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Study Reveals (Sad) Psychology of Facebook Scam Victims

Bad is good enough, according to a study of over 850,000 Facebook scams by the antivirus software provider Bitdefender. (PDF version of the report is here.) The two-year study of Facebook scams in the UK, the US and Europe found that a short list of lame, repackaged tricks are a well that never runs dry: fooling Facebook users by playing on their curiosity, vanity or naiveté.   Almost half of social media e-threats prey on users’ curiosity. Far and away the top category of scam on Facebook  are ‘profile view’ scams that offer Facebook users the ability to see who has viewed their profile. That ruse accounted for 45% of all scams on the 1 billion strong social network. The scam has been linked to malicious software downloads – often in the form of browser ‘plug-ins’ that promise to reveal Facebook profile views. It works well because it plays on Facebook users curiosity […]

Confidential Files

Bad News About File Sharing Apps

Sensitive enterprise data may be leaving the safety of our corporate networks at a much faster clip than we believed – with web based file sharing services a major contributor to data flight. That’s the conclusion of a survey by the firm Elastica, which analyzed 100 million files shared on leading public cloud applications. According to the research, employees each stored an average of 2,037 files in the cloud. More concerning: fully 20 percent of the files that were “broadly shared” via file sharing services contained regulated data of one sort or another. The company put together a nice little infographic that highlights some of the larger findings. You can view it here. Read more via The Bad News About File Sharing Apps | Digital Guardian.

Tesla_Infographic

McKinsey: Consumers Want Connected Cars – And Fear Them, Too

The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. has released an interesting report on the future of connected vehicles. But it has some sobering data for car makers: concerns about privacy and the possibility that connected cars could be hacked are major concerns for consumers that could dampen enthusiasm for smart vehicles. The report, “What’s Driving the Connected Car?” finds that connectivity features will be a major driver of car sales in the coming years, with car buyers increasingly accustomed to vehicles that sport sophisticated interactive and networking features. That said: security concerns may hamper the “rapid and broad adoption” of connected vehicle technology. For its report, McKinsey interviewed 2,000 new car buyers in four countries: Brazil, China, Germany and the U.S. The survey found that a quarter of respondents considered connectivity a more important feature than engine power or even fuel efficiency. The firm estimates that connectivity features will become increasingly important selling features […]

Senate Report Warns of Attacks on Military Transport Contractors

A Senate Armed Services Committee investigation has found evidence that hackers associated with the Chinese government compromised the computer systems of U.S. Transportation Command contractors at least 20 times in a single year. The attacks pose a serious risk to the system that moves military troops and equipment. The Committee released the report on Wednesday. (PDF copy here.) It presented the results of a year-long investigation of U.S. Transportation Command, or “TRANSCOM,” found a serious gap in awareness and reporting requirements. TRANSCOM was only aware of two of the 20 intrusions, while U.S. Transportation Command remained mostly unaware of the computer compromises of contractors during and after the attacks. “These peacetime intrusions into the networks of key defense contractors are more evidence of China’s aggressive actions in cyberspace,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee’s chairman in a published statement. “Our findings are a warning that we must do much more to protect strategically significant […]