Anti Phishing Tools And The Lull Of False Security

From Buzz Bruggeman, here’s another tool that may help fend off phishing attacks (here’s an earlier post on similar software): SpoofStick, a browser extension that sits in either IE or FireFox and tells you what website you’re really visiting. It works like this: Many phishing scams conceal the real website in a link behind tricks … Read more

The Bluesnarfing Skeptics

Is Bluesnarfing the big problem it’s made out to be? “Traditionally,” wrote Guy Kewney of eWeek earlier this month, “security consultants have made a passable living by frightening ignorant managers with security holes. Then they charge money to fix them.” He then takes a look at bluesnarfing, which regular readers of this blog and the … Read more

Double Checking A Phishing Scam

Sometimes the usual checks to see whether an email is a phishing scam or not don’t work. Here’s an example. This morning I received a quite credible looking PayPal email. Of course it had all the hallmarks of a phishing scam too, but then again I’ve received some genuine emails I thought were phishers, so … Read more

This week’s column – Flash Drives Aren’t Flash

This week’s Loose Wire column is about Flash drives:  I LEFT YOU last week in the capable hands of Ethel Girdle, the fictitious octogenarian who took her accusations of built-in obsolescence to the technology giants. One of her beefs was about so-called flash drives–small devices that store data, for example as memory cards for MP3 … Read more

Didtheyreadit’s Response To Privacy Issues Part II

More on Alastair Rumpell’s response to my privacy concerns about his new email monitoring service, didtheyreadit.  (Here’s the first one.) I wondered how the email addresses harvested by Rampell would be used (These would include all emails sent from and to recipients via the service since as far as I can understand it didtheyreadit, unlike … Read more