When I was looking for a job a few years ago, I updated my profile on a popular job board. While the information security space is quite hot and my inbox was quite busy, I also got many emails from left field. Over a few weeks, I also received over 25 emails from some of the most prominent life insurance firms in the US, including:
- Bankers Life
- Aflac
- Prudential
- Allstate
- New York Life
- Northwestern Mutual
- State Farm
The emails from the life insurance firms attempted to stroke my ego with statements such as:
- We came across your resume posted online…
T.J. Hooper was a precedent-setting tort case in 1932. While I’m not a lawyer, I have a good friend, Ron Coleman, Esq., who blogs about law issues, so a bit of jurisprudence has rubbed off on me. In Hooper, Judge Learned Hand described what is now called the calculus of negligence or the Hand Test.
The case’s specifics are that two tugboats, one of which was the T.J. Hooper, were towing barges. During a storm, the barges sunk, and their cargoes were lost. The owners of the cargo sued the barge owners, who in turn sued the tugboat owners. …
Older adults are vulnerable
The AARP has close to 40 million members, and each of them is a target for scammers. Surprisingly, I have found the AARP relatively unenthusiastic about the risks their members face from scammers. And that is quite disconcerting.
These older adults are beloved by scammers due to the following factors:
- Being trusting / not suspicious
- Giving nature
- Having time on their hands
- Often have lots of funds
- Not tech-savvy
Senior Cyber — the book to help grandma avoid being scammed
Not being tech-savvy means that every adult who uses a computer or smartphone is particularly at risk of being scammed. With a potential victim pool so huge, it is odd that…
This article was originally published in CSO in 2015. See important update at the end.
The Cyber NTSB
In his book The Psychological Edge: Strategies For Everyday Living, clinical psychologist Dr. Samuel Shein writes that while we have a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), there is no National Psychological Research Board (NPRB). A group like the NPRB could investigate national disasters caused by those with psychological issues. Even with tragedies such as the Columbine High school and Sandy Hook Elementary school massacres, to the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide, 9/11, and more, the US still lacks a central agency dealing with psychological-based tragedies. …
By listening to these calls with phone scammers, you can avoid being a victim.
Here is an ongoing list of audio recordings from scammers, based on my articles An easy & foolproof way to get phone scammers to hang up on you, and From Amazon Returns to Extended Auto Warranties — How Not to Get Scammed When Your Phone Rings.
Listen to their method, understand their tactics, so you, your friends and family, can avoid being their next victims.
Amazon scammers
Nearly everyone has an Amazon account. Which makes nearly everyone a target.
77 — the last 2 minutes where he goes into a foul-mouth tirade is deleted.
87 — This…
There is no lie, we did land on the moon. There is no basis to this conspiracy theory.
Suppose the US really did lie and the entire moon landing program was a hoax. How would we know that? Very simple, Russia would have brought it to the world’s attention.
Russia and the US were in a cold war. Russia had moles and spies in NASA who would have known it was a hoax. Russia would have been the first to highlight that fact. And their silence says a lot.
Yes, we landed on the moon, and there is no conspiracy at all.
https://brothke.medium.com/the-most-important-thing-you-can-ever-read-about-conspiracy-theories-a38f568f9e4c?sk=050246a8a7ae46a2aa28640d8286af91
Bruce Schneier has some clarificaiton on the Schnorr paper:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/03/no-rsa-is-not-broken.html
The recruiters you use may be sabotaging your job search.
Don’t throw your resume to the wind
One of the most desperate situations people find themselves in is when they are suddenly out of work and need a job. Those on LinkedIn or with a Monster account often quickly send out their resume to everyone and anyone, including recruitment agencies, they think can help them, no matter how remote. And while that is a desperate approach, it may also, in fact, be hijacking their efforts to find a new job.
There are two elements at play here. First, when you send your resume to a recruiter, you…
Because it’s but one application in your privacy portfolio
A non-scientific estimate tells me that almost everyone I know, and their friends use WhatsApp. WhatsApp has been in the news recently, with many stories, most of them negative, as their terms of service and privacy policies are changing. Most specifically, that WhatsApp will be sharing data with Facebook, their parent company.
While WhatsApp just pushed off those changes to March 2021, the underlying question is: should you stop using WhatsApp and use an alternative messaging application like Signal or Telegram that is more privacy oriented? Like most security and privacy questions, the answer is “it depends.”
If you are…
Every call you get is from a scammer — the plague of 2021
In 2021, if you get an unsolicited call, there is a high chance, almost a given, that it is a scammer calling. And why all these scam calls? As Willie Sutton (never really) said, “Because that’s where the money is.” Given that many of these calls originate in third-world countries where an annual salary may be in the range of $750, a scammer can easily make a year’s wage via a single call.
You can easily avoid being a victim of these multi-billion dollar frauds by knowing their techniques and characteristics, which is what this article is about.
Grandma and Grandpa are particularly vulnerable.
Older adults…
