As long as people think of phishing as stealing financial data, no one’s safe. Take this email I just received from Virgin Atlantic after signing up for their Flying Club frequent flier program. It’s a great example of how a user could be duped into giving up personal information (including, but not necessarily, financial data) … Read more
Sad news: As of today, the Far Eastern Economic Review, primary home to the Loose Wire column for the past few years, has ceased publishing as a weekly magazine. That means that the column will move elseswhere, although WSJ.com readers will continue to be able to read it online. For FEER and other readers, please … Read more
I’ve long believed that phishing emails are just the beginning of a new kind of fraud which is likely to be sophisticated and fast moving. Here’s an example of what they might look like, courtesty of a British computer scientist called Jim Ley, written up at the security website Netcraft. Ley, Netcraft says, “has demonstrated … Read more
I can’t help feeling that telephone companies and Internet Service Providers are in real danger of legal action if they don’t tackle the problem of modem dialing. This NBC5 story from Chicago quotes a local woman as complaining about a series of weird calls to her phone company, SBC. The answer: “They didn’t know too … Read more
Yahoo! has bought Stata Labs, the guys behind Bloomba an excellent email program that is more of a database. In a statement the company said they “intend to continue supporting Stata Labs’ existing customers for one year from the date of product purchase”. They said that while there is no word on what Yahoo! will … Read more