How many times have you called someone from your mobile phone instead of sending an email because you didn’t want a “paper trail?”  Maybe because you didn’t want an email to be forwarded on because the information was confidential.  Perhaps the message you chose to conduct over a direct phone call from your mobile contained key product or shipping dates.  Perhaps the information was a bit more sensitive. We’ve all likely done it at one point or another — picked up the phone instead of pressing “send” on an email because we believe it’s more direct; and, frankly, we often believe it is more secure.

Last week I posted an update on Cellcrypt, a company who specializes in securing voice traffic on mobile phones through their unique peer-to-peer device application.  Cellcrypt had just released it’s application for the latest Bold 9700, Curve 8900, and BlackBerry Pearl devices.  My original take was, just a bit, tongue-in-cheek.  It seemed a bit of a niche product, securing mobile to mobile voice calls.  Well, last week I got the chance to sit down with Kathleen Peters, Cellcrypt’s General Manager for North & South America, and got an eye-opening view of the Cellcrypt solution.

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This is for all of you Christians out there, in love with your own Roxane but too flummoxed to speak eloquently without a little help. Now, instead of hiding Cyrano in a nearby bush – ever fearful of being caught – as you regurgitate his lovely lines, you can slip this Brickhouse Security Invisible Bluetooth Earpiece in place and enjoy two way communication without anyone being the wiser.

But you’d never do that…right?

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“Hey D,” Elana said as she came down the step the other night, “did you spend $170 at Macy’s yesterday?”

“Macy’s??” I asked, “No way. I mean, when was the last time I went shopping for any non-tech item without you? Why do you ask?”

“Because AmexEx emailed and was checking up on a suspect purchase.” she said shaking her head.

Yup, YET AGAIN someone was trying to use one of my cards to make purchases. (The last time it was caught much later by the company whose card had been compromised.) As luck would have it I was just starting a review of an item that promises to help with online shopping and, in the process make it less likely that your credit card will be compromised when shopping on line.

The item is the SmartSwipe and it…

…protects your credit card information from malicious software while you shop online
…provides proactive protection against ‘phishing’ sites
…provides added protection against Man in the Middle attacks

Here is a look…

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We told you it was coming, and now General Motors and OnStar report the first successful use of their Stolen Vehicle Slowdown technology to end a carjacking in California.

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The new Amber Alert GPS is a handy (albeit costly at $279 plus monitoring fees) device for parents wanting to keep track of their children. Slip the GPS into a backpack or other secure location. Throughout the day you receive text messages that show you exactly where your child is. Safety zones can be setup so if for example they were to wander away from school during the day you would automatically receive an alert. Once you’ve received an alert you can log into a web site to show the exact track that they’ve taken (requires unlimited service plan). There’s also an SOS button that can be activated by your child in the event of an emergency, a speed alert (handy for teens) and temperature alert. This device lasts up to 12 hours on a single charge (the company sells other larger models that last 5 and 21 days respectively). Current price for the Amber Alert GPS is $279 and monthly recurring monitoring fees add another $9.99 for the basic service which allows for 75 monthly alerts.

Amber Alert GPS

It’s been a bad, bad week for data of all types, it seems…

Macrumors is reporting on a new bug in Snow Leopard that wipes out user data. Continue Reading

This is one of those bits of news that bears repeating, particularly if you use online banking.  CNET is reporting about a new type of Trojan horse, known as URLZone, that is designed not to steal your login information for online banking sites, but rather to actually steal your money while you’re on the bank’s website.  URLZone is sophisticated enough that it calculates how much money to steal based on how much is in your account, then displays a false balance to the user so as not to arouse suspicion.

The Trojan is being distributed through emails, infected sites that carry the malware, or an Adobe PDF.   It exploits a hole in Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, IE7, IE8, and Opera running on Windows systems.  According to the firm that identified the Trojan horse, about 90,000 computers have visited sites with the malware, over 6,000 have been infected, and a few hundred have actually been used to steal the users’ money.

For more details, see CNET’s articles here and here.

[via CNET]

Hotmail users have been advised to change their passwords after a massive security breach occurred where over 10,000 account details have been posted publicly online.

Users on the hotmail.com, msn.com, and live.com domains are all affected. Data that was posted online has since been removed, but was mainly European-based account details from letters A – B. Microsoft has encouraged users to change their passwords immediately.

More information can be found on the Windows Live Team Blog.

Hotmail: stolen email account details appear online (via @pobox)

New York-based BrickHouse Security is not only dedicated to assisting the public and government with their security, safety, protection, covert surveillance and counter-surveillance needs, but they also want to offer peace of mind for our mobile environments as well.

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Microsoft is set to release today their Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus software for users of Windows XP, Vista, and 7. This program has been in beta since June 2009 and is a free replacement to the paid Windows Live OneCare. The software takes aim squarely at Windows computer users not already protected by security software. Each day the program auto-updates virus definitions with no need for a paid annual subscription. Best of all the program itself is free and certainly Microsoft is hoping that it’s use will cut down on reported security issues with their operating system – most of which are caused by careless users opening emails from long lost Nigerian Uncles promising millions in wealth.

Microsoft Security Essentials via PC World

Picture this: You live two and a half miles from your front gate, and you want to know who is entering or leaving your property; or you own a half million dollar mobile home that is kept at a storage facility, and you want to check in on it daily without actually driving to the edge of your city; or you own a vacation home that is only visited a few times a year, and you want to make sure that no one is squatting there when you are gone. Those are just three examples of why someone might need the new Brickhouse Security cellular-enabled Global Watchman.

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I recently checked out the Facebook Fan Check Application on Facebook.  It does some sort of calculation on your friend list and arranges your top 15 friends in a order and it looks like to me the order is in the amount of Facebook activity that you and your friends have.  For example, my brother is actually number one on my list followed by my fellow Tech Show Fan, Claudio Miranda.   Once this calculation is made, then it will create a image with all of the Facebook profile pics of your friends and then it tags all of your friends.  That is the extent of the application.  In fact, it seems to generate more conversation amongst your friends that is useful and fun rather than the application spam you get from people wanting you to be their neighbor in Farmville or help them out in Yoville.  Well, the bad guys have taken the hint that it is popular and somehow a rumor got started that it was a virus.

Spammers and malware writers have taken a hold of this and started creating the false virus checker type of malware sites and these sites are trending to the top in Google searches.  Clicking on a lot of these top links will actually cause your more problems than Fan Check does. Continue Reading

There’s a new Trojan horse computer virus that may affect Skype users. Although there aren’t any widespread cases of this Trojan actually impacting Skype users. According to Symantec Security Response:

Trojan.Peskspy listens in the data traveling between the Skype process and the audio device, it gathers the audio independently of any application-specific protocols or encryption applied by Skype when it passes voice data at the network level. Essentially, it sits below these security measures, recording the audio at the Windows level—before outbound audio from the microphone gets to Skype and after incoming audio leaves Skype and reaches the speakers.

Finally, the Trojan contains a back door, which enables an attacker to have the stolen audio conversations sent to a predetermined location, where they can later be listened to.

Naturally the Symantec recommeneded solution is to keep your virus definitions up-to-date.

Symantec

F-Secure has released the next version of their Internet Security suite, Internet Security 2010.  This version promises better performance, browsing protection with unique exploit shield, a better user experience, parental controls, a redesigned scanning technology, new statistics and Windows 7 support.

To celebrate, F-Secure is having a twitter contest.  All you have to do is follow @FSecure and then tweet the following by 11:59 PM PDT on September 17, 2009: Get your chance to win a Nikon D60 from @FSecure http://bit.ly/cznad #F-Secure – Better security in every way http://www.f-secure.com

Prizes include a Nikon D60, a Nikon CoolPix Video Camera or 1 of 5 copies of F-Secure Internet Security 2010.  For more details on the contest, head on over to the F-Secure website.

Recently released iPhone 3.0.1 firmware protects against receiving malicious SMS messages (no, not from your mother).  These messages can take over your iPhone, as demonstrated by security researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner at Black Hat.  There are no mentions of any other fixes or updates in the Release Notes.  Also this update will not affect your ability to Jailbreak your phone.  Having tested the new update extensively I can say that I have not received one malicious text since updating and only one slightly snippy one. Update your iPhone by connecting to iTunes and checking for updates.

Via Gizmodo