Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Another day, another Facebook scam. This one features a fake Marlboro coupon that’s supposedly good for two free cartons of Marlboro brand cigarettes.
The coupon looks real enough, but if you click on it you won’t be directed to the official Marlboro website.
Instead, you’ll end up on a fake website that could infect your computer with malware and/or trick you into giving a hacker your personal and financial information.
Here is a screenshot of the fake Marlboro coupon: [Read more…]
Scammers have been using ransomware to extort money from Windows users for a good while now, but over the past weekend a bunch of unlucky victims were hit with the first ransomware attacks to ever successfully target Apple Macs.
Ransomware works by encrypting the data on a computer’s hard drive, then informing the user that he’ll have to pay a ransom to the hacker in exchange for the decryption code.
In this case the scammers managed to infect version 2.90 of the popular “Transmission” app with the insidious KeRanger ransomware virus. The infected app was released on Friday, and users who downloaded it immediately infected their Macs with KeRanger. [Read more…]
Facebook is a wonderful venue for sharing our thoughts, ideas and photos with our friends and loved ones, but it also has a very serious downside. It’s ridiculously easy for false information to spread like wildfire by “going viral”.
Just think of all the “Free Gift Card” and “Click and share to get Facebook to donate to this great cause” scams. We see them every day. And make no mistake about it, these are very serious scams.
But there’s another type of scam that routinely takes place on Facebook that is perhaps even worse. Some folks use Facebook to falsely accuse innocent people of crimes and infractions they didn’t commit. [Read more…]
Virtual Private Networks (aka VPNs) are wonderful services that can provide a powerful layer of security and privacy to your Internet activities.
One of the most popular VPN services out there is Hola Free VPN. Hola is currently being used by millions of people, possibly even you.
Well, if you are using Hola Free VPN, I strongly recommend that you STOP using it immediately. Here’s why… [Read more…]
A new virus called PolloCrypt is making the rounds, and it’s a bad one.
PolloCrypt silently encrypts all the data on your hard drive, then demands that you pay a “ransom” of several hundred dollars to a group of hackers before they will decrypt your files so you can regain access to them.
“Ransomware” of this type certainly isn’t new, but this one is the latest strain of it to hit the streets so you need to be especially wary of it.
It has been reported that the hackers often fail to decrypt a victim’s files even after the ransom has been paid, so it’s wise to avoid getting the virus in the first place if at all possible.
Here are a few things you can do to protect yourself against the nasty PolloCrypt Ransomware Virus: [Read more…]