QR Code Scams Hidden in Plain Sight; The Old Subscription Trap May Be Ending; Hello Pervert…Scam Emails; Hackers May Have Social Security Numbers of Every American… and more!
Every day we scan the tech world for interesting news in the world of technology and sometimes from outside the world of technology. Every Wednesday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Wednesday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
QR code scams are hidden in plain sight. Here’s how to spot them
QR codes are everywhere these days – on restaurant tables, at checkout and even on the bills you receive in the mail. But not every QR code you come across is sure to be legitimate. Scammers are taking advantage of the technology to trick people into different schemes, the Better Business Bureau warned this week.
The scams work in a few different ways. One common strategy, the BBB says, is sticking fraudulent QR codes to the back of parking meters or at parking payment terminals. You may think you can scan to pay for parking (especially if you don’t carry change), but you’re led to a fake website where you’re prompted to enter your credit card information.
You may notice it’s a scam until the credit card charges start appearing days or weeks later…
America’s subscription-trap nightmare could be coming to an end
Sick of spending hours trying to cancel your gym membership or get money back on a flight? A solution could be coming your way.
President Joe Biden’s administration announced on Monday an initiative called “Time Is Money” to crack down on hard-to-cancel subscriptions and bad customer service.
In partnership with government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Transportation, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the administration is proposing rules to make business processes easier for consumers to navigate. The rules would ensure people are not stuck paying subscriptions they don’t want, which can cost them time and money as they try to drop a service…
‘Hello pervert’: The terrifying scam email arriving in people’s inboxes
Message claims that someone has been watching you through your webcam – and threatens to release the footage
A long-standing scam that sends terrifying messages to people, beginning with the words “hey pervert”, appears to be continuing.
The emails claim that someone has been watching you through your computer’s camera, and threaten to send footage taken through that camera to family and friends.
The emails often begin with a variation on the eye-catching opening: “hello pervert”.
They usually include accusations that the recipient has been watching pornographic content and that those videos could be sent to families and friends too.
But the messages and any claims they make are a scam. While it has been a popular way of attacking people for years, it seems to have picked up in recent weeks and months.
If people are tricked into believing the message, they are encouraged to send money to someone as a ransom to stop the supposedly incriminating footage being released…
Hackers may have stolen the Social Security numbers of every American. How to protect yourself
About four months after a notorious hacking group claimed to have stolen an extraordinary amount of sensitive personal information from a major data broker, a member of the group has reportedly released most of it for free on an online marketplace for stolen personal data.
The breach, which includes Social Security numbers and other sensitive data, could power a raft of identity theft, fraud and other crimes, said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director for the U.S. Public Information Research Group.
“If this in fact is pretty much the whole dossier on all of us, it certainly is much more concerning” than prior breaches, Murray said in an interview. “And if people weren’t taking precautions in the past, which they should have been doing, this should be a five-alarm wake-up call for them.”
According to a class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the hacking group USDoD claimed in April to have stolen personal records of 2.9 billion people from National Public Data, which offers personal information to employers, private investigators, staffing agencies and others doing background checks. The group offered in a forum for hackers to sell the data…
Read more at The Los Angeles Times.
AI makes it possible, because of course it does
CRT monitors generate images by directing electron beams onto a phosphorescent screen, creating a pattern of light that forms the visible display. This process involves high-frequency signals that radiate from the monitor, which hackers found they could capture using specialized equipment. The shift to LED screens with HDMI cables made doing this much harder as digital signals are more complex and involve higher frequencies.
A study from a team of researchers at Universidad de la República Montevideo in Uruguay has demonstrated that, with the aid of AI, it’s possible to overcome these hurdles and eavesdrop on the signals once again.
Santiago Fernández, Emilio Martínez, Gabriel Varela, and Pablo Musé Federico Larroca published their findings on the arXiv preprint server, explaining how digital signals emitted from a computer’s HDMI cable can be captured and decoded to reproduce text on a computer screen…
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC
