Over the weekend I have been getting several calls from the same 508 area code with the name Comcast on the caller ID (which I didn’t answer) on my Comcast Digital Voice home phone (which is listed as the primary contact number on my Xfinity account). I don’t answer any calls that claim they are from banks, utilities, ISPs, etc because of caller ID spoofing. Also as a supermarket cashier part of my job is fraud protection so I know better. So instead of answering these calls I called Comcast from their known Customer service number 1-800-Comcast and after getting through their impossible IVR system I actually got a human on the line and they said there was no account notes that would generate an outbound call (billing, equipment, etc). So I guessing these calls I’m receiving are likely scam calls. Has anyone noticed anything similar.

I know better that Comcast does not accept iTunes gift cards for payment of past due bills

Whether you’re a recent college graduate looking for a new job or you’re just a person who’s been online for too long, there’s a strong case to be made to delete your tweets. Not just the bad, dumb, or ignorant ones. All the tweets. If Twitter is supposed to be a town square as some would argue, then a permanent record of everything most people say or do isn’t needed, just as a permanent record of the conversations people have in coffee shops or at bars isn’t needed. Privacy tools can make it easier to treat Twitter more like Snapchat: a dumping ground for fleeting thoughts that don’t need to be codified into the public record.

Deleting old tweets makes sense for practical reasons, too. For one, it’s easy for other people to pull an old and poorly aged tweet out of context (which everyone has seen happen plenty of times).

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Twitter doesn’t have any sort of tool to bulk-delete tweets, but plenty of third-party services do. After using a few, I’ve found that Semiphemeral is the best option. The process is pretty straightforward:

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One privacy tip: Use LinkedIn as privately as possible. I’ve tended not to think of LinkedIn as having the same level of surveillance as social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook—but boy, was I wrong. It turns out the Microsoft-owned employment-networking site loves sharing all sorts of data. Here are a few settings to tweak right away:

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Filed: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/

Big tech companies are getting a kick in the keister to start sorting out the mess of disinformation on their online platforms or else face a financial spanking with a pretty massive paddle. Reuters reported that the European Commission plans to release new rules on Thursday that will require big tech companies to deal with both deepfakes and fake information on their platforms. The new rules will require companies to hand over information that could help combat falsities online. Fines could be as big as 6% of their global turnover, according to a leaked document from the European Union seen by Reuters reporters. That could mean a hefty financial hit for those who don’t play ball.

It’s all part of the EU’s efforts to constrain tech giants like Meta, Microsoft, and Twitter through the Digital Services Act, which is already in the process of becoming law. In a piece of the document provided by reporters, signatories will need to implement “clear policies regarding impermissible manipulative behaviours [sic] and practices on their services.” The new rules are co-regulatory, meaning responsibility is shared between the regulators (AKA individual EU countries) and the companies themselves.

Commission VP Věra Jourová told reporters the new regulations will also help countries be better prepared to counter disinfo coming from Russia.

The department is looking for cybersecurity services to help it protect its employees from having personally identifiable information exposed.The New York City Fire Department is looking for consultants to help it prevent doxing of its 16,000 firefighters, emergency medical technicians and administrative support personnel across the five boroughs.

Doxing—or the weaponizing of an individual’s personal information to punish, harass or encourage threats—is a growing problem, potentially affecting anyone on the wrong end of a grudge, including police, poll workers and school officials.

FDNY spokesman Frank Dwyer told the Post the RFI was not triggered by a doxing incident, but rather “part of the FDNY’s ongoing cybersecurity preparedness measures to protect the department’s data.”

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Filed:

• Cybersecurity
• New York City
• Public Safety

Every so often stories of genetic theft, or extreme precautions taken to avoid it, make headline news. So it was with a picture of French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin sitting at opposite ends of a very long table after Macron declined to take a Russian PCR COVID-19 test. Many speculated that Macron refused due to security concerns that the Russians would take and use his DNA for nefarious purposes. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz similarly refused to take a Russian PCR COVID-19 test. While these concerns may seem relatively new, pop star celebrity Madonna has been raising alarm bells about the potential for nonconsensual, surreptitious collection and testing of DNA for over a decade. She has hired cleaning crews to sterilize her dressing rooms after concerts and requires her own new toilet seats at each stop of her tours.

At first, Madonna was ridiculed for having DNA paranoia. But as more advanced, faster and cheaper genetic technologies have reached the consumer realm, these concerns seem not only reasonable, but justified.

We are law professors who study how emerging technologies like genetic sequencing are regulated. We believe that growing public interest in genetics has increased the likelihood that genetic paparazzi with DNA collection kits may soon become as ubiquitous as ones with cameras.

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Posted in: Courts & Technology, Criminal Law, Discovery, Ethics, Legal Research, Privacy

Topics:

• Privacy
• DNA
• Bioethics
• Genetic testing
• Privacy law
• Property law
• Property rights
• Privacy rights
• DNA testing
• Madonna
• Emmanuel Macron
• Direct-to-consumer DNA testing
• Genetic privacy

Sample RSS feed: https://theconversation.com/us/topics/genetic-privacy-63852/articles.atom

Alleged scammers from all over the world were caught up in Interpol’s anti-fraud dragnet this week.A sweeping Interpol operation led to the seizure of $50 million in illicit funds and the arrests of 2,000 alleged scammers from a number of different countries earlier this week.

Interpol, or the International Criminal Police Organization, carried out a large-scale investigation into “social engineering” scams—the ubiquitous online schemes wherein cybercriminals trick web users into divulging confidential information and then defraud them.

The two-month operation, codenamed “First Light 2022,” was coordinated between Interpol and local police agencies in countries all around the world, according to a press release distributed Wednesday…

Filed: TechPrivacy and Security

The FBI said it used cell-tower data earlier this year to link seven bank robberies in five states to a phone number used by a suspect named Fernando Enriquez and possible associates. According to a search warrant discovered by Forbes, by crosschecking the phone number and the name with other police databases, the agency used that information to retrieve email addresses and Google, Instagram and TikTok accounts belonging to Enriquez. That unearthed a photo on TikTok of Enriquez standing in front of a Chevrolet SUV that resembled the getaway vehicle, the FBI said. Photographs also showed tattoos that appeared to match those from bank surveillance footage, according to investigators. Later, the FBI sought to get more information direct from TikTok, including any deleted information on his account.While the warrant shows just how surveillance beginning with a so-called “cell tower dump” can lead cops to targeting all manner of other social media accounts, the FBI’s search warrant also showed confusion over how long TikTok retains information and what can be accessed by police once a user has chosen to delete it.

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Filed: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/ ; https://www.forbes.com/cybersecurity/