 7 2008
    By Chris Walters
    11,285 views, 57 comments

    Latest by Alan Thomas: To reinforce the earlier point: The headline of this article is incorrect and irresponsible. This series of incidents does not represent more »

  • tech support

    Comcast Tech Abuses Power To Rack Vegeneance On Xbox Hackers

    DSL Reports has the story of an outsourced Comcast tech was fired after bragging online about using internal Comcast systems to get vengeance on hackers disrupting his Xbox. After annoying little twerps intentionally overloaded his Xbox with data (known as packet flooding), Mark Ribeiro, who describes himself as a "Comcast tier 2.5 support agent, which essentially means im one of the top 1% elitest agents," went to work. First he identified one of the perps and found out he was a Comcast customer. Then he looked up the kid's info in the Comcast support system and called the kid's father... More »

    11:21 AM on Wed Apr 2 2008
    By Ben Popken
    30,492 views, 130 comments

    Latest by Demonbird: @skilled1: If you had read no a couple posts further you would have seen I posted about that. Now, more »

  • security breach

    Red Card! MLSGear.com Shoppers Exposed To Identity Theft

    Computerworld is reporting that "a series of SQL injection attacks" on a third-party e-commerce company's servers has compromised the personal data of customers who shopped at Major League Soccer's MLSgear.com website. One affected customer told us he received a letter from MLSgear.com letting him know what had happened and offering him free credit monitoring services for a year, which is apparently the standing corporate response to personal data theft. More »

    6:28 PM on Tue Feb 12 2008
    By Chris Walters
    1,266 views, 15 comments

    Latest by soccer123: We had fraud on our credit card after making a purchase at two internet sites in July 2006; one of more »

  • identity theft

    Geeks.com Website Hacked, Customer Data Stolen

    If you bought anything from Geeks.com in at least the last year or so, you might want to start paying close attention to your credit card statements—the company sent out an email on Friday telling former customers that they "recently discovered on December 5, 2007 that customer information, including Visa credit card information, may have been compromised." Full email after the jump. More »

    7:55 AM on Mon Jan 7 2008
    By Chris Walters
    54,829 views, 71 comments

    Latest by VanPanda: either mcafee makes money in a way that I could (saying a site is 99% safe, and blaming hacks on that more »

  • voip

    Security Firm Says Hackers Can Access Vonage Calls

    It's not a good week for Vonage. VoIP Security firm Sipera has announced that they've discovered a vulnerability in Vonage's equipment that can allow hackers to take control of user accounts to intercept calls, make calls via the accounts, eavesdrop, or launch DoS attacks. Although most VoIP systems are about as secure as sending IM messages over a public wifi network (that is, not secure at all), Vonage has a couple of special problems with its Motorola adapters not authorizing requests, which leaves a special door open for bad people doing bad things. The problem also affects adapters from Grandstream and Globe7. More »

    4:57 PM on Fri Oct 26 2007
    By Chris Walters
    986 views, 4 comments

    Latest by mikelotus: I am curious if this is true of AT&T's VOIP too. more »

  • security

    iPhone Security Is On Par With Windows 95

    We owe Apple an apology, because it turns out they weren't kidding when they said that opening the iPhone up to 3rd party software was just asking for trouble. That's because the iPhone runs every single app as "root," which is computerese for "more power than Steve Jobs." It was this root access that made the Safari exploit possible back in July, and it can't be fixed without a complete redesign of the firmware. More »

    10:23 PM on Tue Oct 23 2007
    By Chris Walters
    4,288 views, 30 comments

    Latest by Mr. Gunn: They thought they could get away with it by pushing all the apps over the web. Can't blame him more »

  • iphone

    iPhone Hacked, Compromising All Your Personal Data

    Bleeding-edge early-adopters take note: The iPhone may be a sexy little device, but security experts have found a way to hack it and take complete control of the device. Complete and utter vulnerability. Hackers find their way into the phone via the iPhone's version of the Safari web browser. More »

    12:50 PM on Mon Jul 23 2007
    By ashley
    4,560 views, 19 comments

    Latest by Papa Midnight: So long the old stagnation that Apple products are entirely secure. Thousands of owners might want to re-evaluate their positions more »