Consumerist
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malware
Try These Search Terms If You Want Some Malware
Computer virus company McAfee has assembled a list of the top search keywords that are most commonly linked to malware exposure. The winning phrases are: word unscrambler, lyrics, myspace, free music downloads, phelps, game cheats, printable fill-in puzzles, free ringtones and solitaire. In addition, the general categories that are considered riskiest are: screen savers, free games, work from home, Olympics, videos, celebrities, music and news. More » -
It turns out that weird evening bank verification call from AmEx was legit. Brandon wrote back, "After reading all the comments on Consumerist, it stoked my fear of fraud even more, so I called Amex security. They verified the call was legitimate and was from American Express. It was just poor customer service after all."
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american express
Amex Wants To Play "Scam Call" With You, Please Participate
Update: It turns out the call was legit.
American Express—assuming that's who Brandon called back—has apparently never heard of social engineering scams, considering how they verified Brandon's address the other night. You'd hope a credit card company would help educate its customers to be wary of giving out information over the phone, but the alleged Amex rep on the phone with Brandon demanded personal info and threatened to deactivate the card if he didn't comply. More »
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scams
Reminder: Text Messaging Can Be Used For Scams, Too
This story from Jessica is a good reminder that scammers don't care about the technology, they care about about fooling you. That means they'll use whatever method is available—in this case, SMS. More » -
privacy
Are You Sure You Want To Add That Facebook App?
Gregory writes in to point out that Facebook does a lousy job of monitoring the development of its third-party Platform applications—and in fact many of them are written so badly that they can be easily hacked. The examples he cites, which are listed in the winter issue of the hacker magazine 2600, are all fairly mild stunts like spoofing user IDs, changing the moods of another user, and re-routing gifts, "but this information could be used to mount large scale social engineering attacks if automated and coupled with other information." To illustrate how easy it is to change another user's settings, he pointed us to a YouTube example of how to change another users "mood" via the Mood app. More » -
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comcast
AUDIO: Comcast Easily Tricked Into Giving Your Personal Info To Wiseass Teenagers
Here's a clip from the Cmd Radio show demonstrating how someone armed with only a phone number and address can social engineer your personal information out of Comcast. More » -
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1-8 of 8 for "Social Engineering"
