As businesses take a more digital approach, it's more important than ever to be aware of your online presence and the risks associated with doing business on the Internet. Every time you access an online portal, whether it's for work, social media, or online shopping, you could be putting your personal information at risk if you're not aware of the potential risks. If you want to protect yourself wherever you are online, check out our list of ways to protect your identity.
1. Be careful where you surf
This doesn't mean you should avoid questionable sites, but where you access the Internet can be as bad as where you access it. Public Wi-Fi is not a place to perform sensitive activities such as accessing websites that contain personal information or making online purchases. Hackers can easily use shared login to steal the credentials you use to access websites and steal your personal information in the process. When you're doing something you don't want to see online, it's best to access the internet from a secure online connection. A VPN or Virtual Private Network allows you to access the internet securely from anywhere by encrypting your sensitive information, which is essential for identity security. If you need to do business in public, it's best to invest in a VPN so you can view with confidence.
2. Use strong passwords
Password security is essential when you want to stay away from prying eyes. Do not use passwords that contain personal information such as your birth number, Social Security number, or address. Not only does this make it easier for hackers to decrypt them, but it also gives them personal information about you that you don't want them to keep. Make your password as random as possible by including lots of capital letters, symbols, and numbers. On some systems, you can use a computer-generated password, usually a random combination of these. It's almost impossible for hackers to guess a random set of characters, so if you can use this feature, it's probably your best bet. Also, make sure you keep your password in a very safe place; Sending is not allowed !
3. Avoid strange transitions
Hackers are great at making their communications look legitimate, but there's no way they're perfect. Lottery prizes, shipping confirmations, and online account problems are some of the most common methods hackers or scammers use to get your attention. If you receive an unexpected email containing a link, do some research before clicking on it. First, check for obvious grammatical or spelling errors; A legitimate company would not make such a mistake. Next, click on the sender's email. If the email in question is from a real company, the address will usually be: customerservice@company.com If you're seeing long email addresses with random letters and numbers, that's a big red flag. Normally, the company the hacker is trying to impersonate won't show up in the email! Delete such email immediately before clicking on any link. Once an unsuspecting victim clicks on a specific link and enters information, the hacker gains immediate access.
Staying safe and protecting your identity online is relatively easy if you follow a few rules. Use strong passwords, avoid unexpected links and be careful what you enter online, especially in public places. With the right knowledge, you can avoid the traps set by hackers and protect your personal information.
What do you think of these three smart tips for protecting your identity online? Do you have extras? Let us know on social media using the buttons below
Last updated on December 4, 2022.
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The European Union has some tough privacy laws for online users. The European Union has imposed multiple fines on Apple, Google and Meta for violating their privacy laws. While many of these penalties may seem excessive, for most tech companies they're just a drop in the bucket. The latest fine came from Ireland, where Meta was fined $277 million for breaching EU data protection laws.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
The Data Protection Commission has ruled that meta-managed platforms like Facebook have breached the EU General Data Protection Regulation. This standard requires companies to include technical and organizational components to protect user data.
The fine follows an investigation launched last year after regulators read reports that the data of 533 million Facebook users had been leaked online. The leaked data contained names, Facebook IDs, phone numbers, addresses, dates of birth and email addresses of affected users from more than 100 countries. The leak prompted Techaeris to delete our Facebook account.
Meta said the leaked information was obtained from Facebook using a people search tool. The study examined conflicts between May 2018 and September 2019.
The company said it was "fully cooperating" with the Irish Inspector General.
"We have made reasonable timely changes to our practices, including removing our capability in this way using our phone number," Meta said in a statement. "Unauthorized data breaches are unacceptable and against our laws."
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The fine imposed on Meta also includes some corrective actions that the EU is requiring the company to take. It remains to be seen how the company will react as EU regulations get stricter every year.
What do you think of this penalty? Share your thoughts on the social media sites below. You can comment on our MeWe page by joining the MeWe social network. Be sure to subscribe to our RUMBLE channel!
Last updated on November 28, 2022.
First appeared on Techaeris after Irish regulators fined Meta $277 million for breaching EU data protection rules.
The tax reporting website sent users' financial information to Facebook.
Flagging services available including TaxAct, TaxSlayer and H&R block sending sensitive data.
Authors: Simon Fondry-Titler, Angie Waller and Colin Letcher
Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes
Big tax firms like H&R Block, TaxAct and TaxSlayer are quietly passing sensitive financial information to Facebook when Americans file their taxes online, The Markup has learned.
Data sent using a commonly used code called metapixels not only contains information such as name and email address, but often includes more detailed information such as the user's earnings, application status, return rates and graduate scholarship amounts. at the expense of
The information sent to Facebook can be used by the company to serve its advertising algorithm and is collected without the person using the tax refund service having a Facebook account or other platform managed by the owner.
Each year, the Internal Revenue Service files about 150 million individual returns electronically, and some of the most widely used e-filing services use Pixel, The Markup found.
For example, when users sign up to file their taxes on the popular Tax Act service, they are asked to provide personal information, including how much money and investments they have made, to calculate their income. According to The Markup's review, a pixel on the Tax Act's website sent some information to Facebook, including users' file status, their adjusted gross income and their refunds. The revenue paid is about a thousand and about a hundred. Pixels sent addicts names in a masked but generally reversed format.
TaxAct, which says it has about three million "consumer and professional users," also uses a Google Analytics tool on its website, and Markup found similar but undisclosed financial data sent to Google through the tool.
TaxAct wasn't the only tax filing service using meta pixels. Tax preparation giant H&R Block, which offers an online filing option that attracts millions of customers a year, has built a pixel on its website that collects information about savings account usage, wallets and payments.
Another widely used logging service, TaxSlayer, collects information about Internet visitors to link them to Facebook accounts as part of the social network's "advanced matching" system. Information collected by Pixel on the TaxSlayer website includes phone numbers, names of users filling out the form and names of dependents added to the declaration. According to the TaxAct, certain demographic information about the user is unclear, but can still be used by Facebook to link the user to an existing profile. TaxSlayer said it filed 10 million federal and state tax returns last year.
Markup has acquired Pixelcode's tax preparation space in its version of TaxSlayer, a service operated by software and financial advisor Ramsey Solutions. This pixel collects more personal information from the tax return summary page, including income and return amount information. This information is not sent when visiting the site, but only when visitors click on drop-down menu topics to view more details about their report.
Intuit, the company behind America's leading online storage software, also uses Pixel. However, Intuit was not sending financial information to TurboTax Meta, but rather the username and device's last login time. The company has completely removed the Pixel from its pages since its launch.
"We take our customers' privacy very seriously," TaxAct spokeswoman Nicole Coburn said in an email. "TaxAct always strives to comply with all IRS rules." H&R Block spokeswoman Angela David said the company "regularly reviews our practices and reviews data as part of our ongoing commitment to privacy."
Ramsey Solutions spokeswoman Megan McConnell said in an email that the company "implemented Metapixel to provide a personalized customer experience."
"We did not know and were never told that Facebook collects personal tax information from the Pixel," the statement said. "As soon as we learned about it, we immediately notified TaxSlayer to stop Pixel Ramsay Smart Tax."
After contacting Markup TaxSlayer, spokeswoman Molly Richardson said in an email that the company removed the Pixel to review its usage. "The privacy of our customers is extremely important and we take the privacy of our customers' information very seriously," Ramsey Solutions said in a statement
Intuit spokesman Rick Heineman said the company's Pixel "does not track, collect or share information users enter into TurboTax when filing taxes," but Intuit "may share some non-downloadable information." Earning as a username with marketing partners to provide a better customer experience, such as preventing Intuit from showing Facebook ads to people with accounts. The company said it was following the rules, but changed a pixel to stop sending usernames.
Mandy Matlock, a professor at Harvard Law School who specializes in tax law, said the markup results show that taxpayers "provide and use very sensitive information."
"It's scary," he said. "Of course."
After Markup contacted TaxAct for comment on Monday, the company's website no longer posted meta-financial information such as income and compensation, but continued to post the names of its dependents. The site sends financial information to Google Analytics. Additionally, as of Monday, TaxSlayer and Ramsey Solutions have removed pixels from their tax return pages and TurboTax has stopped sending usernames with incoming pixels. The H&R Block website continues to post information about health savings accounts and college scholarships.
How does Metapixel track users?
Meta makes pixel code free for everyone, allowing companies to add code to their site as they see fit.
Using the code helps both Facebook and the company. When a customer visits a company's website, pixels can record what they saw, such as a t-shirt. The company can target its Facebook ad to people who have viewed the shirt, allowing the company to reach an audience that is interested in its products.
Meta is also benefiting financially. The company said it uses data collected through tools such as pixels to provide data on users' online habits using algorithms.
This strategy has proven successful for Facebook. This year in 2018, the company told Congress that it has more than two million pixels on the web, a massive data mining operation that most internet users will never see.
John Callas, director of community technology at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said of the markup's findings: "It's surprising, but not surprising."
Some of the sensitive data collected analyzed by Markup appears to be related to Metapixel's default behavior, and some appears to come from updates made by the Tax Filing Service on its behalf or from other software installed on it. site.
For example, MetaPixel collected information about savings accounts and college tuition from the H&R Block Site because this information appeared in web page headers, and MetaPixel's default configuration collected the name of the page the user was viewing along with the web address. and other data. data. He was able to access revenue information from Ramsey Solutions because the information was displayed in an expanded summary when clicked. The summary is available in the pixel as a button, and in the default configuration, the pixel collects text from pressed buttons.
Pixels built into TaxSlayer and TaxAct use a feature called "Auto Advanced Mapping". This feature checks for fields that it thinks may contain personal information, such as a phone number, first and last name, or email address, and provides the resulting information to Meta. This feature on the TaxSlayer website collects the phone numbers and names of filers and their employees. He collects the names of dependents in the tax law.
Data collected by the matching function is sent in an encrypted form known as a hash, which Meta says is used to "protect user privacy". But while a company can often reveal a pre-hidden version of the data, Meta clearly uses pixel data to link to Facebook and Instagram profiles.
This pixel feature is disabled by default when Markup sets up a test pixel associated with a company tag, but can be enabled by clicking the toggle during setup.
When TaxAct sends meta-adjusted gross income dollar amounts, they are passed as a parameter to a "custom event" that the website operator or other website operator adds only if the application configures pixels above the default value. on their website. TaxAct did not respond to questions about whether Pixel was structured this way.
Meta Pixel has limitations on the type of data it can collect. The company says it does not want to send sensitive information, including financial information, and uses automatic filters to block sensitive information. The help center says it doesn't allow sending bank account or credit card numbers or "including personal identifying or financial information."
However, a specific piece of restricted data, earnings, was actually what the two tax websites were sending to Facebook, The Markup found. According to information TaxAct sent to Facebook, it previously sent a parameter called "student_loan_interest" which is now filtered by Pixel before sending.
From January to July of this year, The Markup website tracked pixel usage as part of Pixel Hunt, a partnership with Mozilla Rally. For users participating in the project, they installed a browser extension that provides a copy of any metadata passed to the markup in pixels.
For the first time, Markup has learned that the IRS leaked sensitive information through information provided by members of Pixel Hunt. Markup logged the company's web application accounts and used the Chrome DevTools network component built into the Google Chrome browser to replay and verify the data.
Earlier this year, with the help of Pixel Hunt participants, Markup exposed sensitive information sent to Facebook, the Department of Education's federal student aid website, emergency pregnancy websites and major hospitals online.
Meta collects so much data that even the company itself sometimes doesn't know where it's going. According to a leaked Facebook document written by Facebook privacy engineers earlier this year, Vice said the company "lacks a sufficient degree of control and accountability over how our systems use data," making it difficult to promise not to use some of it. data. for specific purposes.
At the time, a company spokesperson told VC that Facebook "has extensive processes and controls in place to enforce data processing and privacy practices."
In response to Markup's question about the use of pixels on tax websites, Meta spokesman Dale Hogan pointed to the company's policy on sensitive financial information.
"Advertisers should not submit sensitive information about individuals through our commercial tools," Hogan wrote in an emailed statement. "This is against our policy and we are teaching advertisers how to properly deploy business tools to prevent this from happening. Our systems are designed to filter out potentially sensitive data."
Running a business is hard work. Sometimes you feel like you have about a million decisions demanding your full attention, and it's easy for you to get overwhelmed. One of the decisions that every business owner must make is the question of insurance. There are hundreds of types of business insurance, each important in its own way. One form of protection you may not have considered is technology insurance. If you're not sure if it's worth paying for this service, here's a quick checklist to see if you need it.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
What technology have you developed?
The first box in the checklist is about what your business does. Although there are many aspects to technology insurance, one of the most common ways is to protect new technologies from theft. If your business is involved in technology development in any capacity, an insurance policy can protect you and your work from internet hackers. Whether you're developing a website or programming a new video game, technology insurance will protect your hard work against theft.
Additionally, if your business manufactures electrical components, you can purchase a technology insurance policy. While this policy protects your intellectual work from theft, it also protects you if something goes wrong and someone gets hurt. For example, if you are manufacturing a computer component and a leaking battery causes injury, Insuretech's policy will protect your business from the consequences. If your company is involved in technology development, it would be a good idea to include technology insurance in your coverage.
Do you work with high value data?
The second field in the checklist is your database contents. Tech companies aren't the only ones who need special insurance policies. If you're dealing with online data, it might be a good idea to cover your business as well. Depending on the type of data you process, your competitors and other interested parties may try to hack into your servers and steal information. Although it sounds like a scene from a spy movie, it happens all too often with big tech companies. Instead of leaving your data unprotected, you can purchase an insurance policy to protect yourself.
With that in mind, securing your IT department can help prevent potential data breaches. If all of your company's computers and servers are working properly, disclosure of confidential information will be more difficult and could harm your business. Whether you work in R&D, federal contractors, or just human resources for a large corporation, a technology insurance policy will help keep your information safe. .
Do you have financial information online?
The last checkbox is your financial statements. If your business is better, you pay digitally. All information about your employees, your bank and your business accounts is online. If the worst happens and someone outside your company gets the information, do you have a contingency plan? Technology insurance can help protect you in the event of a financial data breach. While it's impossible to predict when someone will attempt to steal data, insurtech can help your business recover and fight back.
Likewise, if your company handles payroll or HR for another company, you need to make sure your data is safe. Whether or not you manage your employees' financial information, you want to secure your servers and spreadsheets. Instead of dealing with uncontrolled data breaches, purchasing a technology insurance policy will give you peace of mind at work.
In short, technology assurance is a wise move for many companies. If your company checks one of these boxes, you can obtain the appropriate policy.
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