Are you planning to file your taxes online? If so, you may see some delays in getting your refund. The IRS has been experiencing intermittent problems with their eFile system that has been making it impossible to take the final step in online submissions. This requires online filers to save their returns and try again […]
How long has it been since we’ve seen a full week go by without another headline of yet another data breach? Far too long, and this week is no exception. The latest victim? High-end retailer Neiman Marcus. Fortunately, at least in terms of scope and scale, this breach is a relatively small one. A spokesman […]
Everybody’s always looking for new ways to save money. A little here, a little there, and before you know it, you can realize significant savings. The problem with that approach, however, is that sometimes, the quest to save a few bucks can wind up being much more expensive in the long run. Take, for example, […]
If you use Microsoft products, you’ve no doubt made at least some use of Cortana, the company’s digital assistant function. If you’re in the Apple camp, then Siri has become an increasingly important part of your life. These digital assistants began as small components of a much larger ecosystem, and in their earliest iterations, were […]
Smartphones rule the world. Even a few years ago, a statement like that would seem silly, but today, silly has become fact. There are more smartphones in active service today than there are human beings living on planet earth, and we use them for just about everything. People watch videos, stream music, do work, play […]
Have you been hacked? Has your personal information been compromised? If so, what are you worth? What’s your information selling for? If you’re curious, take a trip to the Dark Web to find out. The Dark Web is the “underground” internet. All of the servers are hidden and encrypted. The only way to access them […]
Have you heard of Hot Potato? It’s the latest security exploit that Windows-based machines are vulnerable to. Note that this doesn’t target a particular version of Windows, but rather, spans everything from Windows 7, forward to Windows Server 2012. The exploits take advantage of hooks and weaknesses built into the core of the OS itself, […]
Ransomware is shaping up to be the most significant threat from the hacker community in 2016. Over the last few days, Locky, a new piece of malware has been spreading like a wildfire across the Internet. The problem began February 16, when Locky was sent to 400,000 unlucky potential victims. In its first form, it […]
Do you own a Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, or Surface Pro 3? If so, and if you made your purchase before March, 2015, you should know that Microsoft has just issued a recall for the AC power cords for those devices. According to a spokesman for the company, the recall was issued because over […]
A health insurer based in St. Louis, called Centene, has “misplaced” six hard drives. Normally that would not be a big deal, but these particular hard drives happened to contain the personal data of around a million patients. The missing data includes patient names, addresses, birthdays, and social security numbers, but thankfully, not payment information. […]
Since 2011, a company called SplashDash has posted a “Worst Password List” based on data mined from hacks and data breaches. What’s remarkable about the annual list is how little it changes from one year to the next. In the age of weekly, high profile hacks, in the age of rampant identity theft, one would […]
For many months, Amazon has been planning to take the retail game to the next level. Their ambitious plan first became visible with the inclusion of mysterious “Dash Buttons” on various classes of products. Mysterious, because at least until now, those buttons didn’t actually do anything. Clicking on them would get you absolutely nothing. Quietly, […]