So I have the new ADT Pulse system. It’s pretty amazing. I’ve had a “plain old” system for the past 15 years, which has been upgraded 3 times. The standard home alarm system covers monitoring, doors, windows, motion and glass.
This system has all that plus wireless cameras inside, remote controlled thermostats, remote controlled/timed light controls, flood sensors in the mechanical room and laundry, full web access to the cameras, an iPad looking touchpad that controls it, an iPhone app to control/monitor its cameras/stat it from anywhere, and a web dashboard that lets you control every single aspect of each control to inform you of activity or to set up a “reaction” to an incident.
This home alarm system is very simple and easy to program and once you dive into the system it give you a tremendous amount of “awareness” of the goings on in and around your home and it does it automatically.
I haven’t spent a lot of time on the programming just yet, but just by default the basic settings will alert you via text and email whenever anything happens. You also have the ability to turn all these same alerts off.
It has no less than 5 ways to turn it on and off including a wired keypad, iPhone app, Touch pad, computer and remote control on the keychain for deactivating before the garage door goes up. The Touch pads si
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A group of hackers calling themselves Goatse Security claimed they had exploited a security flaw in AT&T’s 3G network and had gained access to personal information belonging to thousands of iPad users. On Tuesday, Daniel Spitler and Andrew Auernheimer were arrested in connection with this June incident.
While the original number of compromised accounts was thought to have been 114,000, new figures reveal that personal data was obtained from 120,000 iPad 3G users. According to Reuters, both Spitler and Auernheimer were “charged with one count of fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization.”
The hackers had managed to snoop out accounts from the major service branches of the military, NASA, the FCC, DARPA, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Health.
Now more than ever, criminal hackers are hacking into databases that contain Social Security numbers and using the numbers to open new financial accounts. Criminals use stolen Social Security numbers to obtain mobile phones, credit cards, and even bank loans. Some victims whose Social Security numbers fell into the hands of identity thieves have even had their mortgages refinanced and their equity stripped.
WTEN.com reports an arrest has been made of an individual alleged to have illegally downloaded personal information, including Social Security numbers of about 15,000 people.
Police arrested a man “for stealing the collection of Social Security numbers from computers belonging to contractors working for the Office of Disability and Temporary Assistance, which is the New York state agency that decides some initial disability claims for Social Security.”
As in most cases of data theft, the Office of Disability and Temporary Assistance will notify and provide credit monitoring services to affected individuals.
According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s Chronology of Data Breaches, more than 500 million sensitive records have been breached in the past five years. The Chrono
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A lot of people complain that the government isn’t doing enough to prevent identity theft from happening in this country. Seeing as 12% of Americans have been victimized, it’s not hard to see things in this light. That being said, you may find it encouraging that something new is being done. The government is working on what it calls a National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace.
The point of this policy is to help people protect their identities online by adopting online credentials, mobile identity cards or something similar that people can use to prove that they are who they say they are before they make a transaction over the Web. These personal identity cards and such are said to be part of an Identity Ecosystem.
If this policy becomes mainstream, you could see the age of usernames and passwords go away in favor of a more high tech way to automatically be identified. The point is to also make it easier to identify legitimate organizations by giving consumers an easy way to tell that the business they think they’re doing business with is who they are really submitting their information to. As of
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A data breach at the Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) has exposed the personal and financial records of members of the U.S. military and their families, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of identity theft.
The Pentagon Federal Credit Union database, which includes names, addresses, Social Security numbers and credit card numbers, was accessed by a malware-infested PC.
PenFed serves about 100,000 members in the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The Pentagon Federal Credit Union offers mortgages, credit cards and loans to its customers, and has $15 billion in assets.
The full extent of the data breach is not yet known. T
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Here are some practical tips from McAfee to ensure optimal Internet safety and security in 2011:
Be aware that threats aimed at mobile phones are growing – Use software that backs up smart devices and use strong discretion when storing, saving or editing personal information on your smartphone or device. Don’t keep all of your personal passwords on your device, and avoid using it to store financial information like credit card and bank account numbers.
Keep in mind that gaming and entertainment devices are now Internet-connected – Many people don’t realize that their new gaming console may represent another port of entry for cybercrooks into their household. Some Internet TV applications can expose personal information, so be sure to install anti-virus software, two-way firewalls, anti-spyware, anti-phishing, and safe search capabilities, just as you would on a PC. Block free browser access via these devices and use parental controls wherever possible to ensure the safety of children who play interactive games.
Use technologies to protect information on USBs – Secure USB sticks by encrypting information, making it unreadable to someone who has taken or found it. In additi
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