Consumers were cheated out of $770 million by social media scams last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission, which said the number accounts for roughly one-fourth of fraud losses for the year. New scams involving e-commerce and cryptocurrency helped boost the haul, which was 18 times greater than the $42 million in social media fraud the FTC tracked for 2017. As a result, incidences of younger victims grew, with adults 18-to-39 reporting fraud losses 2.4 times more than adults 40 and over. Investment and romance scams were also high on the list.  Continue reading FTC Says Social Media Has Become Goldmine for Scammers

On Wednesday, scammers launched one of the most audacious attacks in recent memory, posting messages from the Twitter accounts of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Kanye West, Bill Gates and Elon Musk that if people sent Bitcoin, the famous person would send back double the money. The first attack targeted high-profile cryptocurrency leaders and companies, but soon broadened to include a list of prominent U.S. politicians and entertainment and tech executives. It appears that an internal Twitter account was involved in the attacks, but it has yet to be determined whether an employee was willfully complicit. Continue reading Prominent Twitter Accounts Hacked for Cryptocurrency Fraud

Early Tuesday morning, just as CES 2020 was getting underway, the team that monitors computers for Las Vegas detected a potential cyberattack as the city’s systems were reportedly compromised. While city officials tweeted about the breach, the information was light on details regarding which operations had been affected or the extent of the attack. The timing was unfortunate, since the annual CES confab is one of the largest events in Las Vegas. Last year, the show attracted more than 175,000 people and 4,400 exhibitors, including a number of Fortune 500 companies. Continue reading Las Vegas Was a Target of Cyberattack While Hosting CES

In the “risk factors” section of its annual report, e-commerce leader Amazon listed counterfeit products, stating that the company may be “unable to prevent sellers in our stores or through other stores from selling unlawful, counterfeit, pirated, or stolen goods, selling goods in an unlawful or unethical manner … or otherwise violating our policies.” This is a first for the tech giant, which had never discussed the ongoing problem. In principle, it has a “zero tolerance” policy but the site is full of merchants selling knockoffs. Continue reading Amazon Has Growing Problem of Third-Party Counterfeiters

Facebook is introducing a new feature that will allow users to leave feedback after buying products from advertisers on its site, with the goal of cracking down on businesses that sell shoddy goods or don’t deliver them promptly. In addition to this new tool, Facebook is also warning e-commerce companies that get large numbers of complaints, to allow them to improve. If the companies do not clean up their act, says Facebook, it will constrain the number of ads they deliver and could ban them. Continue reading Facebook Monitors Advertisers via Customer Feedback Tool

Jackson Palmer and his once-wildly successful cryptocurrency Dogecoin are a cautionary tale for those bedazzled by Bitcoin. Palmer was an early enthusiast of cryptocurrency, but sought a way to mock the hype around investing huge sums of money in it. He created his own cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, based on an Internet meme of a Shiba Inu dog. Instead of getting the joke, investors brought Dogecoin’s market value to $400 million, before scammers and hackers brought it down, selling fake products and defrauding investors. Continue reading Are Cryptocurrencies Next Big Bust or Revolution in Finance?

In an era of system hacks becoming more common, JP Morgan is the latest to report a massive breach of customer information. While the company believed a few weeks ago that only one million accounts were affected, it now reports that 76 million households and 8 million small businesses were part of the data breach. While recent breaches have largely involved retailers, some analysts are more concerned about the JP Morgan case, especially since banks tend to have more sensitive data about their customers. Continue reading Why Analysts Are Concerned About the JP Morgan Data Breach