security

Today we're taking a look through the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) "Internet Crime Report" for the year 2018. This document shows statistics on crimes reported to the FBI, as well as total crimes committed on the internet in the calendar year 2018. This year saw nearly twice the amount of estimated total financial loss through the year VS 2017, easily the biggest jump since tracking these statistics began.

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This weekend we bore witness to what's simultaneously the best and the worst way to keep your AirPods safe from theft. It requires that you have both a good memory and no 3rd-party cleaners. By that, I mean you're going to need to be completely free of friends and family that'd normally do cleaning missions in your home without your assistance.

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Man in the middle attacks are a major concern when it comes to protecting login credentials online, and Google is looking to better protect against them in Chrome. The company has announced that later this year, it will begin blocking logins from embedded browsers, like the Chromium Embedded Framework. This will give end users more safety against phishing, but it also might make things a little more inconvenient.

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Biometrics-based security systems, be it fingerprints or faces, is the trend in computing these days but not all devices are equipped with such sensors. That's especially true for desktop and even for the majority of laptops in the market. Apple has equipped some of its MacBooks with Touch IDs but that still leaves out most of the computers that it offers. Come macOS 10.15, however, that might not be an urgent need, that is if you have an Apple Watch on your wrist.

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Back in March, Facebook revealed that it had been storing passwords from a number of its products in plain text. Though it didn't give a precise amount, Facebook said that hundreds of millions of passwords were stored improperly across Facebook Lite, Facebook proper, and Instagram. At the time, it said that only "tens of thousands of Instagram users," were affected by this mishap (Facebook said it intended for its login system to make user passwords unreadable), but today, we're finding out that the damage as it concerns Instagram is much worse.

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Fortnite, being the biggest game in the world at the moment, is a prime target for hackers and account thieves. Epic claims that there are now more than 250 million Epic accounts out there, which are used across its games, its store, and the Unreal Engine. Though Epic says that its account system has never been compromised (which sort of feels like tempting fate), it has acknowledged that there have been problems with individual accounts being breached.

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Microsoft has already thrown in the web browser towel and has based its Edge browser on Chromium and it seems to be in a rush to put its past behind it. Perhaps even too hastily. It may now be practically dead with less than 10% of the browser market, but a recently revealed exploit continues to put users at risk because of IE's unique position. And Microsoft claims to be not in a rush to patch that up.

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It's probably rare to see @msn.com or @hotmail.com or even the newer @outlook.com these days but users of these long-standing email accounts do exist. They may show their age but now they might also be showing something else. Microsoft has recently acknowledged and sent warnings to Outlook.com users about a security breach that allowed hackers to pilfer no small amount of data. Unfortunately, it seems that Microsoft wasn't admitting to everything and the reach of this compromise is actually worse than it let on.

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Microsoft has sent an email to some Outlook.com users informing them of a security breach. The issue involved compromised credentials belonging to a support agent that left some accounts exposed to 'unauthorized parties,' according to Microsoft, with the vulnerability having existed from January 1 to March 28, 2019. The compromised credentials have since been disabled.

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The UK Metropolitan Police announced today that it has arrested WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, ending a years-long standoff that saw Assange claiming asylum with Ecuador and taking refuge in the country's embassy in London. Assange first took up residence in the embassy in 2012 in an attempt to avoid extradition to Sweden in a sexual assault case.

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Hotels were created to provide a place to rest away from home but, more often than not, the booking process itself can be quite stressful. As if that weren't bad enough, it seems that more than half of the hotels that let you book online might make you want to reconsider. A security researcher has just discovered that two out of three hotels across the world have very little security in place to protect their patron's data, making them easy pickings not just for advertisers but also for criminals.

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Sometimes the smart home can seem not-so-smart when you're renting, something the new August View doorbell camera aims to address with its wire-free installation. Latest in the connected home security company's range of smart locks and accessories, the new video doorbell promises not only easy installation but more useful results, courtesy of an unusual camera. Question is, is all that worth $229.99?

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