Security News

Online shopping is the most prevalent type of scam with people losing nearly $14 million to date, according to FTC data. Americans have reported 152,129 coronavirus-related fraud cases to the Federal Trade Commission since the start of 2020, according to data analyzed by Atlas VPN. FTC data further revealed that Americans have lost more than $98 million to COVID-19 and stimulus check scams.

The majority of Americans characterized data privacy as a human right, yet most still don't take adequate security precautions with their information, a KPMG report found. KPMG's The New Imperative for Corporate Data Responsibility report, released on Wednesday, surveyed American consumers to determine their attitudes toward data privacy and what they expect from corporations.

The Empire State's financial regulator said First American Title Insurance was so negligent with securing its data, it broke state laws on the protection of non-public information. "For more than four years, First American Title Insurance Company exposed tens of millions of documents that contained consumers' sensitive personal information including bank account numbers and statements, mortgage and tax records, Social Security numbers, wire transaction receipts, and drivers' license images," the DFS charged [PDF].

In May 2019, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that the website of mortgage title insurance giant First American Financial Corp. had exposed approximately 885 million records related to mortgage deals going back to 2003. On Wednesday, regulators in New York announced that First American was the target of their first ever cybersecurity enforcement action in connection with the incident, charges that could bring steep financial penalties.

You don't have to pay to vote in the US. Up until recently, you wouldn't have necessarily known that, were you to have run a Google search for how or where to vote. Such a search would have been polluted with ads like this one offering "Same-day processing" of voter registration for $129:. That ad, which directs to a site from PrivacyWall.org, is the first ad in a Google search for "Register to vote" that was run in an analysis done by watchdog Tech Transparency Project.

Less than one-third of Americans said they are concerned about their data security while working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Unisys Security report found. The Unisys Security Index, released on Tuesday, calculates a score out of 300 that measures consumer attitudes over eight areas of security in four categories.

A report published Tuesday by security provider Avira explores the reluctance on the part of many to adopt these contact tracing apps. Commissioned by Avira and conducted by research firm Opinion Matters, an online survey of 2,005 people found that 71% of them would not use COVID-19 contact tracing apps.

92% of Americans say they care about online safety and data privacy, yet a new report from iProov showed 44% polled shared passwords and mobile devices with their partners. "You wouldn't have the same key to your house, your car, and every building you ever need to go into. But it's also not possible to remember different passwords for every single site you use. So, Americans are recycling and sharing passwords because they want a convenient way to access their accounts. Biometric authentication is the modern replacement for keys."

Results from separate studies by Checkmarx and ExpressVPN reveal consumers won't easily share their personal information with tracing apps due to concern for misuse. The VPN provider ExpressVPN and software security company Checkmarx queried 1,200 and 1,500 consumers, respectively, to find out what Americans think about digital contact-tracing systems having access to their health information.

A large percentage of Americans currently do not take the necessary steps to protect their passwords and logins online, FICO reveals. Only 42 percent are using separate passwords to access multiple accounts; 17 percent of respondents have between two to five passwords they reuse across accounts; and 4 percent use a single password across all accounts.