Fraud ring uses stolen data to scam unemployment insurance programs

Fraudsters are taking advantage of both data breaches and weaknesses in government online systems to commit scams on a large scale. KrebsOnSecurity has obtained a Secret Service memo revealing that a sophisticated Nigerian crime ring has been using a...

Facebook sues cloaking software maker for deceptive COVID-19 ads

Facebook is suing Basant Gajjar (aka LeadCloak) for allegedly selling software that helped bad actors circumvent Facebook’s automated ad review systems and push deceptive ads around COVID-19 and other scams. As the name suggests, LeadCloak’s software...

FCC, FTC give providers 48 hours to block COVID-19 scam robocalls

The US government's quest to fight robocalls is taking on added urgency in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The FCC and FTC have demanded that gateway providers cut off COVID-19-related scam robocalls of overseas origin within 48 hours or else fa...

New York orders Craigslist to remove ads for fake COVID-19 treatments

It's no secret that coronavirus-related scams are flourishing (the FCC put out a guide to avoiding them), and New York is now applying legal pressure to stop them. State Attorney General Letitia James has ordered Craigslist to "immediately remove" a...

Facebook reveals the AI tool it used to ban 6.6 billion fake accounts

Today, Facebook unveiled a machine learning tool that, in the last year, has removed more than six billion fake accounts. That's in addition to the millions of new fake accounts that Facebook blocks from being created daily. According to Facebook, th...

Apple engineers propose a way to make using two-factor texts easier

If you've ever used online banking or any other highly-secure website, chances are you've encountered a one-time passcode (OTP) before. These are SMS messages sent to your phone with a unique code that verifies your identity with the website you're o...

Twitter will let you report posts aimed at suppressing voters

Twitter is rolling out another tool meant to protect the 2020 US election. Today, it announced that during "key moments" of the election users will be able to report misleading information about how to participate in an election or other civic event....

Google adds spam detection and verified business SMS to Messages

Businesses often send one-time passwords, account alerts and appointment confirmations via text. But if you've ever received one of those, you know they tend to come from a random number, and bad actors can take advantage of that by disguising phishi...