Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Well, the Facebook hackers and scammers are at it again (as if they ever take a break).
The latest scam tries to entice users to click on a fake video of a scantily clad lady who is apparently in the process of taking off her clothes.
But this is no video. It’s actually just a photo that links to a virus-laden web page. If you click the link, your PC can become infected with an insidious piece of malware known as Trojan.Agent.BDYV. [Read more…]
Most folks are now aware of the nasty CryptoLocker ransomeware virus and have learned how to avoid it, but now its equally nasty successor has arrived on the scene.
Like CryptoLocker before it, CryptoWall takes over your PC and encrypts all the files on the hard drive, then demands that the user pay a hefty ransom in order to have the files un-encrypted. Only this time the ransom is even higher.
The CryptoWall ransom starts out at a whopping $500, then doubles every three days until the user finally gives in and pays the ransom.
To prove that they can indeed un-encrypt your files, the hackers behind CryptoWall will offer to un-encrypt just one of your files for free.
The best way to deal with the CryptoWall threat is to avoid getting it in the first place and be prepared just in case you fall victim to it anyway. Here’s how: [Read more…]
Another day, another scam. This one is perpetrated via an email that claims to be from Google – but it isn’t.
The subject line of the scam email varies, but it usually is something like “Lookout Notice” or “Mail Notice“. If you happen to accidentally open the email, you’ll see text similar to this: [Read more…]
The “Covert Redirect” phishing scam has been around for a long time, but scammers are now using it to harvest the email addresses and passwords that victims use to log in to their Facebook accounts.
The scam works like this: You visit a website and like what you see, but you are asked to either “Create a new account” or “Sign in using Facebook” before being allowed to see or do certain things with the site (leave a comment for example). [Read more…]
It seems that the scammers of the world are working overtime these days in an effort to separate you from your money and steal your identity.
The latest scam making the rounds is targeted at users of the popular Netflix streaming video service. This ploy is apparently a part of a concerted effort among fraudsters to expand their pool of potential victims to users of mainstream online services.
The Netflix scam works something like this: [Read more…]