Security News
Authorities in Maryland have issued an advisory about an apparent email phishing scam targeting firearms dealers in the state. Maryland State Police said it was issued after the Maryland State Police Licensing Division was notified Tuesday about emails received by at least two firearms dealers.
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.
Among consumers reporting being targeted with digital COVID-19 schemes globally, 27% said they were hit with pandemic-themed phishing scams. "From the impacts of phishing and other well documented COVID-19 scams like unemployment fraud, it's clear that fraudsters have the data and increasing opportunities to create synthetic identities and utilize stolen identities," said Shai Cohen, senior vice president of Global Fraud & Identity Solutions at TransUnion.
Twitter has said that around 130 accounts were targeted by miscreants this week as high-profile individuals and businesses had their accounts hijacked to promote a Bitcoin scam. The estimate comes days after the social media biz admitted the blitz - which snared the accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Apple, Uber and former President Barack Obama - was the result of "Coordinated social engineering".
The Twittersphere went into overdrive on Wednesday as a bunch of prominent, verified Twitter accounts were hijacked and started promoting a COVID-19 cryptocurrency giveaway scam. The attackers simultaneously compromised Twitter accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, Apple, Uber, as well as those of cryptocurrency exchanges Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin and Gemini, the CoinDesk news site and other top crypto accounts.
Many prominent, verified Twitter accounts have been tweeting out cryptocoin scams, with fake tweets reported from an eclectic range of high-profile people and companies, apparently including Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Apple and many others. The scam tweets reportedly included catchy - if highly unlikely - messages such as "Feeling greatful , doubling all payments made to my Bitcoin address," urging people to pay out $1000 and get $2000 back.
The Twitter accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Apple and Uber have each been hijacked at the same time to push a cryptocurrency scam in an unprecedented breach of Twitter accounts. Twitter locked down thousands of verified accounts belonging to elite Twitter users and high-profile companies Wednesday afternoon in an effort to prevent hackers from perpetrating a massive cryptocurrency scam.
A number of high profile Twitter accounts, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Apple, were breached on Wednesday. Twitter said in an official statement: "We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts Twitter accounts. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly".
The Twitter accounts of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and other celebrities were briefly taken over on Wednesday, along with the accounts of various cryptocurrency businesses and affiliated executives, to promote a Bitcoin scam. Twitter also silenced verified blue-tick accounts temporarily to prevent more abuse while it got to the bottom of the kerfuffle.
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.