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So, when you think about summer travel safety, what comes to mind? Which beach you’ll be lounging on? Sunburns? Shark attacks? While sunburns and vacation plans are rational concerns most have when traveling during the summer, shark attacks are a new one.

With all of the news of recent shark attacks, people are now anxious about wading into the waters, despite the fact that the chances of getting mauled by a shark are a whopping one in 3.7 million. No guarantees, of course, but your odds are look

Remember the good ‘ol days when you thought of a finger pushing a button that launched a Russian missile that then sped at seven miles per second towards the U.S. to blow it up?

Little did we know back then what would one day be a way for the Superpowers to war on each other: cyber technology!

A new book is out called Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, written by Peter W. Singer and August Cole. WWIII certainly won’t be wrought with speeding missiles and hand-to-hand combat in the trenche

Did you know that sometimes, the apps you use for your smartphone have access to your personal information and are capable of sharing it? Are you aware that your privacy can be invaded across the network board? That includes Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and more.

And how can you tell which applications can do this? MyPermissions can tell you. Once you load this and do some setting up, you’ll see which apps on your device has access to your information.

For instance, it’s not jus

Let’s cut to the chase (never mind how you misplaced your phone): There are several ways to sign out of your Google accounts remotely. It takes three steps, and you’ll need the desktop version of Google.

• On a mobile use a browser opposed to the Gmail/Google app and sign in at gmail.com.
• Seek out “Desktop version” at the bottom of the window/browser. Click it. You may need to login again.
• At the very bottom you will see “Recent Activity” in the right corner. Look below that to see “Details.” Click t

Think about your keychain. It probably holds the necessities: car keys, home keys, work keys, miscellaneous keychains you bought on your previous vacations. Now, imagine you have a keychain full of these keys that all look the same, but each only opens a specific door.

Sounds kind of like your list of passwords, right? But what happens when you have all of these keys, and you need to get into your house? In either situation it can be easy to forget which key, or password, goes to what door or web

You’ve been “Googled.” No matter how small a speck you think you are in this universe, you have without a doubt created an online footprint that is attached to your name. Chances are high that someone out there has followed this footprint of yours via a Google search.

Whether by a business colleague, family member or even a significant other, it’s reasonable to assume that your name will be “searched” online for personal information about you. But, what are the results of these searches? Are you

There is good news for the tech-unsavvy out there: Google has made their privacy settings easier to work with. This day has not come a moment too soon. “My Account” is Google’s new dashboard.

When you use any Google account, the giant company collects information on you. The new dashboard will reveal what information this is. My Account also has other privacy related features; check it out first chance that you get. It has the following three sections.

Security

• If you get locked out of your Google

The latest report says that Darron Dellon Dennis Wint did not act alone in the arson murder of a Washington, D.C., family and their housekeeper. You might wonder how a $4.5 million mansion—presumably with top-flight smoke alarms—could burn enough to kill the occupants.

A cnn.com report says they were held against their will since the day prior to the May 14 fire. Wint is being held without bond.

It’s too soon, however, to draw conclusions, as other people are being interviewed by police.

Wint was a

Social media is a conduit for thieves to get personal data (they can use it, for instance, to open up a credit line in the victim’s name). Though many people are concerned their personal information will get in the wrong hands, the funny thing is that they continue posting personal information—way too personal.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center says that social media is a fertile area for criminals to scam people.

Phishing

You are lured to a phony website that masquerades as your bank or so

Recently I got a puppy for my child. We decided to name the puppy 4wgu23x5#9. My wife,8yysH3m, thought we should name the dog 0x2%#b5. But I’m sure she’ll get over it. Meanwhile, I’m helping my older child with setting up a few social media accounts, and I suggested the two passwords: Rover and Spot.

Is there something wrong with this picture?

Of course! But this picture replays itself millions of times over all the time, as people name their passwords after their pets, family members or favorite

At least one woman is happy that her driver drove like a drunk. That’s because his erratic driving caught the attention of troopers who pulled him over. They then heard a woman calling for help—from the backseat. She was bound and gagged with a bag over her head.

The 41-year-old man had posted an ad on Craigslist; he wanted a submissive partner. His phony profile attracted the 22-year-old woman (who I must wonder, why would she be interested in a man who wants a submissive partner? Doesn’t this s

When someone online presents as a different person than their true self, this is called catphishing, and it occurs on online dating sites.

• Google the name of the object of your interest. Obviously, “Kelly Smith” and “John Miller” won’t get you far, but “Jaycina McArthur” just might. What comes up?
• See if they have social media accounts, as these suggest they’re a real person. But the absence doesn’t prove they’re a phony, either. Not every legitimate person is into the social media thing.

Here are

According to a recent report from Pew Research, many Americans take privacy seriously—as in the cyber kind, but also offline.

• 9% of survey respondents thought they had strong control over how much of their personal information was collected and shared.
• 38% thought they had moderate control; 37% believed they had little control; 13% said they had zero control.
• 25% used temporary e-mail addresses or usernames for some online activities.
• 24% gave non-truthful information about themselves (e.g., when re

Do you know what ATM stands for? For crooks, it stands for A Thief’s Moneymaker.

A new report from FICO says that “skimming” crimes have made their biggest spike in the past 20 years. This includes ATMs on bank premises, but of course, public ATM kiosks have seen the biggest spike.

The thief tampers with the ATM’s card receiver; the installed gadget collects card data which the thief retrieves later. “Skimming,” as this is called, also refers to capturing the PIN via a hidden camera.

With the stole

Cyber crooks have phony websites that masquerade as the legitimate site you want to log onto. They’ve spun their web and are just waiting for you to fly into it. Google now has Password Alert, which will tell you if you’ve landed into such a non-Google web.

For the Chrome browser, this extension will prompt the user to change their password.

When you change a password (regardless of reason) or sign up for a new account and it’s time to come up with a password…don’t just make up an easy word to rem

Of all the weird things that can happen to your iOS device, the latest is a relatively benign situation in which a string of text is sent to the phone…and it causes the phone to crash.

The phone will reboot if the particular nonsensical text string is received while the phone is locked.

Data won’t be stolen; nobody will gain remote control of your device (yet); but heck, who wouldn’t be very annoyed that their phone crashes? And this is going on all over the world. The text characters can also be

Gone are the days of the fat wallet bursting at the seems, since smartphones can now contain most anything that a wallet does—except the driver‘s license. But don‘t write that possibility off just yet.

Forbes.com reports on a story from the Des Moines Register that the Iowa Department of Motor Vehicles is hot on the trail of getting driver‘s licenses into smartphones: an app that would contain all the applicable data, a scannable bar code and a two-step verification which would include a biometri

If you think there’s like a million apps out there, that’s not exactly an exaggeration. For sure, there are more than you can imagine, which makes it easy to conceive that many certainly come with security problems.

In fact, out of the top 25 most popular apps, 18 of them bombed on a security test from McAfee Labs recently.

Creators of apps put convenience and allure ahead of security. This is why so many apps don’t have secure connections—creating welcome mats for hackers; they get into your smar

The proliferation of mobile devices means that we can work or play online from almost anywhere, so it’s no surprise that public Wi-Fi networks have become more common. From hotels and coffee shops, to universities and city centers, Wi-Fi is widely available, but is connecting to these networks safe?

If you were carrying on a highly sensitive conversation on a park bench with your closest friend, would you want everyone in the immediate area to gather around and eavesdrop?

That’s essentially what h

Ever wonder just what happens to the data in a data breach incident? Does it go into some kind of wormhole in cyberspace, out through the other end? Well, the answer is pretty much so, when you consider that hacked data makes its rounds on a global scale, taking only 14 days to land in 22 countries spanning five continents—according to an experiment by Bitglass.

Bitglass, a cloud access security broker, did some research, generating over 1,500 fake names, credit card numbers, SSNs and other data