Crooks

Have you ever had your debit card or credit card information stolen from an ATM? If you have, you may have fallen victim to a skimmer. Tiny devices used by fraudsters called "skimmers" can be attached to ATMs and used to steal data off of your debit or credit card magnetic strip.There's also an even smaller device called a "shimmer" that can be installed by fraudsters into an ATM that steals data from your credit or debit card chip if you have a newer chip-based card. If you're worried about falling victim to skimmers…

Two Maryland residents who submitted over 5,000 fake iPhones to the Apple Genius Bar for repair have been sentenced to up to 20 years imprisonment. The duo is said to have intended to cause a loss of more than $3 million dollars to Apple by fraudulently replacing inauthentic iPhones.According to evidence, Haotian Sun and Pengfei Xue defrauded Apple for over two years between May 2017 and September 2019 by submitting “counterfeit iPhones to Apple for repair to get Apple to exchange them with genuine replacement…

It is the crummiest feeling of getting fooled and ripped off by online swindlers.  A former New York Times writer courageously shares a day from hell when an orchestrated attack starting with a phone call ended with her handing crooks $50,000 in cash. Before you rush to conclusions and think, "That could never happen to me," think again.CLICK TO GET KURT’S FREE CYBERGUY NEWSLETTER WITH SECURITY ALERTS, QUICK VIDEO TIPS, TECH REVIEWS, AND EASY HOW-TO’S TO MAKE YOU SMARTER  Woman talking on her cell phone  (Kurt…

What would happen if your iPhone fell into the wrong hands? Have you ever worried about that? Well, worry no more, because Apple just rolled out a new software update that makes your phone more secure than ever.The now available iOS 17.3 update comes with a feature called Stolen Device Protection, which locks down your phone with your biometric verification. This means that it prevents a crook from accessing or changing certain settings on your phone without your Face ID or Touch ID. Stolen Device Protection can be a…

Fire Rush springs from the well of the personal. Please talk about its genesis and how it has travelled with you for nearly a decade. Author Jacqueline Crooks (Courtesy the subject) I was living in a remote mountain village when I started to think about the dub-reggae music that I had danced to 30 years ago, part of the Black sound revolution. The silence of that village created space for memories of that supra-watt loud subterranean world of dub-reggae dancehalls. People, riots, racist murders, Thatcherism. I…

In this startling debut novel, longlisted for the Women’s prize, a young woman is lured into an underworld of violent gangsters, and communes with her Jamaican ancestors through DJ toasting over dub music. Jacqueline Crooks has crafted a richly textured world, artfully drawing on her youthful experience of raves and gangs in 1970s west London, as well as supernatural beliefs in Obeah (an African diasporic tradition of healing and spell-casting).The second-generation Caribbean migrants in Fire Rush are habituated to life…

In a shocking OTP bypass scam, multiple incidents have surfaced where hackers have stolen money from victims through net banking without them ever finding out about it. Know about this scary online bank scam. Cybercriminals are getting smarter by the minute and are coming up with scary tactics to steal money from innocent people. They are even able to use technology that allows OTP bypass online scams to happen. Just a couple of months ago, a businessman lost almost Rs. 1 Crore after his smartphone got hacked without…

image sourceCan we tell whether kids are in school just from the viewing of certain TV shows on BBC iPlayer? Spoiler— yes! We can also identify when schools are closed due to snow!This was the first project I worked on at the BBC, and remains one of the most fun to have delivered!While the information on school holidays is available on the internet, it’s presented on local government websites which vary in format from council to council making web scraping impractical.The BBC produces a lot of content for children and…

Getty Images/iStockphotoA cyber extortion gang is using phishing emails, social engineering and network of phony call centers to scam victims out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by tricking them into allowing remote access to their PC, then stealing data threatening to leak it if a ransom isn't paid. According to analysis of the 'callback phishing' attacks by cybersecurity researchers at Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, the social engineering campaign is worryingly successful – which is leading to a growth in the…

Image: Getty / 10'000 HoursAn Android banking malware attack is tricking people into entering their phone number and other sensitive information into phishing websites – which cyber criminals then use to call victims and dupe them into installing malware on their smartphones. The telephone-oriented attack delivery (TOAD) technique is designed to infect Android users with Copybara Android banking malware, which steals usernames and passwords for online-banking accounts – as well as information that allows attackers to…