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If you use Gmail, pay attention! Security experts have announced that there is a very effective phishing scam out there, and you are a target. This scam, which has only been growing over the past couple of months, is also hitting other email providers, too. However, it’s quite difficult to detect.

According to researchers at WordFence, who make a security tool for WordPress, this is a pretty serious attack and can have quite an impact, even for those who are up on security.

Here’s how it works:

You

If you have a cell phone, and you use it in any way associated with accessing online accounts (and many do), you are putting yourself at risk of getting hacked. With only a phone number and a bit of information, which is easy to get through social engineering, a hacker can break into your personal and financial accounts.

This works by getting information about you, such as your birthday, address, or even the last four digits of your Social Security number…information that is readily available…and

Think about hackers breaking into accounts. If you think they need top-notch computer skills, you would be wrong. These days, instead of requiring skills behind a keyboard, hackers generally rely on strategy…specifically a strategy called social engineering. This means that hackers don’t have to be technical, but they DO have to be clever and crafty because they are essentially taking advantage of people and “tricking” them into giving information.

There are four main ways that hackers use social

Ever peruse Craigslist for a new home? Nothing against Craigslist for doing that, but that’s where Coty Houston and David Yost happened to find a very alluring four-bed home for sale; looked perfect for their five young kids.

Then they all got squashed by a bomb: The man who sold it to them was not a licensed Realtor. Matthew Boros, however, used to be a real estate agent, but he never renewed his license. But this time, he had climbed through the house’s window (after placing an ad for it on Cra

If you’ve heard this once, you need to hear it again—and again: Never use the same password and username for more than one account!

If this got Mark Zuckerberg’s (Facebook’s chief executive). Twitter account hacked, it can get just about anybody hacked.

A report at nytimes.com says that the OurMine hacking group takes credit for busting into Zuckerberg’s accounts including LinkedIn and Pinterest. It’s possible that this breach was cultivated by a repeated password of Zuckerberg’s.

According to OurM

Do you work for a corporation, especially in the U.S.? You may be at risk for tax return fraud.

ADP is a payroll provider. Hackers were able to acquire tax information of employees of U.S. Bank from ADP. Now, this doesn’t mean that ADP was directly hacked into. Instead, what happened, it seems, their authentication system was flawed and ADP failed to implement a protection strategy for the personal data to keep it safe from prying eyes.

The crooks registered ADP accounts by using the stolen data o

Craigslist is one of my favorite sites on the Internet, though I admittedly have a love/hate relationship with it. One reason I love it is because of the deals and variety of items and services available, but I hate it because some of the people who use it are scammers and the site has some major security issues.

Once, I listed a property on on Craigslist for rent. Scammers relisted the property for a third of the asking price. People came to my home and would knock on my door to see the property

Someone else might file your taxes if you don’t get to it. And they won’t be doing it as a favor; they’ll be doing it to steal your identity.

Here’s how it works:

• Cyber thieves send fraudulent e-mails to a business’s employees.
• The e-mails are designed to look like they came from the big wigs at the company.
• As a result, the targeted employees are tricked into revealing sensitive data about the company’s employees.
• The crooks end up with all this valuable data—enough to file phony tax returns.
• This pl

Once a thief knows your Social Security number…you’re at very high risk for having your identity stolen.

A report on bankrate.com says that the IRS is warning of a cyber attack on its electronic filing PIN application. Thieves infiltrated it with malware in an attempt to claim other people’s refunds as their own. Over 450,000 SSNs were involved, and over 100,000 of them enabled the hackers to access an E-file PIN.

Endless scams are directed towards SSNs, like the classic phishing attack. A phishin

What are you doing to prevent tax identity theft? Do you even know what steps to take? You’d better, because this crime has tripled since 2010, says the FTC.

A report on foxbusiness.com describes tax identity theft as the act of stealing someone’s personal information, then the crook files a phony tax return in the victim’s name to get a refund. The victim will never see it in their mailbox. And that’s only the beginning of the victim’s problems.

First, your complaint that you didn’t get your chec

Many so-called psychics are frauds. But so are some auto mechanics, lenders and roofers. There’s fraud in just about all lines of work.

What we do know is this: There’s not enough evidence to refute paranormal phenomena. Nor enough to prove it beyond a doubt.

And we also know this: There exist scams involving hot and cold readings.

I could give a scam reading to a flamboyant, colorfully-dressed woman (whom I’ve known for only a minute) with big hair, lots of costume jewelry and a supersonic laugh.

I

Are you thinking of getting a personal loan? Hopefully you have a high credit score, as this will give you a better chance of getting the loan through a legitimate company. But even if your credit is excellent, you need to be aware of the personal loan scams out there.

Not Respecting Your Limit

• You don’t want to do business with a lender that pressures you into borrowing more than you can handle

Upfront Payment

• You should never have to pay any fees for the application process. If you’re requested to

Even though the highly publicized retail data breaches have involved off-line brick and mortar stores, this doesn’t mean that security is high with online shopping. Scammers and hackers are waiting for you in more ways than you know, such as:

• Fake product reviews
• Non-existent products
• Delivered products that don’t match what was seen on the retail site
• Shoppers being tricked into typing their credit card information into a purchase form on a phony shopping site
• Malicious attachments and phishing emai

LinkedIn is a free service that allows professional people to network with each other. Often, a LinkedIn member will receive an e-mail from another LinkedIn member “inviting” them to join their network. Sometimes, the inviter is someone the recipient doesn’t know, but the recipient will link up anyways. And that’s the problem.

A report at www.secureworks.com says that Dell SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit™ (CTU) researchers discovered 25 phony LinkedIn profiles.

With this particular phony network (

Janet N. Cook, 76, was duped by a dashing younger man. A report at nytimes.com explains that in July 2011 she connected with Kelvin Wells via a dating site.

Next thing, this seemingly-together man was in trouble and needed lots of money. Cook got burned; she sent the crook nearly $300,000 (amazing; just try to get a friend to give you $100).

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center warns:

• If that wonderful man (or woman) sounds too good to be true and speaks poetically, e.g., “We were meant to be

You’ll probably be shocked to learn that last year, thousands of cars with keyless entry technology were stolen in London, says a report from wired.com.

But fact is, the more connected a vehicle is to the cyber world, the more hackable the vehicle is—and the hack could be to steal the vehicle or hurt the owner.

Rule: Anything that’s connected, especially via WiFi can be hacked.

The article notes that recently, a Jeep Cherokee was hacked with a smartphone via its Internet-connected navigation and en

Catfishing is when someone creates a phony online account—and not necessarily to scam someone for financial gain. An article on vice.com tells all about a person who’s been catfishing for eight years.

She started in middle school by creating “Joey” on MySpace. She then commented, as “Joey,” on her real MySpace page to make herself appear that some cool kid named Joey thought she was pretty.

She got older and didn’t have friends. Don’t blame her for this. Her mother was an addict and father behind

You take your car to the mechanic; it’s been making a funny grinding noise when you press on the gas pedal. The mechanic tells you what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed, then socks you with the estimate.

How can you tell he’s not embellishing a lot of the “diagnosis”? You know nothing about cars. You have to take his word for it. What if the second opinion is also from a scammer and sounds a lot like the first opinion? You’re screwed.

An article at carbuying.jalopnik.com describes five auto repa

Let’s look at the top 10 scams (random order).

Charity

• A fraudster claims to represent a charitable organization.
• Such scams can operate ring-style, such as one out in Colorado some years ago in which women wearing crisp white dresses that resembled the dresses nurses used to wear, and also wearing white caps (like a nurse), solicited motorists for money by walking around at stoplights holding out tin cans that had a label on them like “Help Fight Drugs.” Many people were fooled by the white outfit

CNN recently reported that the data breach of the IRS, which occurred between this past February and May, originated from Russia. The crooks were able to steal tax returns from over 100,000 people. The thieves filed a total of $50 million in tax refunds, having obtained personal data to get ahold of the data.

In other words, this crime wasn’t a hacking job. The Russians didn’t hack into the IRS’s network through some “back door” or social engineering scheme. They actually entered through the fron