Security, Spoken

When you think about online security, you think digital solutions. Install a reputable antivirus program; use end-to-end encryption. But protection can be physical as well. To up your security game, think outside the code with these IRL reinforcements. Tape Over Your Webcam Mark Zuckerberg does it. So does James Comey. And you, too, should also take this high-reward, low-tech security step.

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There are few more toxic practices online than doxing, the distribution of someone's personal information across the internet against their will. It’s all too common, though, deployed regularly and devastatingly as a means to harass and intimidate. The practice is not limited to public—or briefly internet famous—figures either. Anyone can be a victim, at any time.

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Like any classic hustle, phishing has staying power. The fake emails and texts that lure you into a digital con—Free cruise! Act now!—may not comprise a very technical hack, but the attackers behind them still put a lot of resources and expertise into giving their cons as much authenticity as possible. That’s what makes it so difficult to protect yourself against phishing. You know not to click links in shady emails. You know to think twice before clicking any link in any email.

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If the web were an amusement park attraction, you’d have to be 10 feet tall to ride—it's terrifying enough for adults and a funhouse of horrors for kids, from inappropriate content to unkind comment sections to outright predators. And yet! The internet also affords opportunities to learn, to socialize, to create. Besides, at this point trying to keep your kids off of it entirely would be like keeping them away from electricity or indoor plumbing. They’re going to get online.

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Your passwords are a first line of defense against many internet ills, but few people actually treat them that way: Whether it’s leaning on lazy Star Wars references or repeating across all of your accounts—or both—everyone is guilty of multiple password sins. But while they’re an imperfect security solution to begin with, putting in your best effort will provide an immediate security boost. Don’t think of the following tips as suggestions.

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Throughout 2016 and 2017, individuals in Canada, United States, Germany, Norway, United Kingdom, and numerous other countries began to receive suspicious emails. It wasn’t just common spam. These people were chosen. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Ronald Deibert (@rondeibert) is professor of political science and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. The emails were specifically designed to entice each individual to click a malicious link.

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When North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday, analysts quickly determined that the weapon would be able to reach any target in the continental United States. Further photo and video analysis since, though, indicate that the missile test represents an even greater advance in capabilities than analysts first thought.

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The Internet of Things security crisis persists, as billions of inadequately secured webcams, refrigerators, and more flood homes around the world. But IoT security researchers at Microsoft Research have their eye on an even larger problem: the billions of gadgets that already run on simple microcontrollers—small, low-power computers on a single chip—that will gradually gain connectivity over the years, exponentially expanding the internet of things population.

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Pretending to be someone you're not in an email has never been quite hard enough—hence phishing, that eternal scourge of internet security. But now one researcher has dug up a new collection of bugs in email programs that in many cases strip away even the existing, imperfect protections against email impersonation, allowing anyone to undetectably spoof a message with no hint at all to the recipient.

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Most ad blockers—and there are so, so many of them now—operate roughly the same way, comparing the scripts they encounter on a given site to their whitelist and block list letting the former run and stopping the others. This means they largely share the same drawback, as well; they can’t block what they’ve never seen before. With its latest release, popular ad blocker Ghostery attempts to solve that common dilemma, with a fashionable solution: artificial intelligence.

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