5. Swedish Urology Group — Urine Trouble!
Victims: “Hundreds”
Class Action Outrage Scale: 1 out of 10 lawyers

Doctors lost three hard drives containing patients’ personal information, and we mean personal!

4. The Nature Conservancy — Think of It as Recycled Data
Victims: 14,000
Class Action Outrage Scale: 9 out of 10 lawyers

Someone at the Conservancy was thinking locally but acting globally by apparently visiting a website of questionable provenance. The site was poisoned with malware. Soon, malicious hackers were clear-cutting names, home addresses, birthdates, Social Security numbers of employees and their dependents, and, yes, direct deposit bank account numbers. Let’s hope there’s been a climate change in the group’s security department.

3. TSA, Part II – Still Doing DHS Proud!
Victims: 100,000
Class Action Outrage Scale: 3 out of 10 lawyers

Thieves stole a computer hard drive with the names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and bank account and routing information of current and former employees, including federal air marshals. Don’t worry, though. How easy could it be to pose as an air marshal with only that information?

2. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs — One Regrets the Error
Victims: 25 million
Class Action Outrage Scale: 10 out of 10 lawyers

Two CDs containing personal data on about 7 million families went missing in the mail, and the HMRC chancellor resigned. Frankly, we included it just so we could quote sentences like: “The chancellor seeks the advice of the Serious Organised Crime Agency,” and “Mr Cable said he sincerely hoped the discs would not fall into the hands of ‘the criminal fraternity,’” and “Police have visited London rubbish tips in their hunt for missing computer discs.” Makes the worst breach in Britain’s history sound kind of lovely.

1. TJX — ’Sorry About That. Here’s a Gift Card. Come Back Soon for our Sale!’
Victims: Millions of bargain shoppers worldwide
Class Action Outrage Scale: 8 out of 10 lawyers

No breach got more ink this year than TJX’s, which involved some, OK, tens of millions, OK, 50 million, all right all right around 100 million credit and debit card records. Priceless moments included TJX’s defense in press accounts that “our security was comparable to many other major retailers” and the portion of TJX’s proposed settlement with consumers in which the company would hold a three-day “Customer Appreciation Sale” and give some customers $30 store vouchers. (Sorry about the e. coli in the meat in our store; here’s a gift card to buy more meat in our store). After consumer advocates raised a stink, the vouchers were changed to $15 checks. Sad as the whole episode was for consumers, TJX’s stock has remained healthy. Don’t you just love a bargain?

via [CSOOnline]

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Unfortunately, many Microsoft Windows users are unaware of a common security leak in their network settings.

This is a common setup for network computers in Microsoft Windows:

• Client for Microsoft Networks
• File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks
• NetBEUI Protocol
• Internet Protocol TCP/IP

If your setup allows NetBIOS over TCP/IP, you have a security problem:

• Your files can be shared all over the Internet
• Your logon-name, computer-name, and workgroup-name are visible to others.

If your setup allows File and Printer Sharing over TCP/IP, you also have a problem:

• Your files can be shared all over the Internet

Computers that are not connected to any network can also have dangerous network settings because the network settings were changed when Internet was installed.

Source

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How can you protect your computer against the above-mentioned Internet security incidents? There are a number of free Internet security programs available online that you can use for this purpose. Given below is a checklist of few simple things you do:

• Assess your risk/risk potential
• Use good antivirus software. There are a number of free Internet security solutions that you can download for this purpose.
• Keep all your software up-to-date (download and apply updates and patches regularly)
• Check your security settings
• Use a firewall (hardware/software)
• Create tough-to-crack passwords (ideally 13 characters long, that includes numbers)
• Conduct regular security maintenance

Source

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The FBI called for new legislation that allows the federal police to keep close look at internet activity to track down illegal activities. This seem to go beyond a current plan to monitor traffic on federal-government networks, and that the bureau should have a broad “omnibus” authority to conduct monitoring and surveillance of private-sector networks as well. This could violate the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. In general, courts have ruled that police need search warrants to obtain the content of communication

Source

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Suspecting a spyware in your system? Here are some tips on how you could get rid of spyware in your computer:

1. Get, install and periodically run Ad-aware and Spybot Search & Destroy.
2. To prevent reinfection by Aureate/Radiate – search for advert.dll on your system. If it’s there and if you can, delete it (Ad-aware will do this for you). Then create an empty text file, name it advert.dll, make it read-only and save it in your Windows/System directory. Then configure Ad-aware (version 5 or later) to ignore advert.dll.

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A man is convicted to serve five years in jail after being convicted of being the creator of a botnet that had in it’s peak infected almost half a million computers, spreading spam and adware. The man, Jeanson James Ancheta at a young age of 21 is set to serve a total of 57 months in prison, which is considered to be one of the the longest ever sentence for computer crimes. He drew the curiosity of government cyber-security people when he tried to infiltrate computers owned by the US Naval Warfare Center and the Defense Information Systems Agency, both of which were being constantly attacked by hackers and botnets. Please tell me more! »

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The software giant announced that it will be releasing their own Windows embedded anti-virus that raises some eyebrows in the IT industry. Why, well the company has been known to be the most attacked PC platform on earth compared to other operating systems due to their ways of old. This hatred of the company stems back from the days when Microsoft was involved in what can be called “steal then deal”, when they were involved in getting nifty software form the many start up firms who produced respectable programs they embedded within their OS releases. This is sure to result in lawsuits which the company then opted to settle out of court, buying out the rights and even the company in a hostile take-over. Please tell me more! »

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The world of cyber-crime has grown so much in these past few years due to the explosion of growth with respect to the number of internet users the world over. It has not only expanded on the side of normal people but on the side of cyber-criminals who now operate on their own networks, spanning the globe and ready to spread their products, malicious code that first scans the globe for weak points in the security net that we all put up to somewhat give us a sense of security from the ever-growing threat which is actually futile to some extent. Please tell me more! »

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Computer viruses threaten the user everyday. It gets more dangerous each day. One day they can tap into your personal information and steal your identity for criminal activities.
Tehre are free softwares that unleashes spyware, trojans, or worms on your system. So dont go trying them all out because its free. Others install popups which always annoys the users.

Arm your computer and protect yourself against these potential attecks by installing a good antivirus software. Using the firewall greatly reduces the risk of hackers crawling into your system.
Now adays, browsers are equipped with popup blockers, so you can enable this feature to ward of annoying popups while you view a certain page in your favorite site. Changing passwords regularly can be of good use. And dont forget to keep those passwords to yourself. Never indulge it to others, not even to your mother.

These are a few things that might protect you from becoming a victim.
Image Source:geeksontime

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Image source:www.youtubeic.com
Remember what your computer teachers or anyone good enough, told you not to tell your “secret words” (Meaning, not just your passwords) to anyone? Well, some hackers send malicious softwares or malwares to capture your keystrokes, copy your precious data, or even control your computer to hack another person. Okay, maybe you know about that too, and even the “hackers use websites for these purposes” thing. But! Did you know that Youtube is not that different from these sites? That’s right. Youtube has these links, and you might just open these things since these links looks trust worthy, and your “friend” sent this link. In short, Youtube is not different from Myspace now. Well, to save yourself from these hackers, just use the search engine in Youtube, or if the link is not in youtube, copy the link and paste it to yahoo or google, and their protection might show the true face of that page. But if you think that its such a hassle, then just don’t open it.

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