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ZDNet – “Three billion phishing emails are sent every day. But one change could make life much harder for scammers. Phishing attacks remain extremely popular with cyber criminals – but by applying DMARC, organisations can help thwart them. Cyber criminals are sending over three billion emails a day as part of phishing attacks designed to look like they come from trusted senders. By spoofing the sender identity used in the ‘from’ field in messages, cyber criminals attempt to lure potential victims into opening emails from names they trust. This could be the name of a trusted brand like a retailer or delivery company, or even, in more sophisticated attacks, the name of their CEO or a colleague. These phishing attacks might sound simple, but they work – and that’s why so many of these messages are distributed by cyber criminals. And according to a report by email security company Valimail, over three billion spoofing messages are sent every day, accounting for 1% of all email traffic…”
NBCMiami – “CARES Act Unintentionally Leads to an Increase in Credit Report Mistakes – Credit reports errors are quite common. In fact, a study found that one in four people has at least one error on their report, which Consumer Reports money reporter Octavio Blanco says can lead to problems. “The worst thing that you can have is to be surprised that there’s an error and be denied credit because you didn’t know something was incorrect,” he added. While credit report errors are not new, the number of complaints about this problem to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has reached record levels, and a big reason for that is the CARES Act. Last year, at the beginning of the pandemic, the deferral government offered a lifeline to people who were struggling financially. Companies that offered federally backed loans, including mortgages, student loans and some credit card and car loans, provided deferral options without a late payment penalty. “But what’s happening,” said Blanco, “is it’s causing confusion and it’s leading to those deferred payments showing as late, and so that’s really hurting people.”….
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Subject: Ulysses Group Claims It Can Track Nearly Any Car in Real-Time
Source: Gizmodo
https://gizmodo.com/this-surveillance-company-claims-it-can-track-nearly-an-1846494534
A defense contractor that claims to have access to motor vehicle location data on a global scale says it wants to use that data to help U.S. federal agencies conduct more efficient spying and military operations.
The Ulysses Group, which offers “cutting edge operational and intelligence services, support, and equipment” to government clients, says it can “access over 15 billion vehicle locations” worldwide every month. This data, which can be viewed “historically” or in real-time, should be used operationally by U.S. agencies, the company says.
A document obtained by the office of Sen. Ron Wyden, which was first reported by Motherboard and shared with Gizmodo, shows Ulysses claims to be able to “remotely geolocate” cars in “nearly any country,” with the exceptions of Cuba and North Korea. In the document, the firm explains how this might be useful to a government agency:
…
Maybe the worst thing about this whole story is that it’s not entirely clear where a company like Ulysses gets all its data from. Andrea Amico, the founder of Privacy4Cars told Vicethat, due to the convoluted nature of vehicle data collection, there are a whole variety of sources where locations might be procured from: “the company that provides the map itself, for instance, would have access to it; the company that provides the infotainment system may have access to it; the company that provides the traffic data may have access to it; the company that provides the parking data may have access to it. Right there and then you’ve got five companies that are getting your location.”
A call to the Ulysses Group wasn’t immediately returned. A call to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers for commentary on this story didn’t garner a response either (the group represents the interests of car giants like Ford, Honda, Subaru, Hyundai, BMW, Chrysler and others, and has previously published a set of consumer data privacy guidelines for the industry). We will update this story if we hear back.