Today (October 1) marks the start of the US's National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. It's an increasingly important kind of awareness for everybody to have, because, in this very social media environment, security – of our data, identity and property – is just as "crowd-sourced" as media is now. And we all know that kids are doing as much, if not more, sharing and producing as everybody else. So … [Read more...] about Cybersecurity where kids are concerned
computer security
Key phishing-avoidance trick
Share this easy phishing-avoidance tactic with Facebook users in your family. ZDNET writer Ed Bott provides screenshots of four Facebook email notifications he has received, two of them definitely not from Facebook. He illustrates how hard it is to tell fake Facebook emails from real ones, but here's a great trick that will help you and your kids: Instead of just clicking, hover your cursor or … [Read more...] about Key phishing-avoidance trick
Major privacy and safety updates at Facebook
This week Facebook starts rolling out* a new level of control users have over their profiles and privacy. Among a number of positive changes are: the ability to approve any photo or post you're tagged in before it's visible to others on your profile; the ability to approve or not any tag someone tries to add to your photos or posts; and the ability to decide who sees what you post right before you … [Read more...] about Major privacy and safety updates at Facebook
DefCon’s first kid hackers
You know that there are hackers, and then there are hackers, right? Sure there are criminal hackers, but there are also plenty of "white hat" hackers who are in it for the challenge and to help find security breaches so companies and governments can get them fixed. Well, DefCon, one of the longest-running annual hacker conventions, just happened in Las Vegas for the 19th time, and it seems the … [Read more...] about DefCon’s first kid hackers
Attacks on Macs
There have been "a number of reports over the past few weeks about an anti-virus scam that goes by a number of aliases, including MacDefender, MacProtector and MacSecurity," reports Larry Magid, my ConnectSafely.org co-director, at the San Jose Mercury News. He says he's been religious about protecting his Windows computers against malware but only just tried out some anti-virus software on his … [Read more...] about Attacks on Macs