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Thursday, October 24, 2024

Welcome to Online: risks, harms, and duty of care in the virtual high crime neighborhood we all inhabit

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Welcome to Online (see Alt text for credit) Is the constant news of fresh cybercrimes getting you down?  Has your personal information been ...
Saturday, July 20, 2024

Global IT Outages and Monoculture: The “potato famine theory” of information system insecurity

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Painting: An Irish Peasant Family Discovering the Blight of their Store, by Daniel MacDonald The following article explains the problem of ...
Monday, April 01, 2024

Internet crime keeps on growing, as do efforts to understand the harm it causes

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Internet crime losses 2014-2023, as reported to IC3/FBI,  and compiled by S. Cobb Losses from Internet crimes reported to the FBI's Inte...
Wednesday, November 29, 2023

QR code abuse 2012-2023

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QR code abuse is in the news again—see the list of headlines below—whch reminds me that I first wrote about this in 2012 ( eleven years ago ...
Saturday, November 04, 2023

Artificial Intelligence is really just another vulnerable, hackable, information system

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Recent hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the amazingly good and bad things that it can and may do has prompted me to remind the w...
Wednesday, April 12, 2023

What is ChatGPT and how can AI get things wrong: an annotated example using jackware

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You can't trust what ChatGPT says ChatGPT is, as you probably know, a computer system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to answer q...
Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Internet crime surged in 2022: possibly causing as much as $160 billion in non-financial losses

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Financial losses reported to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center in 2022 rose almost 50% over the prior year, reaching $10.3 billi...
Saturday, December 17, 2022

Digital Baitballs and Shrinkage: a cybersecurity lesson from 2022

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A school of baitfish forming a ball to reduce predation (Shutterstock)  If 2022 has taught us anything about cybersecurity, it is this: our ...
Friday, July 22, 2022

Cobb's Guide to PC and LAN Security: the 30th anniversary of the first version

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The Stephen Cobb Complete Book of PC and LAN Security first appeared in print in 1992, an amazing 30 years ago. In celebration of this anni...
Monday, March 28, 2022

Big jump in losses due to Internet crimes in 2021, up 64% according to latest IC3/FBI report

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IC3/FBI internet crime data graphed by S. Cobb In 2021, the world came to rely on digital technologies even more than it had in 2020. Sadly,...
Thursday, April 29, 2021

From cyber-crime metrics to cyber-harm stories: shifting cybersecurity perspectives and cybercrime strategies

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Is measuring the amount of cybercrime important? I have argued that it is, and for several different reasons which I have presented in many ...
Thursday, March 18, 2021

As predicted, Internet crime surged in 2020, losses up 20% based on FBI and IC3 reports: analysis and opinion

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Losses to individual and business victims of internet crime in 2020 exceeded $4 billion according to the recently published 2020 Internet Cr...
Friday, March 05, 2021

Secu-ring video doorbells and other 'smart' security cameras: some helpful links

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Are you thinking of installing a video doorbell or smart security camera? Are you concerned about the security of the one you have already i...
Thursday, January 28, 2021

Data Privacy Day 2021: Selected data privacy reading and viewing, past and present

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For this Day Privacy Day—January 28, 2021—I have put together an assortment of items, suggested resources and observations that might prove ...