Just Two Words Can Put You In The Middle Of A Smishing Scam

Phishing by text or “smishing” has long been a thorn in the side of smartphone users. With cybercriminals always looking for new ways to lure victims, this latest smishing attack is doing the trick. And now, a Chinese smishing network using just two words in a text are tricking victims into handing over sensitive information. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that last year, scam texts alone cost consumers a reported $470 million and growing. READ FULL STORY

Gmail Tech Support Exposes New Threats From AI

A significant cybersecurity breach involving Gmail raised alarms across the tech community late in 2024. Hackers leveraged advanced AI techniques to create a sophisticated scheme involving account recovery phishing emails that were nearly indistinguishable from legitimate communications. And, to make it even more believable, they were followed up with a phone call from a “Gmail tech support person,” throwing everyone a phishing curveball. READ FULL STORY

Text Scams Impersonating Financial Institutions

Jim Stickley gives a quick warning about malicious text messages that appear to come from your financial institution. READ FULL STORY

Before You Unsubscribe, Know This First

Bad actors are everywhere these days, and now they’re behind the latest “unsubscribe” email phishing scam. We all know how invasive spam emails are, and keeping them from flooding your inbox is but a dream. And now, clicking the unsubscribe button is a devious way to infect your device with malware.  Hackers are now setting up bogus “Unsubscribe” buttons that can really frustrate you. Fortunately, there is some help. Here’s what you need to know. READ FULL STORY

The Most Hacked Apps To Get To Your Details

We share a lot these days. Some might even say we spout personal details like a water from a fire hydrant, especially when it comes to social media. For hackers, that means they have us all right where they want us. Researchers at TechShielder put in some work and found that there are a number of apps available to us that actually have been repeatedly compromised and share our personal information with plenty of others that we may not want to have our information. READ FULL STORY

Online Banking Smishing Scam

Text message scams are on the rise and in this Today Show segment, Jim Stickley demonstrates how easy it is from criminals to perform these attacks. Most people receive legitimate text alerts from their financial institution so a malicious text can be very believable. DON'T CLICK EVER. Simply open your mobile app or open a browser and sign into your account. If there is a real fraud alert, you will be notified once you are logged in. READ FULL STORY

Calling Your FI? You Could Be Calling a Hacker Instead

When did calling your financial institution (FI) turn into calling a hacker instead? Well, there’s now an improved Android banking trojan named FakeCall that’s intercepting calls to FIs. FakeCall reportedly has 13 new variations, with all making detection more difficult. It sounds hard to believe, but victims of FakeCall malware along with their financial accounts tell the story—and there’s more to know. One of them is that all versions have one thing in common. READ FULL STORY

Keeping Your Information More Private and Out of the Hands of Attackers

It’s no secret, especially after the recent revelation of the NPD breach, that our information is everywhere online. This is true whether we intentionally allowed it or not. There are numerous websites that collect information about us and post it online. Many are “people search” sites. If you’ve ever looked up an unfamiliar phone number, some of these likely showed up. Well-known lookup sites have all kinds of information on all of us. The challenge is to keep this information from making you a victim of a phishing attack or identity theft. READ FULL STORY

Are Your Old Accounts Leaving the Door Open for Hackers?

We all have them, those online accounts you signed up for once and never thought about again. Maybe it was a recipe site you tried years ago, a store where you bought a gift and never revisited, or a social media profile you forgot you even made. What most people don’t realize is that these abandoned or unused accounts are like a treasure chest for cybercriminals, just waiting to be looted. Once bad actors get into one of these old accounts, they can use the information they find there. READ FULL STORY

Click the Box to Prove You're Human to Hackers

We've all done it countless times. It's so routine that we don't think about it much. Click the "I'm not a robot" box, solve a simple puzzle, and move on. But cybercriminals are now taking advantage of that routine by creating fake CAPTCHA pages that trick users into infecting their own computers. Instead of proving you're human, victims unknowingly install malware capable of stealing passwords, banking information, cryptocurrency wallets, and other sensitive data. The scam is spreading quickly because it looks so familiar. Knowing what to watch for could be the difference between safely browsing the web and handing criminals the keys to your digital life. READ FULL STORY

Benefits Company Breach Provides Unwelcome Benefits

Millions of Americans are facing a quiet but dangerous fallout after a major breach at Navia Benefit Solutions exposed highly sensitive personal data, including Social Security numbers. The twist? Many victims may not even recognize the company’s name. As a behind-the-scenes benefits administrator, Navia’s reach stretches across thousands of employers, making this incident a stark reminder that your data can be compromised by companies you’ve never directly interacted with. READ FULL STORY

Walmart Impersonation Robocall Scams On The Rise

Scammers posing as Walmart employees are behind a frightening new robocall campaign that has duped thousands across the country. According to investigators at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and sanctioned Industry Traceback Group, the campaign — traced to just one network provider over a few-month span — delivered nearly eight million illegal robocalls between January 21 and April 11, 2025. And it's likely you received a few of those calls. READ FULL STORY