Don’t Trust Caller ID — It Can Be Faked

Telephone scams are on the upswing, and they’re often enabled by caller ID spoofing. That name and number that appears when someone calls you can be faked, so you can’t place all your trust in it.

Caller ID is more of a convenience feature. If a friend, family member, or business is calling you, you can easily see who it is before you answer. It’s not a security feature, and scammers can appear as any phone number and name they like.

Yes, It Can Be Faked — And Yes, It’s Often Illegal

This is often illegal, of course. In the USA, FCCrules “prohibit any person or entity from transmitting misleading or inaccurate caller ID information with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value.” But, if someone is already trying to scam you, they won’t necessarily be scared of breaking another law. This is especially true if those calls are coming from outside the US, as those fake Windows and Mac tech support calls often do.Caller ID numbers and names can be faked. The how and why aren’t as important — everyone just needs to know this is possible.

Doesn’t the Phone Company Know Where the Phone Call is Coming From?

You might assume that, because the phone company theoretically knows where the phone call is coming from, they can show you an accurate number. But that’s not how the system works. Instead, an incoming phone call comes with a bit of data attached to it — the number it claims to be from and, sometimes, a name. In other cases, your phone company may look up the number in a phone directory and automatically attach the name.

Phone calls are more like letters and emails. When you mail a letter, you can write anything in the “Return address” area — it’s not checked. When you send an email, you can modify the “From” field and claim it’s from anyone — that’s usually not checked, either.

That’s the main thing to bear in mind. Caller ID doesn’t show you where the phone company thinks the phone call is coming from. It shows where the caller claims the phone call is coming from.

But Why Is This Even Possible?

This feature isn’t always used for bad purposes. For example, a business owner might want to use caller ID spoofing on their cell phone. The cell phone could report its caller ID number as the business’s landline phone number. People would know the call is from that business and returned calls would go to the business itself rather than the cell phone.

That sort of use wouldn’t be illegal in the US, as it wouldn’t be performed with the intent to defraud.

It’s Not Even Hard

VoIP equipment generally allows you to set a caller ID phone number to anything you want, and many VoIP providers may just offer this feature.

It doesn’t matter, though — anyone can do it with a quick web search. Plug “caller ID spoofing” or “fake caller ID” into your favorite web search engine. You’ll find websites where you can plug in a phone number and easily call someone with a fake caller ID.

There are also other services that work like calling cards, allowing you to call a phone number, enter a fake caller ID number, enter the number you want to call, and connect you.

How Can You Protect Yourself?

So, how do you protect yourself? Easy: Don’t trust what caller ID says.

If you see a number like the local police department, a bank, a legitimate business, or a government agency, remember that number could be fake. Don’t trust the caller just because of the number that appears on their caller ID. If you’re ever in doubt, just assume you’re being scammed, pranked, or otherwise tricked.

If you think it might be a legitimate call, you should try calling them back. For example, let’s say your bank calls you about a problem with your bank account and wants personal information. Rather than giving it to them, hang up and find the bank’s official phone number — on their official website, for example. Call that phone number back so you’re sure you’re actually talking to your bank.

---

Don’t be fooled into trusting a scammer just because a legitimate number appears when they call you. Always remember that number can be faked.

Read More

How to Run Malwarebytes Alongside Another Antivirus

How to Run Malwarebytes Alongside Another Antivirus

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is a great security tool that’s particularly effective against “potentially unwanted programs (PUPs)” and other nasty software traditional antivirus programs don’t deal with. But it’s intended to be used alongside an antivirus and doesn’t replace one entirely.

If you’re using Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, you should be running it alongside a primary antivirus program to keep your computer in tip-top security shape. But traditional advice is not to run two anti-malware programs at once. Here’s how to thread that needle.

On-Demand Scans

The standard, free version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware just functions as an on-demand scanner. In other words, it doesn’t run automatically in the background. Instead, it only does something when you launch it and click the Scan button.

This version of Malwarebytes shouldn’t interfere with your antivirus program at all. Just install it and occasionally launch it to perform a scan and check for the “potentially unwanted programs” almost no one actually wants. It will find and remove them. Using an anti-malware program as an on-demand scanner is a safe way to get a second opinion.

You shouldn’t have to do any extra configuration here. If Malwarebytes reports some sort of error removing a piece of malware it finds, you could potentially pause or disable real-time scanning in your main antivirus program to prevent it from interfering, and then reenable real-time scanning right after. But even this shouldn’t be necessary, and we’ve never heard of anyone encountering a problem like this one.

(This is the only way Malwarebytes works on a Mac, too. It can’t perform automatic, real-time scans — just on-demand scans. Malwarebytes shouldn’t interfere with other Mac antivirus applications, if you are actually running one.)

Real-Time Scanning

The paid version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium also contains real-time scanning features. Malwarebytes will run in the background, scanning your system and files you open for problems and preventing them from taking root on your system in the first place.

The problem is that your main antivirus program is already functioning in this way. The standard advice is that you shouldn’t have real-time scanning enabled for two antivirus programs enabled at once. They can interfere with each other in a variety of ways, slowing down your computer, causing crashes, or even preventing each other from working.

To do this in Malwarebytes, open Malwarebytes, click the Settings icon, select “Malware Exclusions,” and add the folder — typically under Program Files — containing your antivirus program’s files.Malwarebytes is coded in a different way and is designed to run alongside other antivirus programs without interfering. It may even work without any further configuration. But, to make it work as well as it possibly can and improve performance, you should set up exclusions in both Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium and your standard antivirus program.

In your antivirus program, load the antivirus program, find “exclusions”, “ignored files”, or a similarly named section, and add the appropriate Malwarebytes files.

You should exclude these files on 64-bit versions of Windows:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes Anti-Malware\mbam.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes Anti-Malware\mbamdor.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes Anti-Malware\mbampt.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes Anti-Malware\mbamservice.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes Anti-Malware\mbamscheduler.exe
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\mbam.sys

Exclude these files instead on 32-bit versions of Windows:

C:\Program Files\Malwarebytes Anti-Malware\mbam.exe
C:\Program Files\Malwarebytes Anti-Malware\mbamdor.exe
C:\Program Files\Malwarebytes Anti-Malware\mbampt.exe
C:\Program Files\Malwarebytes Anti-Malware\mbamservice.exe
C:\Program Files\Malwarebytes Anti-Malware\mbamscheduler.exe
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\mbam.sys

For more specific instructions, you might want to perform a web search for “Malwarebytes” and the name of your antivirus program. Or just perform a web search for the name of your antivirus program and “exclusions” to find out how to add those exclusions and exclude the files named on the Malwarebytes website.

---

Malwarebytes is designed to run alongside a normal antivirus program so you shouldn’t have to worry about this most of the time — especially if you’re just using the free version. If you’re using the paid version, setting up exclusions can help you avoid problems and maximize your computer’s performance. But even that won’t be completely necessary most of the time.

Read More

How to Prevent Identity Thieves from Opening Accounts in Your Name

How to Prevent Identity Thieves from Opening Accounts in Your Name

Everybody is getting hacked left and right. Anthem lost 80 million records. The US government got hacked and lost personal data for millions, all the way down to fingerprint data. Now Experian, a credit bureau got hacked. So how can you protect yourself from criminals opening accounts in your name?

Disclaimer: We’re not tax or financial advisors, so make sure to do your own research and maybe talk to a professional before taking any of the steps on this page. This article was written from our own experiences dealing with identity theft recently.

The Anthem hack was one of the biggest hacks ever, with social security numbers, addresses, and a lot more personal information being stolen, but it’s hardly the first — just last year, JP Morgan had 76 million customer records stolen and the Postal Service lost 800,000. And those were just the recent, high-profile hacks where personal information was lost, as opposed to Target, eBay, Sony, Home Depot, and other hacks where they mostly got emails and passwords. How many hacks haven’t been reported yet, or worse, not even noticed?

At this point it’s probably best to assume that criminals have access to enough personal information to open an account in your name, or that they will soon.

After all, you don’t really need anything but a name and a social security number to open a credit card account. Luckily there’s good news.

How to Deal with Your Personal Information Being Stolen

Most people don’t realize this, but you can actually freeze your credit report so that nobody can access it. That means that credit card companies, banks, stores, apartments, and anybody else that usually requires it will be unable to pull your credit. Which means they can’t open an account in your name.

Of course, this means that you also can’t open an account while the credit report is frozen. Luckily the three credit bureaus will allow you to temporarily (or permanently) unfreeze your credit report so you can apply for something. And then you can re-freeze it again afterward if you’d like.

The only catch to this is that depending on your state, freezing your accounts isn’t always free unless you have proof that your identity was stolen and a case report — it’s going to cost you anywhere from free up to $10 for each of the three credit bureaus. And you’re going to have to do the process separately for each one.

It’s important to keep in mind that almost every time you try to open a new account of any type — cell phone, car insurance, apartment, credit card, store card, or anything like that, your credit report will be accessed. Luckily it only takes a five minute phone call to lift the freeze, or a simple online form, and you can specify when the freeze should go back into effect. Since most creditors only use one credit bureau, you don’t need to lift the freeze on all three every time, just ask them which one they use, and lift the freeze on that one.

Should you Freeze Your Credit Reports?

That depends. If you have some reason that your credit report gets pulled on a regular basis, such as for your job, this might not work for you. If you open up accounts all the time, this will probably cause a bit of a problem for you — although our general financial advice would be that you don’t open new credit every week.

If everybody’s credit report was frozen by default except for when they needed to use it, there would be no such thing as identity theft. Think about that.

The Difference between a Security Freeze and Credit Monitoring

The credit agencies really, really, really want you to pay for credit monitoring, because it’s a recurring $10 or $20 monthly charge forever. They each offer their own “lock” feature, but only to paying customers, and you really need to pay for all three of them if you want it to work very well. Of course, that’s the solution they push in all their marketing, because that’s how they pay the bills.

But credit monitoring only alerts you after somebody opens an account in your name. What’s the point in that? Sure, you can try and fight it, but by the time that happens, the damage is already done. And if you have to pay for credit monitoring for all three agencies all the time, you’re going to just go broke.

A security freeze, on the other hand, is going to prevent anybody from opening an account without having access to all your information and your secret PIN number (a 10 digit code for two of the agencies, and a 6 digit code for the third).

If you do have to pay for a security freeze, it’s a one-time fee as opposed to a monthly fee (forever) for monitoring. To “thaw” your frozen credit report might be free depending on the state or the agency, or might cost up to $10. If you are a victim of identity theft, you can get it all for free, but you’ll need to figure out the process to officially file a report and get a case number.

When you read all of the help pages from the credit agencies, they are going to recommend that you use their other services, and make a big deal that doing a security freeze on your account is going to make it difficult to get credit. But that’s a bit of an exaggeration — you can very easily and temporarily lift a freeze should you decide to apply for something, you’ll just need to do it ahead of time. How’s that a big deal?

Bottom line, a maximum $30 one time to freeze your credit on all three bureaus is cheaper than paying $20 a month for monitoring for the rest of your life.

Freezing Your Credit Accounts

For each of the three credit bureaus, there’s a whole process you’ll need to go through — first, you’ll need to go to each of their web pages separately, put in all your personal information, if you need to pay the $10 fee, you’ll have to enter your credit card number, and then you’ll have to verify that you are who you say you are based on questions from your credit report.

We’d really recommend that you have a copy of your credit report handy, because some of those questions can be tricky.

Alternatively, you can just call each of them separately and do the process over the phone, or you can even mail the required forms and information to each of them. They’ll need things like a copy of all your information, a utility bill in your name, and some other information — you’ll need to check with each one to see what they require.

NOTE: Make absolutely certain that when you click through these links that you are on the right site. Check the address bar to make sure it shows HTTPS. Otherwise go directly to each of their sites and find the security freeze option, usually hidden at the bottom of the page.

• Equifax
  Go to https://www.freeze.equifax.com and fill out the form or call them with the number on the page. They also have a help page with more information.
• Experian
  Go to https://www.experian.com/freeze/ and fill out the form. They also have a help pagewith more information about other options for how to do the freeze.
• Transunion
  Go to https://freeze.transunion.com and fill out the form. They also have a help page with more information (we’d recommend reading that first).

At some point during the process you’ll either be presented with the option to choose a PIN number, or their system will automatically generate one for you. WRITE THIS NUMBER DOWN. Put it into a safe place where you will never lose it. If you want to thaw your credit report in the future, you are going to need this PIN.

If you do not save your PIN number, you’re going to have to go through a tedious process of calling the credit bureau and requesting a new one, which could take a week to get to your house via snail mail.

Alternative: Place a Fraud Alert

If you don’t want to freeze your credit entirely, you can also place a free fraud alert on your account. This works for 90 days, and then the process to continue it is a little confusing unless you have a police report. Here are the links for Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. If you do a fraud alert on one credit bureau, it will automatically apply to all three of them.

Personally, we went with the credit freeze. But it’s up to you.

One Last Note

When scammers steal your identity, they will often file a fraudulent tax return in your name, having your tax return deposited into their account instead of yours. This is a real problem — in 2012, scammers managed to collect 4 Billion dollars this way. Make sure to file your tax return as soon as possible to avoid this happening to you.

Read More

How to Better Organize Secrets Using Keepass Password Manager

             How to Better  Organize Secrets Using Keepass Password Manager

Today’s Internet services rely heavily on text-based passwords for user authentication. The pervasiveness of these services coupled with the difficulty of remembering large numbers and symbols of secure passwords tempt users to reuse simple, easy to guess passwords at multiple websites, making their accounts vulnerable.

Read More

How to Use the BitDefender Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC

                     How to Use the BitDefender Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC

 

When you’ve got a PC completely infected with viruses, sometimes it’s best to reboot into a rescue disc and run a full virus scan from there. Here’s how to use the BitDefender Rescue CD to clean an infected PC.

The good thing about BitDefender is that their regular antivirus is consistently rated at the top in terms of detection and removal of viruses, so you have to assume that their rescue CD is going to work pretty well.
And since you’re booting into a clean Linux-based environment, you’re able to scan for viruses without having to worry about things not working because the computer is infected. It’s almost like Safe Mode on steroids. It’s almost the same as if you had pulled out the hard drive and connected it to a clean computer to scan it for viruses, except without the risk of infecting the clean computer, since it’s a boot disk.

Read More

         How to keep Facebook account Secure 

Hello reader!  there is  need for you to secure your facebook account if not for you chats with friends then it will be for your personal in formations like email and mobile numbers which can be used maliciously against you...so i bring to you a means

  

Read More

                The Best Proxy Servers 

1) Proxy Website No 1

2) Proxy Website No 2

3) Proxy Website No 3

4) Proxy Website No 4 

5) Proxy Website No 5

Read More

How to Check & Stop Keyloggers in Your PC/Laptop

Do you use public computers, Cyber-Cafe or PC? Then you must know about keyloggers. Keylogger is a small software that can be installed or hidden in your pc without your knowledge. That record user activity (keystroke) and make a log file. It is used by hackers or in companies in surveillance employees’ systems. It can capture your email login details, every click, visited website

Read More

              8 Important Tips to Protect Your Magento Store from Hacking

Protection of eCommerce and financial websites is necessary because these websites deal with monetary transactions and stand first as a victim in the list of cyber crime. Magento is the most popular eCommerce platform which also comes under threat of hacking by accessing unauthorized logins and other attacks. Magento Platform is rich in security features but security is needed on the admin level to protect it from cyber criminals.

Read More

How to Choose the Best VPN Service for Your Needs

         How to Choose the Best VPN Service for Your Needs

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are veritable Swiss Army Knives when it comes to privacy enhancement, censorship avoidance, anonymous file sharing, and more. But not all VPNs are created equal and there’s no sense paying for features you don’t need (or paying at all if a full-fledged VPN service is overkill for your needs). Read on as we explore the ins and outs of picking a perfect VPN service.

Read More

How to Update Your Windows Server Cipher Suite for Better Security

                   How to Update Your Windows Server Cipher Suite for Better Security

You run a respectable website that your users can trust. Right? You might want to double check that. If your site is running on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), you might be in for a surprise. When your users try to connect to your server over a secure connection (SSL/TLS) you may not be providing them a safe option.

Providing a better cipher suite is free and pretty easy to setup. Just follow this step by step guide to protect your users and your server. You’ll also learn how to test services you use to see how safe they really are.

Read More