(3 votes, average: 7 out of 10)
Loading ...Payment card security standards are a joke
The user experience doesn’t get much better than credit or debit cards. You hand over the card, you swipe, you sign or punch in a PIN, and you go. Compared to a lot of other transactions we make through technology, that’s pretty fast. Most people outside the industry probably have no idea the snail’s crawl at which the industry behind those cards is moving to protect them.
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(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...The Storm that never ends
We like to imagine that hackers are smart, but it is their collective incompetence that has allowed the IT industry to survive their attacks as long as they have.
Viruses may be unleashed, worms may spread, but usually the McAfees and Symantecs of the world are quick enough to help isolate and deal with such malware in a manner of weeks, if not days. This was the case with Sasser, Nimda, and even Code Red. Rare is the malware that acts with the consistent, determined approach of a stealth marketing campaign. This, however, has been the hallmark of Storm, a quietly professional example of online organized crime at its best. And scariest.
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(2 votes, average: 9.5 out of 10) Loading ...The spammer who would buy your house
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
While most of us have been reading about the slowdown in the U.S. housing market with a certain detached interest, one group of people have been very carefully studying the situation, and devising products to capitalize on it.
No, they aren’t real estate brokers, they’re spammers (though, there may some overlap there, going by all the assorted marketing crap - flyers, cards, brochures etc. - I find outside my door or stuffed into my mail box – and cold calls from agents who can’t pronounce my name, but give me the usual line: “I’ve heard you may be interested in selling your house.”)
Anyway, according to Symantec’s latest ‘State of the Spam Report’ (for October 2007), cyber crooks are doing their darndest to capitalize on the uncertainty in the U.S. housing market.
