Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
As you know, the scammers of the world are always scheming up new ways to take advantage of people in today’s Internet-connected world.
A few years back a very devious Facebook/email scam targeting unsuspecting moms leading up to Mothers Day weekend popped up, and it’s been popping up every spring since then.
If you use Facebook you’re probably used to receiving cute and funny videos in instant messages (IMs).
And of course there are political videos and a wide variety of other types of videos being shared via IMs as well.
Truth be told, we all get them on a regular basis.
Dozens of videos land in my IM inbox every day, but I never click on any of them. And I strongly recommend that you avoid clicking on them as well.
Many of these seemingly harmless videos are actually quite dangerous because they have viruses attached to them. If you take the bait and attempt to watch one of them, your computer or Android device could become infected. And that could easily ruin your entire day. [Read more…]
As you probably know, the scammers of the world are getting more creative and more brazen by the day.
Unfortunately, the Internet has made it far too easy for fraudsters to target victims in other states, and even other countries.
Many scams go after credit card and/or bank account info, but there’s an entirely different class of monetary scams in which the scammers ask you to send them gift cards instead of your financial info. [Read more…]
It’s no secret that Facebook is a favorite venue for crooks and scammers to seek out potential victims, but it’s certainly not the only place where they hang out.
A recurring scam that targets frustrated PayPal customers is once again making the rounds on X (formerly Twitter), and it typically works something like this: [Read more…]
A recent study found that almost half of all Americans get their news from Facebook.
That’s a startling number, and it’s even more startling that almost two-thirds of millennials use the social media giant as their primary news source.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with an Internet company delivering the news of the day.
However, the almost constant barrage of “fake news” stories that show up in our Facebook Newsfeeds makes it hard for many users to recognize which stories are true and which are fake.
Luckily, there are things you can do to identify and avoid fake news: [Read more…]