Facebook Improves Privacy

 

 

Facebook has woken up to the fact that people will no longer put up with Facebook’s disregard for people’s privacy and they are starting to make changes designed to help Facebook users rather than just Facebook’s bank account.

Privacy Alerts

You may have seen an alert, upon visiting your News Feed, asking you to review your privacy settings. Facebook will show you a series of these which cover various topics:

– How Facebook use data from partners to show more relevant advertising

– Political, religious and relationship information you’ve chosen to include in your profile

– How Facebook use facial recognition

– Updates to the terms of service and data policy

You’ll see a summary of the choices you’ve already made and be given the chance to make changes.

Privacy Controls

They’ve redesigned the settings menu on mobile devices to make privacy controls easier to find and use and it’s all accessible from one screen. They’ve also made it clearer to see what information can and can’t be shared with apps.

In addition, there’s a new Privacy Shortcuts feature. From here you can have quick access to the most widely used privacy settings and tools.

Access Your Information

They’ve created a tool called ‘Access Your Information’ – a secure way to access and manage your information, such as posts, reactions, comments, and things you’ve searched for. You can find, download and delete any or all of your Facebook data.

Reward for reporting data misuse

A Data Abuse Bounty was launched recently to reward people who report any misuse of data by app developers.

It’s part of the efforts to more quickly uncover potential abuse of people’s information.

Facebook say they quickly review and respond to reports that identify a credible threat to people’s information, be it a case where a Facebook platform app is trying to collect people’s data to sell it, or pass it onto another party to be sold, or used for scams or political influence. If confirmed data abuse, they’ll shut down the offending app and take legal action against the company selling or buying the data if necessary. Facebook will reward the person who reported the issue and also alert those believed to be affected.

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Surrey Police Stop Phone Scammer

Brandon Hurst of Hounslow, posed as a bank fraud investigator and scammed two ladies 88 and 70, out of just under £6,000.

He was caught and has been sentenced to 6 months imprisonment, suspended for two years and has to do community service and pay back nearly £6,000.

He phoned his victims and claimed to be calling from bank fraud investigation departments of Barclays or Santander.

He told them there had been fraudulent activity on their accounts and convinced them to return their bank cards to the bank. He got them to provide their PIN number as well.

To convince them he was calling from the bank he used the stay on the line trick. He told them to check the bank’s fraud number and call it but he stayed on the line and the victims were just talking to him again.

He arranged for a courier to collect the cards and the victims believed the cards would be taken back to the bank but they went to Hurst instead where he could then spend on the cards.

If you get any suspicious callers claiming to be from your bank then use a separate phone to call the bank to check and do not do as requested unless you are totally sure the caller is from your bank. Some scammers may already have some of your information such as the account number so do not be fooled by this.

Let’s hope the prison sentence can teach this man to pursue a life that doesn’t prey on vulnerable people.

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Twitter Shock Messages

A recent scam uses the fear of public humiliation, to make people click without thinking.

This scam involves receiving a private message to your Twitter account.

The message often has the following sorts of wording, designed to cause shock:-

  • You have been filmed in suspicious activity
  • Is that really you in the picture?
  • What are you doing with her?
  • Isn’t she a bit young for you?
  • You were recorded
  • Why are you in this video clip?
  • How are you going to hide this video?

There is a link to click to see the supposed video.  If clicked, the victim sees a page with a video player and a message indicating an update to YouTube is needed before the video can be viewed.

But the supposed update is actually a virus instead, which will infect your device.

If you receive such a message, then you may want to carry out the following steps:-

  1. Block the sender from your Twitter account
  2. Send Twitter a report about the malware and /or threatening message.
  3. Delete the message

Sometimes, the scammers use an innocent persons Twitter account to send out the messages. If you find your account is being used for this purpose then you need to take immediate measures to reset your password and revoke connections to third-party applications. Also report the problem to Twitter so they don’t label you as a spammer.

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Ticketmaster Data Breach Failings

Ticketmaster is a well-known global ticket selling business and they suffered a data breach starting in February 2018 and continuing through to late June.

A piece of malware on a customer service system operated by a third party had been exporting customer data to a scammer and Ticketmaster claim to have known nothing about this until June 23rd.

However, Digital bank Monzo did spot in April that customers’ cards were being compromised and warned Ticketmaster but “couldn’t get any traction” out of the company.

Monzo contacted all of its customers who had ever dealt with Ticketmaster – about 5,000 – and replaced their cards.

It also told banks that are part of the UK Finance group in April that it was aware of what appeared to be a significant data breach at Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster say they investigated at the time but found no problem. The fault was in third party software not Ticketmaster’s own software, but that doesn’t excuse their apparent lack of responsibility for their customers who were being compromised.

Ticketmaster eventually realised there was a serious problem and said customers who bought concert, theatre and sporting event tickets between February and 23 June 2018 may have been affected by the incident, which involved malicious software being used to steal people’s names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, payment details and Ticketmaster login details.

The breach also affects customers of two other UK websites owned by Ticketmaster: TicketWeb and the resale website Get Me In!

Ticketmaster claims that the data for less than 40,000 people was affected.

Ticketmaster could face questions over whether there was a delay in disclosing the breach after it emerged that some UK banks had known about the incident since early April.

Ticketmaster has subsequently warned customers: “We recommend that you monitor your account statements for evidence of fraud or identity theft.

Ticketmaster said it was offering affected customers a free 12-month identity monitoring service. There is a dedicated website at security.ticketmaster.co.uk, and customers can also email fan.help@ticketmaster.co.uk for further information or to register their concern.

Companies need to protect their customer’s data, but also how they deal with such problems when they occur,  can affect the outcome as much as the details of the actual problem. Ticketmaster have not come out of this very well.

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Fake LinkedIn Messages

Many scammers have woken up to the fact that a lot of users of LinkedIn trust it more than do Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.  After all, it’s for business people only? – right?

This scammer is using the name Jane Davies (although the email says it’s from Edgar Williams) and the title is “You have private message from Jane Davies”

The layout of the message and the text is copied directly from a LinkedIn message so it does look realistic and what could be the harm in reading a LinkedIn message?

But the message is actually from ae.ge.com and is not from LinkedIn so clicking on it could lead to a fake website, or fake page simulating LinkedIn.

Dangerous.

Another give-a-way is that further in the email are links to view/reply to the message and one to adjust your message settings.

Both of these links are actually identical to the first one to read the message – the scammer cannot be bothered creating three separate links so just duplicates the first ones and makes them look different.

Do not click on LinkedIn messages unless you are convinced they are genuine.

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