When you subscribe to an online service, be careful of how much information you give out about yourself.

Most businesses in their terms and conditions, say they “respect your privacy.” But what if these companies go under or are sold? An article from the online New York Times explores this concept. Today’s market-data-hungry-businesses can gather lots of data about subscribers. This data can be transferred to third parties in the event the company is sold or goes belly up.

The New York Times recently analyzed the top 100 U.S. websites, and the revelation is that it’s par for the course for companies to state that subscribers’ data could be transferred as part of a sales or bankruptcy transaction. Companies like this include Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon and Apple.

On one hand, such companies assure consumers that privacy is important. Next second they’re telling you your data will get into third-party hands if they sell out or fizzle out.

A real-life example is the True.com Texas dating site that attempted to sell its customer database to another dating site. However, True.com’s privacy policy assured members that their personal details would never be sold without their permission. Texas law stopped the attempt.

The Times article points out that at least 17 of the top 100 said they’d notify customers of a data transfer, while only a handful promised an opt-out choice.

This isn’t as benign as some might think. For example, WhatsApp was sold to Facebook. A user of both services ultimately complained that Facebook, without his consent, accessed his WhatsApp contact list, even though his Facebook account was set to prevent people outside his network from obtaining his phone number.

Another example is Toysmart.com. When it went bankrupt, it tried to sell customer data, which included birthdates and names of children. The company’s privacy policy, however, promised users that this information would never be shared.

To avoid fracases, companies are now jumping on the bandwagon of stating they have the right to share customer/subscriber data with third parties per business transactions.

Don’t be surprised if you read something like: “We value your privacy,” and in another section of the privacy policy, “Upon sale of our company, your personal information may be sold.”

Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert to BestIDTheftCompanys.com discussing identity theft prevention.

Burglars get burgled, muggers get mugged, and hackers get hacked. This includes a sophisticated ring of hackers: Hacking Team, hailing from Italy, specializing in selling hacking software to major governments.

An article on wired.com describes how a “400 gigabyte trove” went online by anonymous hackers who gutted the Hacking Team, including source code. Even their Twitter feed was hacked, and the secret hackers tweeted HT’s cracked files.

One of the exposed files apparently was a list of HT’s customer information, spanning the Middle East, Africa and the U.S.

Hacking Team must really be the Humiliated Team now, because they refused to respond to WIRED’s request for a comment. However, one of HT’s workers tweeted that their mystery hackers were spreading lies. His tweet was then hacked.

Sudan was one of the customers, and this shows that Hacking Team believed it could sell hacking software to any government, as Sudan is noted for its ultra-high restrictions to access.

Can the selling of hacking software be equated to the sales of weapons of mass destruction? More likely this is so than not. There is an arms control pact, the Wassenaar Agreement, designed to control the sales internationally of hacking tools.

Criticisms of the Wassenaar Agreement come from hackers (not necessarily only the bad ones) because the Agreement limits security research.

Eric King, from Privacy International, points out that the Agreement is required. Wired.com quotes him: “Some form of regulation is needed to prevent these companies from selling to human rights abusers.”

The Hacking Team organization, despite what it insists, should not be considered a “good guy.” For example, Citizen Lab uncovered that customers, including the United Arab Emirates and Sudan, used tools from Hacking Team to spy on a political dissident—who just happened subsequently get beaten up.

Eric King says, as quoted in wired.com, that Hacking Team “has continuously thrown mud, obfuscated, tried to confuse the truth.” The hacking of Hacking Team will help reveal the truth behind their “deviousness and duplicity in responding to what are legitimate criticisms,” says King.

Let’s look at the top 10 scams (random order).

Charity

• A fraudster claims to represent a charitable organization.
• Such scams can operate ring-style, such as one out in Colorado some years ago in which women wearing crisp white dresses that resembled the dresses nurses used to wear, and also wearing white caps (like a nurse), solicited motorists for money by walking around at stoplights holding out tin cans that had a label on them like “Help Fight Drugs.” Many people were fooled by the white outfits and labeled cans.
• Check out the legitimacy of the organization at bbb.org or charitynavigator.org.

E-mail

• You receive an e-mail that seems to be from a legitimate company, like your bank, the IRS, UPS, etc. In the message is a link that you click. You just downloaded a virus.
• Never click links inside e-mails. Contact the company by phone.

Cell Phone

• Your cell phone rings once. You don’t recognize the number. You call back. You then get charged about $20. Whatever happens after a connection is made, you’ll also be charged a high fee per minute.
• Ignore one-ring calls. If it’s important they’ll call back.

Credit Card Fraud

• Ever see a tiny charge on your credit card but have no idea what it was for? It’s probably by a crook.
• Always report even the smallest charges if they’re unfamiliar.

Sob Story

• You get an e-mail that seems to be from someone you know. They’re overseas, got mugged, sob sob…and need you to wire them money.
• Don’t send them a penny; it’s a scam.

Sweepstakes and Lottery

• “You’ve Won!” shouts your new e-mail. So you click the link in the e-mail to claim your prize—which is a nice fat virus that infects your computer.
• Run like the wind if the message tells you that you need to pay a fee to claim your winnings.

Jury Duty

• Your phone rings. You answer. The caller tells you that you’ll be subject to fines because you didn’t show up for jury duty. But relax, you can avoid the fines by providing personal information or paying a fee.
• Courts have better things to do than to call people who missed jury duty (do you realize how many calls that would be?!).
• Though failing to report for jury duty does have consequences, the action is never initiated via phone.

Computer Lockout

• You turn on your computer and see a message stating the device is locked.
• To unlock it, you’re told to provide sensitive information.
• Contact your security software provider or a local geek.

WiFi Hacking

• You connect to free WiFi thinking your secure. But waiting in the wings is a hacker to sniff out your data.
• Always use a VPN such as Hotspot Shield to encrypt your data over free WiFi.

Home Improvement

• Someone appears at your door wearing a workman’s outfit and offers to do a job for a dirt cheap fee. They want the money upfront and will return later to do the work, or some variant of this.
• Stick with bonded, insured, reputable companies. Refer to Angie’s List or the BBB.

Health Care

• Someone calls you offering to help you sign up for health care.
• Hang up; it’s a crook because government officials don’t do this.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

Did you know that the original meaning of hacker, as far as computers, was that of a person who built codes into computers? In fact, the bad guy was called a “cracker.” Somehow, “cracker” didn’t catch on. But the mainstream folk out there hears “hacker,” and right away, they think of a digital thief, often someone who breaks into governmental computer systems or Russian “hacking rings” that steal credit card numbers.

An article at motherboard.vice.com mentions that Richard Stallman gets the credit for cracker. Stallman, creator of the GNU operating system, is quoted as saying, “I coined the term ‘cracker’ in the early ‘80s when I saw journalists were equating ‘hacker’ with ‘security breaker.’”

The news media began noticing hackers around 1980. Some hackers were security breakers. Security breaking is one thin slice of the pie, but the media jumped on this, creating the impression that hackers were bad guys.

The article also notes something that Biella Coleman explains. She’s a hacker expert and is quoted as stating that the American government “has tended to criminalize hacking under all circumstances, unwilling to differentiate between criminal activities, playful pursuits, and political causes.”

The reality is, is that a security breaker is no more a hacker than a home burglar is an architect.

In the 1990s were movies that portrayed hackers as cyber villains, and all along, the real hackers were trying to get the word out that “crackers” was the term of choice. But it just didn’t take.

Maybe one reason is because the word “hacker” has more of a novel sound to it. When you hear “cracker,” several possible things come to mind, including a detective who cracks a case, and something you put in your soup. But “hacker”? Wow – it has more punch. It conveys more action.

But how did innocent code writers get to be called “hackers” in the first place? Perhaps it’s because writing code is such an imperfect science—more of an art, full of bugs and crimps. Code writers must hack their way through muddle to get it right.

At this point, however, hacker is here to stay to refer to the bad guy, whether a teenager with too much time on his hands breaking into some company’s network, or an intricate Chinese cyber criminal organization that cracks into the U.S. government’s system.

Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert to TheBestCompanys.com discussing  identity theft prevention.

It’s tough being responsible sometimes. And managing responsibilities for what is precious in your life usually takes a little extra thought.  Let’s say you’ve just welcomed a beautiful set of triplets into the world.  Lucky you . . . and lots to managed! But, you wouldn’t give all these babies the same name simply to make it easier to remember, right?

Consider this same concept as you manage other precious aspects of life, like your on line accounts. It may seem convenient – and easier to remember — to use the same password for all accounts.

But a single password across all accounts can also make it convenient for hackers to access your valuable information on these accounts.

Most of us have a number of accounts that require us to use and remember different passwords, which brings us to the question, “If we can’t use the same password for all of our accounts, how do you expect us to remember all of them?” The solution is easy.

You need a password manager.

A password manager will help you create an un-crackable password, and it will even give you a “master” password that will be able to get you into all of your accounts. That way you really will have only have one password to remember.

Password managers eliminate the need to reset passwords, and improve the security of your online accounts that contain your pertinent information. A password manager allows you to log into sites and apps using multiple factors that are unique to you, like your face and fingerprints and the devices you own.

Here are some useful tips for making strong and protected passwords:

• Make sure your passwords are at least eight characters long and include numbers, letters and characters that don’t spell anything.
• Use different passwords for separate accounts, especially for banking and other high-value websites.
• Change your passwords frequently.

Robert Siciliano is an Online Safety Expert to Intel Security. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Mobile was Hacked!

What a disgrace: A private investigator, Eric Saldarriaga, 41, got nailed for hacking into peoples’ e-mails. He may get six months in the can. Is six months reasonable for this, though?

A recent online New York Times article quotes a prosecutor who points out that hackers could be deterred by the threat of harsh penalties—because the mind of a hacker operates with a lot of thinking, vs. the mind of someone who impulsively pulls out a gun or knife.

So what did Saldarriaga do exactly? He paid an overseas company to get the login information for e-mail accounts: a hacker-for-hire deal. His clients included lawyers and other private investigators. He was known for gaining access to e-mail accounts without the user’s knowledge, so this is why he got some of his cases in the first place.

Breaking into e-mails is a serious crime because it can involve the accounts of big companies, revealing their trade secrets and other classified information.

One of Saldarriaga’s victims was journalist Tony Ortega, who has spent about 20 years writing about Scientology. Ortega believes that this controversial church’s reps hired Saldarriaga to get information about Ortega.

Ortega, as well as possibly most of the other victims, are adamant about learning just who hired Saldarriaga to conduct his dirty deed. One of the other victims is a professional gambler who secretly donates to charity. The Times article quotes the gambler: “For this one guy, to be sentenced today for a crime he did for other people would be a miscarriage of justice.”

Why aren’t the people who hired Saldarriaga also facing justice?

Saldarriaga’s lawyer, Peter Brill, gunned for just a three-year probationary sentence for his client because he was remorseful. In fact, his crime got him only $5,000.

Saldarriaga himself even pleaded with the judge who’s overseeing the case that he deserves some concessions because one of his actions, he claims, may have spared a woman from harm.

But that doesn’t nullify the reality that Saldarriaga intruded upon peoples’ privacy without their knowledge. And got paid for it.

Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert to BestIDTheftCompanys.com discussing identity theft prevention.

Remember the good ‘ol days when you thought of a finger pushing a button that launched a Russian missile that then sped at seven miles per second towards the U.S. to blow it up?

Little did we know back then what would one day be a way for the Superpowers to war on each other: cyber technology!

A new book is out called Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, written by Peter W. Singer and August Cole. WWIII certainly won’t be wrought with speeding missiles and hand-to-hand combat in the trenches—at least not the bulk of it.

An article on vice.com notes that the Third World War will take place in cyberspace (in addition to land, sea and air).

Vice.com contacted Singer about his novel. One of the villains is China, even though much of the attention has been on the Middle East and so-called terrorist attacks by radical Muslims.

To write the novel, the authors met with a wide assortment of people who, if WWIII were to come about, would likely be involved. This includes Chinese generals, anonymous hackers and fighter pilots. This gives the story authenticity, realism…a foreshadowing.

Singer explains that his novel is so realistic that it’s already influencing Pentagon officials in their tactics.

The Third World War will probably not require so much the ability to do pull-ups, slither under barbed wire and rappel down buildings, but the mastering of cyberspace and outer space: It’s likely that the winner of this war will be king beyond land, sea and air: lord over the digital world and the blackness beyond our planet’s atmosphere.

Projected Weapons of WWIII

• A kite-shaped Chinese drone, massive enough to take out stealth planes and ships
• Drones that, from high altitude, could get an instant genetic readout of an individual
• Smart rings that replace computer mouses
• Brain-machine interfaces. This already exists in the form of paralyzed people using their thoughts (hooked up to a computer) to move a limb (their own or robotic). This technology has applications in torturing the enemy.

That old saying, “What the mind can conceive and believe, can be achieved,” seems to be becoming more truer by the second. Imagine being able to wipe out the enemy by plugging your thoughts into a computer and imagining them having heart attacks.

Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert to TheBestCompanys.com discussing  identity theft prevention.