Security

Facebook’s still growing in popularity every year. In fact, it now has almost as many users as there are people living in China! You’d think such a popular program would be well-loved, but it still has quite the reputation problem, mostly stemming from its apparent lack of respect for individual privacy. It makes sense: Their […]

Your password has expired again! Time to come up with a new one. Be sure to use at least one capital letter, lower-case letter, a symbol, and a number. And don’t use anything that can be easily guessed, like the name of your street, child, or pet. Random strings of letters, symbols, and numbers are the […]

How often do you use your smartphone? If you’re like nearly 80% of smartphone users, you have your phone with you nearly 24/7. Many of us can’t sleep without them by our sides, and they’re the first thing we check when we get up in the morning. Almost a third of us can’t imagine living […]

How easy a target are you making yourself for hackers? You may think you’re being careful with your online data. You take all the recommended precautions and carefully configure your privacy settings on Facebook, go by a pseudonym on Twitter, and only connect with people you’ve actually met in person on LinkedIn. You may think […]

Like a glacier in the sea, only a fraction of the World Wide Web is visible by search engines. Google has indexed trillions of pages on the web, but the monolithic search engine really only scrapes the surface. Though they’re constantly crawling the web and adding new pages, search engines can only access about 1% […]

“Hacker” wasn’t always a pejorative term, and even today it may not mean exactly what you think. The term has a convoluted history, but its origins lie with some of the first computer programmers at MIT in the 1960s, who used it to label anyone who played around with computer programming software for the fun […]

How much do you trust the Internet? If you’re like the majority of Internet users, you’re trusting the Internet with your life. Think about it: So many tasks are much more convenient thanks to the Internet. You can now manage your bank accounts without ever setting foot in a local branch, pay your utility bills […]

Most of the billions of people who go online every day do so to perform mundane tasks like checking email, shopping, banking, and using social media. The World Wide Web has made these everyday tasks so much more convenient, now that everything from bank accounts to baby monitors can be accessed online. Why drive to the […]

The information age is made possible by the lightening-fast exchange of data, making that data today’s all-important currency. As precious as our personal and private data is today, it must be kept safe. Individuals can take action to safeguard our usernames, passwords, and personal information. But when every precaution is taken, is your information guaranteed to […]

The security of Bitcoin transactions is one of the main draws of the new digital currency. Each Bitcoin transaction is publicly recorded and irreversible, while individual identifying information is kept secure and practically untraceable. Yet, ironically, some of the qualities that make Bitcoin so secure also make the digital currency irresistibly attractive to thieving hackers. […]

We’re all familiar with the irritating experience of opening our email and discovering that the vast majority of the messages we’ve received are either destined for the spam folder, or already in it. Spam is an increasingly serious problem for email users everywhere. As of 2013, spam emails accounted for nearly 71% of all email […]

With more and more of us shifting everyday tasks—banking, education, social interaction, even shopping for groceries—to the virtual world, securing our personal information has become more important than ever. One of the simplest ways to help protect our financial and other info from prying eyes and would-be identity thieves is to use a strong password. […]

On January 23, 2014, Hunter Moore, the so-called “King of Revenge Porn,” was arrested. Moore is the former owner of the site isanyoneup.com, notorious for posting nude photos of people—mostly women—without their consent. As if that weren’t bad enough, posts to the site frequently included personally identifying information such as the women’s names, address, places […]

Mankind’s search for a meaningful identity in an often confusing world is as old as our species itself. But on the Internet, matters of identity are less about discovering who you might be than they are about protecting who you already are. Identity theft cost consumers over $18 billion in 2012 alone, and with identity […]

As the modern marketplace has come to rely on virtual media, storefronts, and relationship management, the need for greater cybersecurity—on everything from hosting servers to personal pcs to mobile devices—has increased exponentially. Gone are the days of casual GeoCities storefronts, secured only with a (it is hoped) strong password and a vigilant eye. Today, the […]