Cyber Monday is almost here, and if you're sitting at your desk cruising the sales right now, beware: dangerous viruses abound. Now that you're in shopping mode, a few reminders can go a long way to keeping your identity and computers safe from virtual disaster. Beware of unknown links — Just because something shows up in your inbox or on your Facebook wall doesn't mean it's not spam. If you Read more

Mobile shopping is on the rise. In fact, nearly 60 million users will shop on their mobile phone for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales this year. Just because you might be using your smartphone to shop for gifts this year doesn't mean you aren't at risk for hacking, viruses, malware, or identity theft (especially if you're an Android owner, just sayin'). Since we increasingly put more personal Read more

Traveling cross-country or abroad this Summer? While you're able to easily find free WiFi in airports these days, you shouldn't just hop on the first free and available WiFi signal you can find and start browsing, shopping, or logging in to secure websites. Just as leaving your home network open and unprotected with a password can be dangerous, so is piggybacking on an unsecured WiFi signal in a Read more

June is Internet Safety Month, so for the next few weeks we'll be giving you tips and advice on how to stay safe online. Some Internet users browse the web totally unaware of the dangers that are lurking right around the corner. I don't want to strike fear in your geeky little hearts, but the truth is — you need to know how to protect yourself from hackers and evildoers. Your first line of Read more

Talk about a nightmare! A 20-year-old Minnesota woman found her Facebook account had been hacked. Not only was she denied access, but also she found her Facebook photos had been stolen and posted to a porn site. Getting hacked is just like being robbed — you feel totally violated — but she wasn't the only one being taken advantage of online. Turns out, the same hacker had gained access to at Read more

You've heard it a hundred times before: you need to create a hacker-proof password to keep from falling victim to cybercrime. But not only are you supposed to choose a hard-to-guess password, it's best to have a different one for each website you've registered with. This fact was reinforced after the recent hacking of Gawker, which allowed hackers to gain access to Gawker user accounts, as well Read more

After an attack compromised the information of anyone who's ever registered to comment on any of the popular Gawker Media sites, Twitter experienced an attack of its own, spamming users with bogus acai berry links. Users whose passwords on any Gawker site were identical to their Twitter passwords probably experienced some form of Twitter hacking. Of course, one of the first ways to deal with a Read more

Consumer Reports recently released its annual "State of the Net" study, revealing 52 percent of adult social network users have posted personal information, which can increase their risk of becoming a victim of cybercrime. The study also revealed that total use of social networks in the US has nearly doubled from one year ago. In their study of 2,000 households using social media, Consumer Read more