Hot, sexy bot sweet-talks personal data out of chatters

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Security software company PC Tools warns that the bot can easily be used for malicious purposes. The company said that the program’s ability to mimic human behavior to dupe chatters is worrisome, and could readily be used to collect all manner of information. “As a tool that can be used by hackers to conduct identity fraud, CyberLover demonstrates an unprecedented level of social engineering,” said PC Tools senior malware analyst Sergei Shevchenko in a statement. “CyberLover has been designed as a bot [robot] that lures victims automatically, without human intervention. If it’s spawned in multiple instances on multiple servers, the number of potential victims could be very substantial.”
[Via Arstechnica]

This is really a security issue here. Never give out your personal information online. I just want to post this to remind people not everything online is safe.

Verizon Shares Your Call Data Unless You Opt-Out (Update!)

The folks from Skydeck just received a written notice from Verizon Wireless for an opt-out system for sharing your call records to third-party advertisers. Unless you call them and opt-out, Verizon will sell what numbers you called, how often you called, and your call length with “authorized companies,” which includes their “affiliates, agents, and parent companies.” Although it doesn’t include your own name, number or address, something like this should be opt-in, not opt-out. If you’re a Verizon customer, call 1-800-333-9956 and tell them you want to opt-out. Why should you let Verizon get even richer off your data for nothing in return? [Skydeck via Crunchgear]

I hope people realize just how bad this is for you!! Would you like them to know who you called? What if your number is Private, It isn’t no longer!!

Fifteen Back up programs to save your data!

There’s no way around it: Malware happens, drive failure happens, natural disaster happens. If your data isn’t backed up, it’s gone–or it will require an extremely expensive, not-certain-to-succeed recovery operation.

If all you have on your system are scribblings and unimportant downloads, you might not care. But you probably have something of value: scanned pictures of ancestors, wedding videos, a presentation you worked all week on, the song that’s going to make you famous.

It pays to back up, and it has never been easier to do so. No matter what method you’re most comfortable with, be it traditional file-based backup, image backup, or continuous data protection, one of the following fifteen tools will do the trick.


http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137434/article.html

Even though they aren’t free I’ll still take a look at them to see if I can afford one or two of them.