With so much information being passed around in this day and age it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. Because of this so many people are affected by all kinds of epidemics. Information breaches, hacks, stolen identities, and more.

These events are partly our fault for not being up to date with security. From easy to crack passwords to using the same password on several sites. But it’s not always our fault. Sometimes it’s pointed at the business who gathered our information in the first place.

And some of these companies are massive multi-million dollar businesses. Take one case of a man who’s entire digital life was destroyed in the span of an hour. His Google account was taken over before it was deleted. Next was his Twitter account. Then his AppleID account was broken into and all of the data on his MacBook, iPad, and iPhone was erased.

How could this all happen? Similar to how we may use the same password on multiple sites, companies have similar common practices.

For the case of this man, how the hacker got his AppleID account (and eventually Gmail, then Twitter) was by getting into Amazon.

Whenever you order from Amazon, a partial amount of numbers are shown for your credit card. Even though the hacker didn’t get the entire number of this man’s credit card, those digits are the same digits that are used for Apple to release information.

Essentially those four digits that Amazon considers as unimportant to display are the same numbers that Apple uses to perform an identity verification and giving you access to AppleID, iCloud, and more.

What’s saddening about this is some of this could’ve been salvaged. If the man backed up his computer regularly, he could rebuild his life easily. If he had two-factor authentication on his Gmail account he could’ve protected his Twitter account and any other social media site he was on.

What this teaches us is to be careful about our security. We can take certain measures to protect ourselves, but they can only go so far. One other step we ought to take is to push companies for tighter security measures. After all, since we are entering an era of cloud computing and multiple connected devices, this scenario can be more frequent for the foreseeable future.

There are many kind of viruses in the world, but the one to really start it all was the Elk Cloner virus. Similar to the origin story of the worm virus, this virus entered into the world by accident… Sorta.

Developed by entrepreneur Rich Skrenta, at age 15, he created this virus as a practical joke and placed it on a floppy disk. Little did he expect that the virus would latch onto Apple II operating system and start to wreak havoc.

This was the very first virus that was spread out in the wild. It wasn’t created in a lab nor was it contained within a specific computer system. How it moved from computer to computer was via the floppy disks and using a technique called boot sector virus.

How the virus worked was that it was attached to a game which was set to play automatically. After the 50th time the game started up, the virus would be released. People discovered this because on the 50th time, the graphics would change. Instead of the loading screen, users were greeted to a poem. This poem was what gave the virus the name Elk Cloner:

Elk Cloner: The program with a personality

It will get on all your disks

It will stick to you like glue

Send in the Cloner!

Just as the poem stated, the virus clung to everything and in this case it kind of behaved like a worm. How it spread was solely based on the amount of floppy disks that you had. Basically if the computer booted up from an infected disk, the virus would copy itself in the computer’s memory. Every time after that, if an uninfected disk was inserted, the virus would then latch onto that floppy disk and spread that way.

Overall, the Elk Cloner didn’t cause any kind of harm unlike the damages that occurred with worms. The only real issue was when you used Apple DOS disks that didn’t have standard images, their reserved tracks were overwritten.

Still, despite the damages being minimal at best, many still remember this virus and was regarded as one of the first large-scale self-spreading personal computer virus ever made.

As for Skrenta himself, he wasn’t punished for his actions. He was a prankster and a lot of his friends knew that.

Virus worms are everywhere and as I mentioned from an earlier episode, it all stemmed from a mistake. But this mistake has manifested in a variety of different worms that have dealt massive damage.

One such worm virus I want to highlight is Timofonica, a worm that raided European cell phones in 2000. This was a new kind of worm that signalled a new medium for hackers. After all, they could now get into wireless phones and begin to do all kinds of damage.

At the time, Timofonica was a simple VBS chain letter. Think of those obnoxious chain letters you would get. That or maybe you were a victim of the LoveLetter worm (also known as ILOVEYOU) when that was still prominent.

But what makes this particular worm different about the other worms up to this point is that the worm forces the phone to send out short messages to other phones via a gateway. All in all, the idea was for the worm to obviously overwhelm a system with all of these text messages and try to break down a particular system.

The sort of good news about this particular worm though is you will likely never receive it. The only reports of this worm virus existing came from residents in Spain and the worm only targeted particular phones at the time - specifically the Nokia brick phones at the time.

So if you are travelling to Spain, you won’t have to worry about this particular virus. However as I said before, this particular worm sparked a series of mobile virus worms now that people cracked the code so to speak.

While some hackers help businesses directly, others do so indirectly. Take the case of Vladimir Levin. In 1994, he staged a bank robbery unlike any we have seen before. It didn’t require any guns or bullets. Merely a laptop and the dial-up internet.

Levin and a small group of hackers dove into Citibank and managed to get into Citibank’s dial-up wire transfer service and begin to transfer funds to various accounts. When Citibank noticed that money was being moved to an account in Finland, the Netherlands, Germany and Israel, the bank called authorities.

Police eventually traced the wire transfers and captured three individuals of Levin’s group who then pointed to Levin. Though since he was in Russia, they were unable to extract Levin from Russia to the United States.

That battle to extract Levin to the United States took 30 long months before he was finally brought in from a London airport after being captured by Scotland Yard. He was later tried and found guilty on one count of conspiracy and defraud, and to stealing $3.7 million. That was despite the groups hacking efforts managed to steal $10.7 million.

While we don’t know what happened to Levin after he was sent to prison, his actions served as a wake up call to banks. His own actions were what led to tightened security measures on a bank level. Especially since the bank only was able to recover about $400,000 of the money Levin and his group stole.

What this change brought was encryption cards, secure door locks, and in general encrypted data. This historic hack was a reminder to businesses that they best be one step ahead as hackers are innovative, and creative individuals.

Hackers over the years change after a while. They aren’t always hellbent on causing chaos and destruction. In fact, in a lot of cases, most hackers tend to change dramatically once they have been arrested.

One example is Kevin Poulsen. It only took one time for Poulsen to change his ways. The instance involved him hacking into all of the phone lines that were going to a Los Angeles radio show. The reason? In 1990, the radio show KIIS-FM held a contest where the 102nd caller would win a Porsche 944 S2.

Though Kevin technically won said Porsche, police were suspicious and found that he won the prize illegitimately. When they went to capture Poulsen, he fled and went underground as a fugitive. Eventually, police captured him in April 1991.

It wasn’t until 1994 though when Poulsen was sentenced for his crime. There were seven counts of conspiracy, fraud, and wiretapping which caused him to spend five years in a federal penitentiary, and was banned from using a computer or the internet for 3 years after his release. This was the first person in United States history to be banned from the internet for a period of time and to serve it. Chris Lamprecht received the same punishment, but he was still in jail while Poulsen was free and serving his ban sentence.

What happened after Poulsen was done prison was reform entirely. He moved away from hacking entirely to now being a journalist. He first found work at SecurityFocus where he started to write news on hacking and security in the early 2000s. Despite this news being late to the market, SecurityFocus News became well-known within the industry. So much so that Symantec acquired that section later on.

Even the mainstream press picked up Poulsen’s articles and research. Because of this, this solidified Poulsen as a quality writer. This amongst other things helped Poulsen jump into freelance writing and worked for various companies. Of note was his work with Wired News and now The Daily Beast.

Since then, Poulsen has been crucial in revealing information about particular people. Some of his work has led to captures of various criminals as well.

In October 2006, Poulsen’s work on MySpace managed to capture 744 users on MySpace who were registered as sex offenders.

In June 2010, Poulsen reported the initial story of Chelsea Manning being arrested. He also published the logs of Manning’s chats with Adrian Lamo pertaining to WikiLeaks.

Poulsen’s work and his life story to this point echoes similar themes to various hackers I’ve talked about before. Not all hackers resort to a life of crime after they’ve been caught and released. In many cases, hackers use their strengths to do good and to contribute to the society as a whole. Remember this moving forward with the many hackers out there in the world. Sometimes they need guidance and maybe a rude wake-up call.

The Great Hacker War sparked a lot of controversy. It was overinflated at the time and many people panicked, despite the fact the war was between two groups and only targeting the members therein. The factions involved were Legion of Doom (LOD) and Masters of Deception (MOD).

That being said, there were ripple effects from the events of this dispute. One that I want to discuss specifically was the imprisonment of five members of MOD. One amongst them was Mark Abene.

If you listened to my episode on the Great Hacker War, Abene was one of the members who talked to Chris Goggans, and refused to meet Goggans demands for personal information on MOD members.

That didn’t sit very well with Goggans clearly and by December 1991, Abene and four other members were arrested and indicted by a Manhattan federal grand jury on July 8th, 1992. This indictment relied heavily on evidence that was gathered through wire tapping. The conversations in question were between MOD members. This was the first instance of wire tapping being court-authorized as evidence in the United States.

Since the law wasn’t being kept up with, technology and hacking were in a sort of grey area in terms of punishment. Abene and the four members were faced with an 11-count charge. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the newsletter reported that Abene and the members with him could face up to 50 years in prison and $2.5 million in fines.

In Abene’s case, he was a minor at the time and they settled a plea arrangement that was still rather harsh: a year in prison with three years probation and 600 hours of community service.

This entire event sent a shockwave through the hacker community. Some considered it harsh at the time while others worked past it. Nevertheless they see Abene as an underground Robin Hood of sorts and some strive to live up to his values and ideals.

Today, Abene is still a hacker, but he talks about the positive aspects. He provides an inside look at a hackers motivation and morals through various forms of public media. He even does lectures revolving around telecommunication technology amongst other things.

Since the development of the Internet, there has always been hackers. While a lot of us see them as nothing short of thieves who want to steal our personal information, hackers are a lot more than that.

To give you an idea of a different side of hackers, one event from the 90s comes to mind: The Great Hacker War. While it has a rather dramatic name to it, it was nothing but two groups of hacker communities sending prank calls, breaking into security systems, jamming phone lines, and breaking into computers.

In fact, members of the two warring factions at the time state this was all a hoax, over-dramatized by the government and that this was nothing more than a competition as opposed to a war. Looking at this war further, it only lasted a few days at best and only four big events were worth noting from it.

The first event started when someone posted a message on an invite-only bulletin board. The message was talking about what was known as the “Fifth Amendment” and that those who were invited were some of the world’s successful hackers. This board was formed by two of the leaders of one of the factions: Chris Goggans and Loyd Blankenship. The faction was a newly reformed group called the Legion of Doom or LOD for short.

What caused conflict was when a member from the Masters of Deception (MOD), John Lee, closed the board by sending cryptic messages on the board to the users. Furthermore Lee was accused of distributing this information openly when it clearly meant to be reserved for specific people.

Shortly after the accusation, members of LOD started to receive prank phone calls to home numbers that MOD had picked up. Once Goggans put out a call to get MOD members personal information, peacemakers intervened and asked to set up a conference call and make peace with the situation.

Unfortunately, peace couldn’t be maintained then as MOD members started to hear LOD members using racial slurs to describe some members of MOD. Because of that, the talk turned into threats and further prank calls.

There was another last-minute peace talk later that same night between Goggans and Mark Abene of MOD. That too didn’t go well with Abene not wanting to meet Goggans demands for MOD members personal information. This sparked more anger from Goggans who shouted more racial slurs before hanging up.

That call sparked the war amongst other events as MOD members quickly uncovered that Goggans was plotting to build a security company: ComSec. The idea was for Goggan and his small group to build this security company, send messages to companies urging them to buy their services, while also helping police capture and imprison various hackers.

At the end of the day, both groups admitted that this war was petty. In general it was a scheme Goggans concocted to build a company. A company that he felt ashamed of implicating many of his hacker friends in. These events gained a lot of traction mainly due to overzealous law enforcement as well as the media painting the entire scene in a grim way to boost readership.

In the social media age, it seems a lot of us have this growing need to catalogue our lives. Whenever we go on vacations, we measure how great it was by how many likes our photos get.

We do the same thing in other events like weddings, or merely hanging out with friends or snapping shots or videos at concerts.

This is unfortunately the view of most people, but before social media vacations were judged differently. They were judged by the quality of the memories for those involved.

But that is a thing of the past and now people need social media affirmation in order to feel good about these experiences. This has led to us over-posting and over-sharing our lives…. AND THAT can be dangerous.

Setting aside the emotional aspects of what social media does to us, this practice is dangerous on a security and privacy level as well. For one, you are giving people information that can result in your home being open to get robbed.

For example, if you make a point of announcing your flight departures on Facebook, you are giving people a time frame for your when no one is at home. This is also true if you take excessive pictures of your meals or you at your hotel room. It’s essentially a digital bullhorn telling people that your place is empty. You can even put other people at risk if you are constantly tagging them in these pictures too.

Over-posting can also push you into being a target for theft. One aspect to consider is blatant visual brags. If you are constantly flooding your friends feed with pictures, they can develop jealousy. And if you are posting these pictures publicly then anyone can grow this resentment and jealousy. So much that they may grow “perceived entitlement” and want some of your stuff.

But the real punch to this is that initially, not many people will care about your vacation or whatever it is your doing. One study found that while some people think their posts are amazing, no one wants to hear about them. No one cares really cares what you were eating or where you are going on a daily basis. The study concluded that friendships and connections are formed from what people have in common. So posting constant selfies in a fancy hotel room may not resonate with people at all. Instead you may alienate some people. That or they may grow resentful or jealous.

At the end of the day, over-posting is akin to bragging. Not only that but it can leave you and your family and friends exposed to lash-outs or even robbery. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take pictures.

Instead, if you are going for trips, make an effort to not post the pictures immediately and instead filter through them later. Pick out a nice handful of pictures that tell a story of your trip AFTER you’ve already experienced it. Consider some creativity and take some different pictures. Forget about the pictures of feet on a beach or historical landmarks. Take the opportunity to try something different and unique.

When we become a little picky about our pictures and see ourselves as story tellers, we can all avoid over-posting and keep ourselves safe in the process.

You’re in a time crunch, you need to rent an apartment. You put out a wanted ad and someone contacts you with a great place. They send you pictures. You agree on the rental, you send over your deposit and your move in date is set. You show up with your stuff, knock on the door, and someone else lives in that place. They have no idea who you are…. THIS is such an easy scam because you didn’t meet the landlord, they sent you photos of an existing rental place, and you didn’t tour the apartment beforehand…..   Every industry out there is subject to scams and scam artists will do anything to get your money. This scam plaguing the rental industry has unfortunately caught many people.

The scam is geared more towards apartment hunters who are time sensitive. From people having to relocate quickly or are dealing with personal issues, most don’t have the time to check to see if the ads are legit.

Thankfully there are some quick methods you can use to help with avoiding getting caught. The first thing is being aware of the apartment application process. In normal circumstances, you would be meeting the landlord and have checked the apartment first before being asked to send any money over. So it raises a red flag if the person you are emailing is demanding money up front.

The second thing is paying attention to the landlord as well. Most would want to know credit scores, get to know you and have some background info about you. If the landlord isn’t that keen on screening you, chances are it’s a scam.

The third strategy is to be suspicious of high-security deposits or upfront fees. Before diving into the apartment hunting, make sure to brush up on your province or state’s security deposit fees and other fees. If a landlord asks for more money than what is legally required of them or is asking for too many fees, chances are they want your money and will run with it.

The fourth sign this can be a rental scam is if the person makes a point in saying you don’t need a lawyer. While that’s true you generally don’t need a lawyer to review an apartment, “the fact they’re going out of their way” to tell you that is unusual and suspicious.

It’s also suspicious if the landlord tells you, you don’t need a lease. You should definitely have a lease. That’s the typical renting situation for most places. But this is suspicious because in this instance the landlord isn’t considering your needs and you may want a lease. Looking deeper into this, the landlord may be stressing this because they don’t have a lease to show you and they don’t want to meet you.

The final sign is the fact the landlord isn’t willing or able to meet with you or show you the apartment. Some may claim they are living outside the country or come up with some other excuse like being on vacation. Either way it’s a tactic to be suspicious of.

Scams are all over the place and as long as you are doing your homework and double checking everything you can get out of these traps. However if you are caught in a scam, you can always take measures in capturing the scam artist. One such way is calling the police and telling them your situation. Even if you’re not hopeful they’ll catch the culprit, the police will at least warn others so they don’t get caught as well.

While cryptocurrency is pitched as a safe and secure thing, the same can be said for it being an unsafe currency. One compelling reason against that are the various scams revolving around cryptocurrency.

And since cryptocurrency doesn’t force you to reveal yourself as it is anonymous by design, scammers can easily create seemingly legit companies to pray on those unsuspecting or who want to get in on the hype. Worst of all, if you do get scammed, there is no way getting any money back. They are anonymous.

As such, it’s important for us in the meantime to look at the offers on the table. While cryptocurrency appears to be lucrative if you’ve been reading the headlines, there’s also a lot of fools gold. So let’s take a look at scams and how to better spot them.

The first scam I’ll cover is Initial Coin Offerings or ICOs. These are fundraising methods for new cryptocurrencies. In exchange for investing in the coin, the investor gets a token for that particular venture. This market alone is worth billions of dollars as people have pumped their money into over 1,000 ICOs over the past several years.

That’s not to say every ICO is a scam. Some are actually very legitimate. However because there are so many, scams can wedge in there and appear as legit and the regulations are minimal to protect us. How to spot these is really a matter of research. Check the ICOs claims and determine if it’s realistic to other ICOs. Check the team behind the project and whether the tech behind the project is solid and the overall purpose of the currency.

The second scam is unregulated brokers or exchanges. From this scam, there have sprung all kinds of other financial scams from pump and dumps to bitcoin trading systems. Nevertheless, these types of scams have the same kind of qualities. They promise high rates and quick riches. And while some of these companies may seem legit by letting you withdraw money, some will charge insanely high rates for you to withdraw your money. That or they will make it very hard or impossible for you to get your money back.

Whatever the case is, make sure to be looking at the site and what it promises. While cryptocurrency in general is volatile, it’s hard to believe you can get 10 or more percent in daily returns from your investment. Don’t buy into the hype and set aside those emotions and ask yourself if this is “too good to be true”…. If it is… it’s probably a scam.

The last scam I’ll cover is a classic: Ponzi schemes. Also called pyramid schemes, this scam is still alive and well in several network marketing companies as well as the cryptocurrency world. The method of this scam is essentially luring people in with the promise of high returns.

How it works is simple: the initial investors invest in the scheme and will later receive their returns. The thing is though those returns stemmed from the money that was deposited by newer investors.

It’s a system that relies on people recruiting other people who are then encouraged to do the same. This continues until eventually the scammer runs off with all the money.

To spot this is a rather simple case: look at the company’s business model. Pyramid schemes rely on other people so if your earnings are hinged on how many people you bring in rather than the amount you invested in or products or services sold, it’s likely a scam. One other characteristic is insanely high returns. Take Bitconnect which in January 2018 was shut down for being a pyramid scheme. The company promised monthly returns of up to 40% and was quickly criticized.

Scams play on our emotions and pull us into a false sense of security. As such, scams have become craftier and more sophisticated over the years. But they still can’t avoid a careful eye and someone who does their research. So long as you double check and remain skeptical, you can avoid a lot of these scams.