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Today — November 22nd 2025Security

This Week in Scams: DoorDash Breach and Fake Flight Cancellation Texts

By: McAfee

Leading off our news on scams this week, a heads-up for DoorDash users, merchants, and Dashers too. A data breach of an undisclosed size may have impacted you.

Per an email sent by the company to “affected DoorDash users where required,” a third party gained access to data that may have included a mix of the following:

  • First and last name
  • Physical address
  • Phone number
  • Email address

You might have got the email too. And even if you didn’t, anyone who’s used DoorDash should take note.

As to the potential scope of the breach, DoorDash made no comment in its email or a post on their help site. Of note, though, is that one of the help lines cited in their post mentions a French-language number—implying that the breach might affect Canadian users as well. Any reach beyond the U.S. and Canada remains unclear.

Per the company’s Q2 financial report this year, “hundreds of thousands of merchants, tens of millions of consumers, and millions of Dashers across over 30 countries every month.” Stats published elsewhere put the user base at more than 40 million people, which includes some 600,000 merchants.

The company underscored that no “sensitive” info like Social Security Numbers (and potentially Canadian Social Insurance Numbers) were involved in the breach. This marks the third notable breach by the well-known delivery service, with incidents in 2019 and 2022

Image of DoorDash email about data breach.
Image of DoorDash email about data breach.

What to do if you think you got caught up in the DoorDash breach

While the types of info involved here appear to be limited, any time there’s a breach, we suggest the following:

Protect your credit and identity. Checking your credit and getting identity theft protection can help keep you safer in the aftermath of a breach. Further, a security freeze can help prevent identity theft if you spot any unusual activity. You can get all three in place with our McAfee+ Advanced or Ultimate plans.

Keep an eye out for phishing attacks. With some personal info in hand, bad actors might seek out more. They might follow up a breach with rounds of phishing attacks that direct you to bogus sites designed to steal your personal info. As with any text or email you get from a company, make sure it’s legitimate before clicking or tapping on any links. Instead, go straight to the appropriate website or contact them by phone directly. Also, protections like our Scam Detector and Web Protection can alert you to scams and sketchy links before they take you somewhere you don’t want to go.

Update your passwords and use two-factor authentication. Changing your password is a strong preventive measure. Strong and unique passwords are best, which means never reusing your passwords across different sites and platforms. Using a password manager helps you stay on top of it all while also storing your passwords securely.

Attention travelers: Now boarding, a rise in flight cancellation scams

Even as the FAA lifted recent flight restrictions on Monday morning, scammers are still taking advantage of lingering uncertainty, and upcoming holiday travel, with a spate of flight cancellation scams.

How the scam works

Fake cancellation texts

The first comes via a text message saying that your flight has been cancelled and you must call or rebook quickly to avoid losing your seat—usually in 30 minutes. It’s a typical scammer trick, where they hook you with a combination of bad news and urgency. Of course, the phone number and the site don’t connect you with your airline. They connect you to a scammer, who walks away with your money and your card info to potentially rip you off again.

Fake airline sites in search results

The second uses paid search results. We’ve talked about this trick in our blogs before. Because paid search results appear ahead of organic results, scammers spin up bogus sites that mirror legitimate ones and promote them in paid search. In this way, they can look like a certain well-known airline and appear in search before the real airline’s listing. With that, people often mistakenly click the first link they see. From there, the scam plays out just as above as the scammer comes away with your money and card info.

How to avoid flight cancellation scams

Q: How can I confirm whether my flight is really canceled?
A: Check directly in your airline’s official app or website. Never click links in texts or emails.

Q: How can I spot a fake airline search result?
A: Look for “Ad”/“Sponsored,” confirm the URL, and check that the site uses HTTPS, not HTTP.

Q: Is there a tool that flags fake booking sites?
A: Scam-spotting tools like Scam Detector and Web Protection can identify sketchy links before you click.

In search, first isn’t always best.

Look closely to see if your top results are tagged with “Sponsored” or “Ad” in some way, realizing it might be in fine print. Further, look at the web address. Does it start with “https” (the “s” means secure), because many scam sites simply use an unsecured “http” site. Also, does the link look right? For example, if you’re searching for “Generic Airlines,” is the link the expected “genericairlines dot-com” or something else? Scammers often try to spoof it in some way by adding to the name or by creating a subdomain like this: “genericairlines.rebookyourflight dot-com.”

Get a scam detector to spot bogus links for you.

Even with these tips and tools, spotting bogus links with the naked eye can get tricky. Some look “close enough” to a legitimate link that you might overlook it. Yet a combination of features in our McAfee+ plans can help do that work for you.  Our Scam Detector helps you stay safer with advanced scam detection technology built to spot and stop scams across text messages, emails, and videos. Likewise, our Web Protection will alert you if a link might take you to a sketchy site. It’ll also block those sites if you accidentally tap or click on a bad link.

Scammers Hijack a Trusted Mass Texting Provider

You’ve probably seen plenty of messages sent by short code numbers. They’re the five- or six-digit codes used to send texts instead of by a phone number. For example, your cable company might use one to send a text for resetting a streaming password, the same goes for your pharmacy to let you know a prescription is ready or your state’s DoT to issue a winter travel alert, and so on.

According to NBC News, scammers sent hundreds of thousands of texts using codes used by the state of New York, a charity, and a political organizing group. The article also cites an email sent to messaging providers by the U.S. Short Code Registry, an industry nonprofit that maintains those codes in the U.S. In the email, the registry said attempted attacks on messaging providers are on the rise.

What this means for the rest of us is that just about any text from an unknown number, and now short codes, might contain malicious links and content. It’s one more reason to arm yourself with the one-two punch of our Scam Detector and Web Protection.

What are short codes?
Short codes are 5–6 digit numbers used by pharmacies, utilities, banks, and government agencies to send official alerts.

Why this attack is unusual
Scammers didn’t spoof short codes—they gained access to real ones used by:

  • The State of New York
  • A charity
  • A political organizing group

Why this matters
Even texts from legitimate short-code numbers can no longer be trusted at face value.

What to do now

  • Treat any unexpected text—even from a short code—as suspicious.
  • Don’t tap links.
  • Verify by going directly to the official website or app.

Quick Scam Roundup

Consumers warned over AI chatbots giving inaccurate financial advice 

  • Our advice: Always verify recommendations with trusted financial sources

Why our own clicks are often cybercrime’s greatest allies

  • Our advice: Many attacks rely on rushed or emotional decisions, slow down before clicking

TikTok malware scam uses fake software activation guides to steal data

  • Our advice: Download software only from official sources

 

We’ll be back after the Thanksgiving weekend with more updates, scam news, and ways to stay cyber safe.

The post This Week in Scams: DoorDash Breach and Fake Flight Cancellation Texts appeared first on McAfee Blog.

US Border Patrol Is Spying on Millions of American Drivers

By: Dell Cameron， Andrew Couts
Plus: The SEC lets SolarWinds off the hook, Microsoft stops a historic DDoS attack, and FBI documents reveal the agency spied on an immigration activist Signal group in New York City.
Yesterday — November 21st 2025Security

This Hacker Conference Installed a Literal Anti-Virus Monitoring System

By: Violet Blue
At New Zealand's Kawaiicon cybersecurity convention, organizers hacked together a way for attendees to track CO2 levels throughout the venue—even before they arrived.

The OSINT playbook: Find your weak spots before attackers do

Here’s how open-source intelligence helps trace your digital footprint and uncover your weak points, plus a few essential tools to connect the dots
Before yesterdaySecurity

4 People Indicted in Alleged Conspiracy to Smuggle Supercomputers and Nvidia Chips to China

By: Paresh Dave
A federal prosecutor alleged that one defendant boasted that his father “had engaged in similar business for the Chinese Communist Party.”

Mozilla Says It’s Finally Done With Two-Faced Onerep

By: BrianKrebs

In March 2024, Mozilla said it was winding down its collaboration with Onerep — an identity protection service offered with the Firefox web browser that promises to remove users from hundreds of people-search sites — after KrebsOnSecurity revealed Onerep’s founder had created dozens of people-search services and was continuing to operate at least one of them. Sixteen months later, however, Mozilla is still promoting Onerep. This week, Mozilla announced its partnership with Onerep will officially end next month.

Mozilla Monitor. Image Mozilla Monitor Plus video on Youtube.

In a statement published Tuesday, Mozilla said it will soon discontinue Monitor Plus, which offered data broker site scans and automated personal data removal from Onerep.

“We will continue to offer our free Monitor data breach service, which is integrated into Firefox’s credential manager, and we are focused on integrating more of our privacy and security experiences in Firefox, including our VPN, for free,” the advisory reads.

Mozilla said current Monitor Plus subscribers will retain full access through the wind-down period, which ends on Dec. 17, 2025. After that, those subscribers will automatically receive a prorated refund for the unused portion of their subscription.

“We explored several options to keep Monitor Plus going, but our high standards for vendors, and the realities of the data broker ecosystem made it challenging to consistently deliver the level of value and reliability we expect for our users,” Mozilla statement reads.

On March 14, 2024, KrebsOnSecurity published an investigation showing that Onerep’s Belarusian CEO and founder Dimitiri Shelest launched dozens of people-search services since 2010, including a still-active data broker called Nuwber that sells background reports on people. Shelest released a lengthy statement wherein he acknowledged maintaining an ownership stake in Nuwber, a data broker he founded in 2015 — around the same time he launched Onerep.

How to Follow McAfee on Google News in One Simple Step

By: McAfee

Want McAfee’s latest scam alerts, cybersecurity tips, and safety updates to show up automatically in your Google News feed? You can follow McAfee directly on Google News with a single tap.

Google News now gives every official publisher a dedicated page — and McAfee has one. Once you follow us, our newest articles will appear in your Following tab and throughout your personalized news feed whenever they’re relevant to you.

Here’s how to do it in seconds.

Follow McAfee on Google News

Step 1: Go to our official Google News page

Tap or click this link:

McAfee Official Google News Source Page

This opens McAfee’s verified publisher page inside Google News.

Image shows McAfee's Google News source page.
Image shows McAfee’s Google News source page.

Step 2: Tap the ⭐ “Follow” button

You’ll see a star icon at the top of the page.

Tap Follow and you’re done.

That’s it — McAfee is now part of your personalized news feed.

What happens after you follow McAfee

When you tap the star:

  • McAfee appears under Following → Sources in Google News
  • Our stories show up more often when you search for cybersecurity topics
  • You’ll see McAfee alerts, safety tips, and threat updates sooner
  • Google prioritizes McAfee when we publish on topics you care about (AI scams, malware, identity theft, etc.)

No settings menus. No advanced search. Just one tap.

How to Unfollow or Manage Your Sources

If you ever want to update your feed:

  1. Open Google News

  2. Go to Following → Sources

  3. Tap the star again to unfollow

  4. Or rearrange which sources matter most to you

 

Image shows how to find your preferred sources in Google News

FAQs

Do I need the Google News app?

No. Following works in both browsers and the app.

Will this make McAfee show up first for every search?

Not automatically — but Google does prioritize publishers you follow when the content is relevant.

Can I follow McAfee on multiple devices?

Yes. It’s tied to your Google account, not your phone or laptop.

Is the follow button safe?

Absolutely. This is Google’s built-in publisher follow system.

Stay Updated, Stay Safer

Cyber threats move fast — following McAfee on Google News makes it easier to stay ahead of scams, breaches, and emerging AI risks.

The post How to Follow McAfee on Google News in One Simple Step appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Ghost Tapping: What It Is, How It Works, and How to Stay Safe

By: McAfee

Contactless payments make everyday purchases fast and easy. Yet with that convenience comes a risk: ghost tapping.

In crowded spaces or rushed moments, a scammer could trigger a small tap-to-pay charge or push through a higher amount without your clear consent. Understanding what ghost tapping is, how it happens, and what to do next helps you keep your money and identity secure.

What Is Ghost Tapping?

Ghost tapping is a form of contactless fraud where someone attempts to initiate a tap-to-pay transaction without your approval.

Tap-to-pay cards and mobile wallets on phones use a technology called “near-field communication,” or NFC. That lets them communicate with things like a point-of-sale device for payment at a very close range. It’s generally quite safe, particularly because of the “near” part. You have to get very close to make the connection.

Even so, proximity and distraction can be exploited. Attackers may try to skim limited details from RFID (Radio Frequency Identification technology) cards or NFC cards, or nudge you into approving a payment you didn’t intend. If you’ve ever wondered what ghost tapping is, think of it as an opportunistic, in-person scam that abuses the tap-to-pay moment rather than a remote hack.

How Ghost Tapping Happens

Most schemes rely on getting close and catching you off guard. A criminal might carry a portable reader, press into a pocket or bag, and attempt a low-value charge. Others set up tampered terminals, rushing you so you don’t check the amount.

Consider These Two Scenarios:

You’re at a busy farmer’s market. A scammer with a phone equipped with a point-of-sale app stumbles into you and gets close enough to your card to trigger a transaction. It’s almost like a modern-day pickpocket move, where the bump distracts the victim from the theft as it happens.

In another case, you might come across a phony vendor. Maybe someone’s selling cheap hats outside a football game or someone’s going around your neighborhood selling candy, supposedly to support a charity. In scenarios like these, you tap to pay with your phone just as you’d expect… but with one exception: the “vendor” jacks up the purchase price. They hurry you through the transaction, so quickly that you don’t review the screen before you confirm payment.

We’ve also seen reports of people getting Apple Pay scammed by impostor merchants who exploit quick taps and small screens. While mobile wallets add strong safeguards, poor visibility and social pressure can still lead to losses.

The Better Business Bureau on Ghost Tapping:

A report posted on the Scam Tracker at the Better Business Bureau (BBB) shows how the phony vendor version of this scam allegedly played out:

“An individual is going door to door in [location redacted] claiming to be selling chocolate on behalf of [redacted] to support special needs students. He says that he can only accept tap-to-pay to get people to pay with a card. He then charges large amounts to the card without the cardholder being able to see the amount. He got my mother for $537… Another victim for $1100… He changes neighborhoods frequently to avoid getting caught.”

Signs of Ghost Tapping and Common Myths

Early ghost detecting starts with vigilance. Watch for unfamiliar small charges, especially after crowded events, and alerts tied to contactless transactions. If you see odd activity tied to RFID cards or NFC cards, act quickly.

Common myths persist. Attackers can’t drain accounts from far away, clone full cards via a tap, or bypass wallet protections easily. Most successful cases hinge on proximity, distraction, and human error. Meanwhile, Apple Pay scam stories often involve rushed taps and unverified totals.

Effective ghost detecting focuses on timely alerts, careful review, and immediate response.

How to Protect Yourself from Ghost Tapping Scams

The BBB, which recently broke the story of these scams, offers several pieces of advice. We have some advice we can add as well.

From the BBB…

  • Store your cards securely. An RFID-blocking wallet or sleeve can help stop wireless skimming.
  • Always confirm payment details. Before tapping your card or phone, check the merchant’s name and amount on the terminal screen.
  • Set up transaction alerts. Many banks allow real-time notifications for every charge.
  • Keep an eye on your accounts. Daily checks help you spot fraud faster.
  • Limit tap-to-pay use in high-risk areas. Consider swiping or inserting your card instead.

From us at McAfee…

Monitor your identity and your credit.

The problem with many card scams is that they can lead to further identity theft and fraud, which you only find out about once the damage is done. Actively monitoring your identity and credit goes beyond single transaction alerts from your bank and can spot an emerging problem before it becomes an even bigger one. You can take care of both easily with timely notifications from our credit monitoring and identity monitoring features, all as part of our McAfee+ plans.

When you’re out and about, consider what you’re carrying—and where you carry it.

The physical safety of your phone and cards counts as well. While ghost tapping scams are new, old-school physical pickpocketing attempts persist. When it comes to devices and things like debit cards, credit cards, and even cash, keep what you bring with you to the bare minimum when you go out. This can cut your losses if the unfortunate happens. If you have a credit card and ID holder attached to the back of your phone, you may want to remove your cards from it. That way, if your phone gets snatched, those important cards don’t get snatched as well.

When in doubt, shop with a credit card.

In the U.S., credit cards offer you additional protection that debit cards don’t. That’s thanks to the Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA). It limits your liability to $50 for fraudulent charges on a credit card if you report the loss to your issuer within 60 days.

The post Ghost Tapping: What It Is, How It Works, and How to Stay Safe appeared first on McAfee Blog.

With the Rise of AI, Cisco Sounds an Urgent Alarm About the Risks of Aging Tech

By: Lily Hay Newman
Generative AI is making it even easier for attackers to exploit old and often forgotten network equipment. Replacing it takes investment, but Cisco is making the case that it’s worth it.

WIRED Roundup: DHS’s Privacy Breach, AI Romantic Affairs, and Google Sues Text Scammers

By: Zoë Schiffer， Brian Barrett
In this episode of Uncanny Valley, we discuss our scoop about how the Department of Homeland Security illegally collected Chicago residents’ data for months, as well as the news of the week.

The Cloudflare Outage May Be a Security Roadmap

By: BrianKrebs

An intermittent outage at Cloudflare on Tuesday briefly knocked many of the Internet’s top destinations offline. Some affected Cloudflare customers were able to pivot away from the platform temporarily so that visitors could still access their websites. But security experts say doing so may have also triggered an impromptu network penetration test for organizations that have come to rely on Cloudflare to block many types of abusive and malicious traffic.

At around 6:30 EST/11:30 UTC on Nov. 18, Cloudflare’s status page acknowledged the company was experiencing “an internal service degradation.” After several hours of Cloudflare services coming back up and failing again, many websites behind Cloudflare found they could not migrate away from using the company’s services because the Cloudflare portal was unreachable and/or because they also were getting their domain name system (DNS) services from Cloudflare.

However, some customers did manage to pivot their domains away from Cloudflare during the outage. And many of those organizations probably need to take a closer look at their web application firewall (WAF) logs during that time, said Aaron Turner, a faculty member at IANS Research.

Turner said Cloudflare’s WAF does a good job filtering out malicious traffic that matches any one of the top ten types of application-layer attacks, including credential stuffing, cross-site scripting, SQL injection, bot attacks and API abuse. But he said this outage might be a good opportunity for Cloudflare customers to better understand how their own app and website defenses may be failing without Cloudflare’s help.

“Your developers could have been lazy in the past for SQL injection because Cloudflare stopped that stuff at the edge,” Turner said. “Maybe you didn’t have the best security QA [quality assurance] for certain things because Cloudflare was the control layer to compensate for that.”

Turner said one company he’s working with saw a huge increase in log volume and they are still trying to figure out what was “legit malicious” versus just noise.

“It looks like there was about an eight hour window when several high-profile sites decided to bypass Cloudflare for the sake of availability,” Turner said. “Many companies have essentially relied on Cloudflare for the OWASP Top Ten [web application vulnerabilities] and a whole range of bot blocking. How much badness could have happened in that window? Any organization that made that decision needs to look closely at any exposed infrastructure to see if they have someone persisting after they’ve switched back to Cloudflare protections.”

Turner said some cybercrime groups likely noticed when an online merchant they normally stalk stopped using Cloudflare’s services during the outage.

“Let’s say you were an attacker, trying to grind your way into a target, but you felt that Cloudflare was in the way in the past,” he said. “Then you see through DNS changes that the target has eliminated Cloudflare from their web stack due to the outage. You’re now going to launch a whole bunch of new attacks because the protective layer is no longer in place.”

Nicole Scott, senior product marketing manager at the McLean, Va. based Replica Cyber, called yesterday’s outage “a free tabletop exercise, whether you meant to run one or not.”

“That few-hour window was a live stress test of how your organization routes around its own control plane and shadow IT blossoms under the sunlamp of time pressure,” Scott said in a post on LinkedIn. “Yes, look at the traffic that hit you while protections were weakened. But also look hard at the behavior inside your org.”

Scott said organizations seeking security insights from the Cloudflare outage should ask themselves:

1. What was turned off or bypassed (WAF, bot protections, geo blocks), and for how long?
2. What emergency DNS or routing changes were made, and who approved them?
3. Did people shift work to personal devices, home Wi-Fi, or unsanctioned Software-as-a-Service providers to get around the outage?
4. Did anyone stand up new services, tunnels, or vendor accounts “just for now”?
5. Is there a plan to unwind those changes, or are they now permanent workarounds?
6. For the next incident, what’s the intentional fallback plan, instead of decentralized improvisation?

In a postmortem published Tuesday evening, Cloudflare said the disruption was not caused, directly or indirectly, by a cyberattack or malicious activity of any kind.

“Instead, it was triggered by a change to one of our database systems’ permissions which caused the database to output multiple entries into a ‘feature file’ used by our Bot Management system,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince wrote. “That feature file, in turn, doubled in size. The larger-than-expected feature file was then propagated to all the machines that make up our network.”

Cloudflare estimates that roughly 20 percent of websites use its services, and with much of the modern web relying heavily on a handful of other cloud providers including AWS and Azure, even a brief outage at one of these platforms can create a single point of failure for many organizations.

Martin Greenfield, CEO at the IT consultancy Quod Orbis, said Tuesday’s outage was another reminder that many organizations may be putting too many of their eggs in one basket.

“There are several practical and overdue fixes,” Greenfield advised. “Split your estate. Spread WAF and DDoS protection across multiple zones. Use multi-vendor DNS. Segment applications so a single provider outage doesn’t cascade. And continuously monitor controls to detect single-vendor dependency.”

Vaping Is ‘Everywhere’ in Schools—Sparking a Bathroom Surveillance Boom

By: Mark Keierleber
Schools in the US are installing vape-detection tech in bathrooms to thwart student nicotine and cannabis use. A new investigation reveals the impact of using spying to solve a problem.

Venmo 101: Making Safer Payments with the App

By: McAfee

As the holiday season ramps up, so do group dinners, shared travel costs, gift exchanges, and all the little moments where someone says, “Just Venmo me.”

With more people sending and splitting money this time of year, scammers know it’s prime time to target payment apps. Here’s how to keep your Venmo transactions safe during one of the busiest — and riskiest — payment seasons.

What kind of scams are on Venmo?

Venmo scams come in all shapes, and many of them look like variations of email phishing and text scams. The scammers behind them will pose as Venmo customer service reps who ask for your login credentials. Other scammers offer bogus cash prizes and pyramid schemes that lure in victims with the promise of quick cash. Some scammers will use the app itself to impersonate friends and family to steal money.

Venmo has a dedicated web page on the topic of scams, and lists the following as the top Venmo scams out there:

·       Fake Prize or Cash Reward

·       Call from Venmo

·       Call from Tech Support

·       Fake Payment Confirmation

·       Pre-payment for Goods and Services

 ·       Stranger Posing as a Friend

·       Payments from Strangers

·       Offers to Make Money Fast

·       Paper Check Scam

·       Romance Scam

 

Venmo has thorough instructions to combat these scams and breaks them down in detail on its site. They also provide preventative tips and steps to take if you unfortunately fall victim to one of these scams. Broadly speaking, though, avoiding Venmo scams breaks down into a few straightforward steps.

How to avoid getting scammed on Venmo

1) Never share private details.

Scammers often pose as customer service reps to pump info out of their victims. They’ll ask for things like bank account info, debit card or credit card numbers, or even passwords and authentication codes sent to your phone. Never share this info. Legitimate reps from legitimate companies like Venmo won’t request it.

2) Know when Venmo might ask for your Social Security number.

In the U.S., Venmo is regulated by the Treasury Department. As such, Venmo might require your SSN in certain circumstances. Venmo details the cases where they might need your SSN for reporting, here on their website. Note that this is an exception to what we say about sharing SSNs and tax ID numbers. As a payment app, Venmo might have legitimate reasons to request it. However, don’t send this info by email or text (any email or text that asks you to do that is a scam). Instead, always use the mobile app by going to Settings  –> Identity Verification.

3) Keep an eye out for scam emails and texts.

Venmo always sends communications through its official “venmo.com” domain name. If you receive an email that claims to be from Venmo but that doesn’t use “venmo.com,” it’s a scam. Never click or tap on links in emails or texts supposedly sent by Venmo.

4) Be suspicious of the messages you get. Imposters are afoot.

Another broad category of scams includes people who aren’t who they say they are. In the case of Venmo, scammers will create imposter accounts that look like they might be a friend or family member but aren’t. If you receive an unexpected and likely urgent-sounding request for payment, contact that person outside the app. See if it’s really them.

5) When sending money, keep an eye open for alerts from the app.

Just recently, Venmo added a new feature, dynamic alerts, which helps protect people when sending money via the “Friends and Family” option. It pops up an alert if the app detects a potentially fraudulent transaction and includes info that describes the level of risk involved. In the cases of highly risky payments, Venmo might decline the transaction altogether. This adds another level of protection to Friends and Family payments, which are non-refundable in cases of fraud. Further, this underscores another important point about using Venmo: only pay people you absolutely know and trust.

More ways to stay safe on Venmo

Keep your transactions private. Venmo has a social component that can display a transaction between two people and allow others to comment on it. Payment amounts are always secret. Yet you have control over who sees what by adjusting your privacy settings:

  • Public – Everyone on the internet can see and comment on the transaction.
  • Friends – Only your Venmo friends and the other participant’s friends can see and comment on the transaction. (Note that the friends of the other participant might be strangers to you, so “friends and friends of friends” is more accurate here.)
  • Private – Here, only the participants can view and comment on the transaction.

This brings up the question, what if the participants in the transaction have different privacy settings? Venmo uses the most restrictive one. So, if you’re paying someone who has their privacy set to “Public” and you have yours set to “Private,” the transaction will indeed be private.

We suggest going private with your account. The less financial information you share, the better. You can set your transactions to private by heading into the Settings of the Venmo app, tapping on Privacy, and then selecting Private.

In short, just because something is designed to be social doesn’t mean it should become a treasure trove of personal data about your spending habits.

Add extra layers of security. Take extra precautions that make it difficult for others to access your Venmo app.

  • First off, lock your phone. Whether with a PIN or other form of protection, locking your phone prevents access to everything you keep on it, which is important in the case of loss or theft. Our own research found that only 58% of adults take the vital step of locking their phones. If you fall into the 42% of people who don’t, strongly consider changing that.
  • Within the Venmo app, you can also enable Face ID and a PIN (on iOS) or a PIN and biometric unlock (Android). These add a further layer of security by asking for identification each time you open the app. That way, even if someone gets access to your phone, they’ll still have to leap through that security hurdle to access your Venmo app.
  • Use a strong, unique password for your account. That’s a password with at least 13 characters using a mix of cases, numbers, and symbols that you don’t use anywhere else. You can also have a password manager do that work for you across all your accounts.

Keep your online finances even more secure with the right tools

Online protection software like ours offers several additional layers of security when it comes to your safety and finances online.

For starters, it includes Web Protection and Scam Detector that can block malicious and questionable links that might lead you down the road to malware or a phishing scam, such as a phony Venmo link designed to steal your login credentials. It also includes a password manager that creates and stores strong, unique passwords for each of your accounts.

Moreover, it further protects you by locking down your identity online. Transaction Monitoring and Credit Monitoring help you spot any questionable financial activity quickly. And if identity theft unfortunately happens to you, up to $2 million in ID theft coverage & restoration can help you recover quickly.

The post Venmo 101: Making Safer Payments with the App appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Identity-Driven Firewalls: Shaping the Future of Adaptive Security

By: Gayathri Nagarajan
Active Directory compromises, credential theft, lateral movement. See how identity-driven security policies stop breaches before attackers escalate privileges.

A Simple WhatsApp Security Flaw Exposed 3.5 Billion Phone Numbers

By: Andy Greenberg
By plugging tens of billions of phone numbers into WhatsApp’s contact discovery tool, researchers found “the most extensive exposure of phone numbers” ever—along with profile photos and more.

What if your romantic AI chatbot can’t keep a secret?

Does your chatbot know too much? Here's why you should think twice before you tell your AI companion everything.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, November 2025 Edition

By: BrianKrebs

Microsoft this week pushed security updates to fix more than 60 vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and supported software, including at least one zero-day bug that is already being exploited. Microsoft also fixed a glitch that prevented some Windows 10 users from taking advantage of an extra year of security updates, which is nice because the zero-day flaw and other critical weaknesses affect all versions of Windows, including Windows 10.

Affected products this month include the Windows OS, Office, SharePoint, SQL Server, Visual Studio, GitHub Copilot, and Azure Monitor Agent. The zero-day threat concerns a memory corruption bug deep in the Windows innards called CVE-2025-62215. Despite the flaw’s zero-day status, Microsoft has assigned it an “important” rating rather than critical, because exploiting it requires an attacker to already have access to the target’s device.

“These types of vulnerabilities are often exploited as part of a more complex attack chain,” said Johannes Ullrich, dean of research for the SANS Technology Institute. “However, exploiting this specific vulnerability is likely to be relatively straightforward, given the existence of prior similar vulnerabilities.”

Ben McCarthy, lead cybersecurity engineer at Immersive, called attention to CVE-2025-60274, a critical weakness in a core Windows graphic component (GDI+) that is used by a massive number of applications, including Microsoft Office, web servers processing images, and countless third-party applications.

“The patch for this should be an organization’s highest priority,” McCarthy said. “While Microsoft assesses this as ‘Exploitation Less Likely,’ a 9.8-rated flaw in a ubiquitous library like GDI+ is a critical risk.”

Microsoft patched a critical bug in Office — CVE-2025-62199 — that can lead to remote code execution on a Windows system. Alex Vovk, CEO and co-founder of Action1, said this Office flaw is a high priority because it is low complexity, needs no privileges, and can be exploited just by viewing a booby-trapped message in the Preview Pane.

Many of the more concerning bugs addressed by Microsoft this month affect Windows 10, an operating system that Microsoft officially ceased supporting with patches last month. As that deadline rolled around, however, Microsoft began offering Windows 10 users an extra year of free updates, so long as they register their PC to an active Microsoft account.

Judging from the comments on last month’s Patch Tuesday post, that registration worked for a lot of Windows 10 users, but some readers reported the option for an extra year of updates was never offered. Nick Carroll, cyber incident response manager at Nightwing, notes that Microsoft has recently released an out-of-band update to address issues when trying to enroll in the Windows 10 Consumer Extended Security Update program.

“If you plan to participate in the program, make sure you update and install KB5071959 to address the enrollment issues,” Carroll said. “After that is installed, users should be able to install other updates such as today’s KB5068781 which is the latest update to Windows 10.”

Chris Goettl at Ivanti notes that in addition to Microsoft updates today, third-party updates from Adobe and Mozilla have already been released. Also, an update for Google Chrome is expected soon, which means Edge will also be in need of its own update.

The SANS Internet Storm Center has a clickable breakdown of each individual fix from Microsoft, indexed by severity and CVSS score. Enterprise Windows admins involved in testing patches before rolling them out should keep an eye on askwoody.com, which often has the skinny on any updates gone awry.

As always, please don’t neglect to back up your data (if not your entire system) at regular intervals, and feel free to sound off in the comments if you experience problems installing any of these fixes.

[Author’s note: This post was intended to appear on the homepage on Tuesday, Nov. 11. I’m still not sure how it happened, but somehow this story failed to publish that day. My apologies for the oversight.]

This Week in Scams: New Alerts for iPhone and Android Users and a Major Google Crackdown

By: McAfee

Welcome back to another This Week in Scams.

This week,  have attacks that take over Androids and iPhones, plus news that Google has gone on the offensive against phishing websites.

First up, a heads-up for iPhone owners.

The “We found your iPhone” scam

In the hands of a scammer, “Find My” can quickly turn into “Scam Me.”

Switzerland’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) shared word this week of a new scam that turns the otherwise helpful “Find My” iOS feature into an avenue of attack.

Now, the thought of losing your phone, along with all the important and precious things you have on it, is enough to give you goosebumps. Luckily, the “Find My” can help you track it down and even post a personalized message on the lock screen to help with its return. And that’s where the scam kicks in.

From the NCSC:

When a device is marked as lost, the owner can display a message on the lock screen containing contact details, such as a phone number or email address. This can be very helpful if the finder is honest – but in dishonest hands, the same information can be used to launch a targeted phishing attack.

With that, scammers send a targeted phishing text, as seen in the sample provided by the NCSC below …

A smartphone screenshot showing a fraudulent text message claiming a lost iPhone 14 has been located and instructing the recipient to click a link. A large red diagonal stamp reading “Betrug / Fraud” overlays the message, indicating it is a scam.
Source: NCSC, Switzerland

What do the scammers want once you tap that link? They request your Apple ID and password, which effectively hands your phone over to them—along with everything on it and everything else that’s associated with your Apple ID.

It’s a scam you can easily avoid. So even if you’re still stuck with a lost phone that’s likely in the hands of a scammer the point of consolation is that, without your ID, the phone is useless to them.

Here’s what the NCSC suggests:

Ignore such messages. The most important rule is Apple will never contact you by text message or email to inform you that a lost device has been found.

Never click on links in unsolicited messages or enter your Apple ID credentials on a linked website.

If you lose your device, act immediately. Enable Lost Mode straight away via the Find My app on another device or at iCloud.com/find. This will lock the device.

Be careful about which contact details you show on your lost device’s lock screen. For example, use a dedicated email address created specifically for this purpose. Never remove the device from your Apple account, as this would disable the Activation Lock.

Make sure your SIM card is protected with a PIN. This simple yet effective measure prevents criminals from gaining access to your phone number.

Android phone takeover scam

Now, a different attack aimed at Android owners …

A story shared on Fox this week breaks down how a combination of paid search ads, remote access tools, and social engineering have led to hijacked Android phones.

It starts with a search, where an Android owner looks up a bank, a tech support company, or what have you. Instead of getting a legitimate result, they get a link to a bogus site via paid search results that appear above organic search results. The link, and the page it takes them to, look quite convincing, given the ease with which scammers can spin up ads and sites today. (More on that next.)

Once there, they call a support number and get connected to a phony agent. The agent convinces the victim to download an app that will help the “agent” solve their issue with their account or phone. In fact, the app is a remote access tool that gives control of the phone, and everything on it, to the scammer. That means they can steal passwords, send messages to friends, family, or anyone at all, and even go so far as to lock you out.

Basically, this scam hands over one of your most precious possessions to a scammer.

Here’s how you can avoid that:

Skip paid search results for extra security. That’s particularly true when contacting your bank or other companies you’re doing business with. Look for their official website in the organic search results below paid ads. Better yet, contact places like your bank or credit card company by calling the number on the back of your card.

Get a scam detector. A combination of our Scam Detector and Web Protection can call out sketchy links, like the bogus paid links here. They’ll even block malicious sites if you accidentally tap a bad link.

Never download apps from third-party sites outside of the Google Play Store. Google has checks in place to spot malicious apps in its store.

Lastly, never give anyone access to your phone. No bank rep needs it. So if someone on a call asks you to download an app like TeamViewer, AnyDesk, or AirDroid, it’s a scam. Hang up.

Beyond that, you can protect yourself further by installing an app like our McAfee Security: Antivirus VPN. You can pick it up in the Google Play store, which also includes our Scam Detector and Identity Monitoring. You can also get it as part of your McAfee+ protection.

Google takes aim at phishing scams with a lawsuit against an alleged criminal organization

Just Wednesday, Google took a first step toward making the internet safer from bogus sites, per a story filed by National Public Radio.

A lawsuit alleges that a China-based company called “Lighthouse” runs a “Phishing-as-a-Service” operation that outfits scammers with quick and easy tools and templates for creating convincing-looking websites. According to Google’s general counsel, these sites could “compromise between 12.7 and 115 million credit cards in the U.S. alone.”

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, which, of course, has no jurisdiction over a China-based company. The aim, per Google’s counsel, is deterrence. From the article:

“It allows us a legal basis on which to go to other platforms and services and ask for their assistance in taking down different components of this particular illegal infrastructure,” she said, without naming which platforms or services Google might focus on. “Even if we can’t get to the individuals, the idea is to deter the overall infrastructure in some cases.”

We’ll keep an eye on this case as it progresses. And in the meantime, it’s a good reminder to get Scam Detector and Web Protection on all your devices so you don’t get hoodwinked by these increasingly convincing-looking scam sites.

Again, scammers can roll them out so quickly and easily today.

And now for a quick roundup …

Here’s a quick list of a few stories that caught our eye this week:

Alarmingly realistic deepfake threats now target banks in South Africa

Nearly 80% of parents fear their kids will fall for an AI scam, but they aren’t sure how to talk about it

Hyundai data breach exposes 2.7 million Social Security numbers

 

And that’s it for this week! We’ll see you next Friday with more updates, scam news, and ways you can stay safer out there.

The post This Week in Scams: New Alerts for iPhone and Android Users and a Major Google Crackdown appeared first on McAfee Blog.

A Major Leak Spills a Chinese Hacking Contractor’s Tools and Targets

By: Andy Greenberg， Lily Hay Newman
Plus: State-sponsored AI hacking is here, Google hosts a CBP face recognition app, and more of the week’s top security news.

DOJ Issued Seizure Warrant to Starlink Over Satellite Internet Systems Used at Scam Compound

By: Matt Burgess， Lily Hay Newman
A new US law enforcement initiative is aimed at crypto fraudsters targeting Americans—and now seeks to seize infrastructure it claims is crucial to notorious scam compounds.

How password managers can be hacked – and how to stay safe

Look no further to learn how cybercriminals could try to crack your vault and how you can keep your logins safe

The Stars Scammers Love Most: McAfee Reveals World’s Most Deepfaked Celebs

By: Brooke Seipel
A deepfaked image of Taylor Swift from a scam video that has since been taken down.

You’ve seen the videos: a too-perfect Taylor Swift promoting free cookware. A fake Tom Hanks offering dental insurance.

They look real—but they’re not.

New research from McAfee Labs shows just how common these scams have become.

Our 2025 Most Dangerous Celebrity: Deepfake Deception List ranks the stars and influencers whose likenesses are most hijacked by scammers, and reveals a growing market for AI-powered fake endorsements.

At the top of the list? Taylor Swift, followed by Scarlett Johansson, Jenna Ortega, and Sydney Sweeney. Globally, names like Brad Pitt, Billie Eilish, and Emma Watson also appear among the most exploited.

McAfee also released its first-ever Influencer Deepfake Deception List, led by gamer and streamer Pokimane, showing that scammers are now targeting social platforms just as aggressively as Hollywood.

Top 10 Most Dangerous Celebrities (2025): U.S 

List of the top 10 celebrities most exploited by scammers in 2025 according to McAfee, led by Taylor Swift.
McAfee’s 2025 report reveals the most impersonated celebrities in online scams, with Taylor Swift ranking number one in the U.S.

Top 10 Most Dangerous Celebrities (2025): Global

McAfee’s 2025 global ranking of the most exploited celebrity names used in online scams.
Taylor Swift tops McAfee’s global list of celebrities most hijacked by scammers in 2025, followed by Scarlett Johansson and Jenna Ortega.

Top 10 Most Dangerous Influencers  (2025): Global 

 

Top 10 influencers most impersonated by scammers online in 2025, according to McAfee, with Pokimane ranking first.
From Pokimane to MrBeast, McAfee’s 2025 list shows which influencers’ likenesses are most exploited in scams.

Why Scammers Love Famous Faces

The formula is simple: use someone people trust to sell something that doesn’t exist.

Criminals clone celebrity voices and faces with AI to promote fake giveaways, skincare products, crypto investments, or “exclusive” deals that lead straight to malware or payment fraud.

According to McAfee’s survey of 8,600 people worldwide:

  • 72% of Americans have seen fake celebrity or influencer endorsements.
  • 39% have clicked on one.
  • 1 in 10 lost money or personal data, an average of $525 per victim.

Scammers exploit trust. When you see a familiar face, your brain automatically lowers its guard. And that’s exactly what they count on.

How Deepfakes Are Making Headlines

AI has made these scams look frighteningly real.

Modern deepfake generators can mimic voices, facial movements, and even micro-expressions with uncanny precision. Only 29% of people feel confident identifying a fake, and 21% admit to having low confidence spotting deepfakes.

That’s how fake endorsements and AI romance scams have exploded online.

  • A woman in France lost nearly $900,000 to a scammer posing as Brad Pitt, complete with AI-generated images and voice messages.
  • TV host Al Roker was recently targeted by a fake deepfake video claiming he’d suffered heart attacks.
  • Tom Hanks, Oprah, and Scarlett Johansson have all been used in fraudulent ads for products they never touched.

“Seeing is believing” doesn’t apply anymore, and scammers know it.

The Psychology of The Scam

Deepfake scams don’t just rely on technology; they prey on parasocial relationships, the one-sided emotional bonds fans form with public figures.

When a “celebrity” DMs you, it doesn’t always feel strange. It feels personal. That sense of intimacy makes people act before thinking.

It’s the same psychological playbook behind romance scams, now supercharged by AI tools that make fake videos and voice messages sound heartbreakingly real.

How to Protect Yourself

  1. Pause before you click. If an ad or post seems out of character or “too good to be true,” it probably is.
  2. Verify at the source. Check the celebrity’s verified account on social media. Scammers often copy profile photos and bios but miss subtle details like posting style or engagement patterns.
  3. Look for signs of AI manipulation. Watch for off-sync lip movements, robotic tone, or lighting that looks inconsistent.
  4. Never share personal or payment details via messages, even if the sender appears to be verified.
  5. Use McAfee’s Scam Detector, included in all core plans, to automatically analyze texts, emails, and videos for signs of fraud or deepfake manipulation.

Key Takeaways

Celebrity and influencer culture has always shaped what we buy, but now it’s shaping how scammers deceive. These deepfakes don’t just steal money; they chip away at our trust in what we see, hear, and share online.

The celebrities at the center of these scams aren’t accomplices, they’re victims, too, as criminals hijack their likenesses to exploit the bond between fans and the people they admire. And as deepfake tools become easier to use, the line between real and fake is vanishing fast.

The next viral “giveaway” might not be an ad at all…it could be bait.

You can’t stop scammers from cloning famous faces, but you can stop them from fooling you. Use McAfee’s Scam Detector to scan links, messages, and videos before you click.

The post The Stars Scammers Love Most: McAfee Reveals World’s Most Deepfaked Celebs appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Google Sues to Disrupt Chinese SMS Phishing Triad

By: BrianKrebs

Google is suing more than two dozen unnamed individuals allegedly involved in peddling a popular China-based mobile phishing service that helps scammers impersonate hundreds of trusted brands, blast out text message lures, and convert phished payment card data into mobile wallets from Apple and Google.

In a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York on November 12, Google sued to unmask and disrupt 25 “John Doe” defendants allegedly linked to the sale of Lighthouse, a sophisticated phishing kit that makes it simple for even novices to steal payment card data from mobile users. Google said Lighthouse has harmed more than a million victims across 120 countries.

A component of the Chinese phishing kit Lighthouse made to target customers of The Toll Roads, which refers to several state routes through Orange County, Calif.

Lighthouse is one of several prolific phishing-as-a-service operations known as the “Smishing Triad,” and collectively they are responsible for sending millions of text messages that spoof the U.S. Postal Service to supposedly collect some outstanding delivery fee, or that pretend to be a local toll road operator warning of a delinquent toll fee. More recently, Lighthouse has been used to spoof e-commerce websites, financial institutions and brokerage firms.

Regardless of the text message lure used or brand used, the basic scam remains the same: After the visitor enters their payment information, the phishing site will automatically attempt to enroll the card as a mobile wallet from Apple or Google. The phishing site then tells the visitor that their bank is going to verify the transaction by sending a one-time code that needs to be entered into the payment page before the transaction can be completed.

If the recipient provides that one-time code, the scammers can link the victim’s card data to a mobile wallet on a device that they control. Researchers say the fraudsters usually load several stolen wallets onto each mobile device, and wait 7-10 days after that enrollment before selling the phones or using them for fraud.

Google called the scale of the Lighthouse phishing attacks “staggering.” A May 2025 report from Silent Push found the domains used by the Smishing Triad are rotated frequently, with approximately 25,000 phishing domains active during any 8-day period.

Google’s lawsuit alleges the purveyors of Lighthouse violated the company’s trademarks by including Google’s logos on countless phishing websites. The complaint says Lighthouse offers over 600 templates for phishing websites of more than 400 entities, and that Google’s logos were featured on at least a quarter of those templates.

Google is also pursuing Lighthouse under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, saying the Lighthouse phishing enterprise encompasses several connected threat actor groups that work together to design and implement complex criminal schemes targeting the general public.

According to Google, those threat actor teams include a “developer group” that supplies the phishing software and templates; a “data broker group” that provides a list of targets; a “spammer group” that provides the tools to send fraudulent text messages in volume; a “theft group,” in charge of monetizing the phished information; and an “administrative group,” which runs their Telegram support channels and discussion groups designed to facilitate collaboration and recruit new members.

“While different members of the Enterprise may play different roles in the Schemes, they all collaborate to execute phishing attacks that rely on the Lighthouse software,” Google’s complaint alleges. “None of the Enterprise’s Schemes can generate revenue without collaboration and cooperation among the members of the Enterprise. All of the threat actor groups are connected to one another through historical and current business ties, including through their use of Lighthouse and the online community supporting its use, which exists on both YouTube and Telegram channels.”

Silent Push’s May report observed that the Smishing Triad boasts it has “300+ front desk staff worldwide” involved in Lighthouse, staff that is mainly used to support various aspects of the group’s fraud and cash-out schemes.

An image shared by an SMS phishing group shows a panel of mobile phones responsible for mass-sending phishing messages. These panels require a live operator because the one-time codes being shared by phishing victims must be used quickly as they generally expire within a few minutes.

Google alleges that in addition to blasting out text messages spoofing known brands, Lighthouse makes it easy for customers to mass-create fake e-commerce websites that are advertised using Google Ads accounts (and paid for with stolen credit cards). These phony merchants collect payment card information at checkout, and then prompt the customer to expect and share a one-time code sent from their financial institution.

Once again, that one-time code is being sent by the bank because the fake e-commerce site has just attempted to enroll the victim’s payment card data in a mobile wallet. By the time a victim understands they will likely never receive the item they just purchased from the fake e-commerce shop, the scammers have already run through hundreds of dollars in fraudulent charges, often at high-end electronics stores or jewelers.

Ford Merrill works in security research at SecAlliance, a CSIS Security Group company, and he’s been tracking Chinese SMS phishing groups for several years. Merrill said many Lighthouse customers are now using the phishing kit to erect fake e-commerce websites that are advertised on Google and Meta platforms.

“You find this shop by searching for a particular product online or whatever, and you think you’re getting a good deal,” Merrill said. “But of course you never receive the product, and they will phish that one-time code at checkout.”

Merrill said some of the phishing templates include payment buttons for services like PayPal, and that victims who choose to pay through PayPal can also see their PayPal accounts hijacked.

A fake e-commerce site from the Smishing Triad spoofing PayPal on a mobile device.

“The main advantage of the fake e-commerce site is that it doesn’t require them to send out message lures,” Merrill said, noting that the fake vendor sites have more staying power than traditional phishing sites because it takes far longer for them to be flagged for fraud.

Merrill said Google’s legal action may temporarily disrupt the Lighthouse operators, and could make it easier for U.S. federal authorities to bring criminal charges against the group. But he said the Chinese mobile phishing market is so lucrative right now that it’s difficult to imagine a popular phishing service voluntarily turning out the lights.

Merrill said Google’s lawsuit also can help lay the groundwork for future disruptive actions against Lighthouse and other phishing-as-a-service entities that are operating almost entirely on Chinese networks. According to Silent Push, a majority of the phishing sites created with these kits are sitting at two Chinese hosting companies: Tencent (AS132203) and Alibaba (AS45102).

“Once Google has a default judgment against the Lighthouse guys in court, theoretically they could use that to go to Alibaba and Tencent and say, ‘These guys have been found guilty, here are their domains and IP addresses, we want you to shut these down or we’ll include you in the case.'”

If Google can bring that kind of legal pressure consistently over time, Merrill said, they might succeed in increasing costs for the phishers and more frequently disrupting their operations.

“If you take all of these Chinese phishing kit developers, I have to believe it’s tens of thousands of Chinese-speaking people involved,” he said. “The Lighthouse guys will probably burn down their Telegram channels and disappear for a while. They might call it something else or redevelop their service entirely. But I don’t believe for a minute they’re going to close up shop and leave forever.”

Cisco Recognized as a Major Player in the 2025 IDC XDR MarketScape

By: Nirav Shah
Cisco has been recognized as a Major Player in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Software 2025 Vendor Assessment.

DHS Kept Chicago Police Records for Months in Violation of Domestic Espionage Rules

By: Dell Cameron
The Department of Homeland Security collected data on Chicago residents accused of gang ties to test if police files could feed an FBI watchlist. Months passed before anyone noticed it wasn’t deleted.

How to Remove Your Personal Information From the Internet

By: Jasdev Dhaliwal

Chances are, you have more personal information posted online than you think.

In 2024, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported that 1.1 million identity theft complaints were filed, where $12.5 billion was lost to identity theft and fraud overall—a 25% increase over the year prior.

What fuels all this theft and fraud? Easy access to personal information.

Here’s one way you can reduce your chances of identity theft: remove your personal information from the internet.

Scammers and thieves can get a hold of your personal information in several ways, such as information leaked in data breaches, phishing attacks that lure you into handing it over, malware that steals it from your devices, or by purchasing your information on dark web marketplaces, just to name a few.

However, scammers and thieves have other resources and connections to help them commit theft and fraud—data broker sites, places where personal information is posted online for practically anyone to see. This makes removing your info from these sites so important, from both an identity and privacy standpoint.

Data brokers: Collectors and aggregators of your information

Data broker sites are massive repositories of personal information that also buy information from other data brokers. As a result, some data brokers have thousands of pieces of data on billions of individuals worldwide.

What kind of data could they have on you? A broker may know how much you paid for your home, your education level, where you’ve lived over the years, who you’ve lived with, your driving record, and possibly your political leanings. A broker could even know your favorite flavor of ice cream and your preferred over-the-counter allergy medicine thanks to information from loyalty cards. They may also have health-related information from fitness apps. The amount of personal information can run that broadly, and that deeply.

With information at this level of detail, it’s no wonder that data brokers rake in an estimated $200 billion worldwide every year.

Sources of your information

Your personal information reaches the internet through six main methods, most of which are initiated by activities you perform every day. Understanding these channels can help you make more informed choices about your digital footprint.

Digitized public records

When you buy a home, register to vote, get married, or start a business, government agencies create public records that contain your personal details. These records, once stored in filing cabinets, are now digitized, accessible online, and searchable by anyone with an internet connection.

Social media sharing and privacy gaps

Every photo you post, location you tag, and profile detail you share contributes to your digital presence. Even with privacy settings enabled, social media platforms collect extensive data about your behavior, relationships, and preferences. You may not realize it, but every time you share details with your network, you are training algorithms that analyze and categorize your information.

Data breaches

You create accounts with retailers, healthcare providers, employers, and service companies, trusting them to protect your information. However, when hackers breach these systems, your personal information often ends up for sale on dark web marketplaces, where data brokers can purchase it. The Identity Theft Research Center Annual Data Breach Report revealed that 2024 saw the second-highest number of data compromises in the U.S. since the organization began recording incidents in 2005.

Apps and ad trackers

When you browse, shop, or use apps, your online behavior is recorded by tracking pixels, cookies, and software development kits. The data collected—such as your location, device usage, and interests—is packaged and sold to data brokers who combine it with other sources to build a profile of you.

Loyalty programs

Grocery store cards, coffee shop apps, and airline miles programs offer discounts in exchange for detailed purchasing information. Every transaction gets recorded, analyzed, and often shared with third-party data brokers, who then create detailed lifestyle profiles that are sold to marketing companies.

Data broker aggregators

Data brokers act as the hubs that collect information from the various sources to create comprehensive profiles that may include over 5,000 data points per person. Seemingly separate pieces of information become a detailed digital dossier that reveals intimate details about your life, relationships, health, and financial situation.

The users of your information

Legally, your aggregated information from data brokers is used by advertisers to create targeted ad campaigns. In addition, law enforcement, journalists, and employers may use data brokers because the time-consuming pre-work of assembling your data has largely been done.

Currently, the U.S. has no federal laws that regulate data brokers or require them to remove personal information if requested. Only a few states, such as Nevada, Vermont, and California, have legislation that protects consumers. In the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has stricter rules about what information can be collected and what can be done with it.

On the darker side, scammers and thieves use personal information for identity theft and fraud. With enough information, they can create a high-fidelity profile of their victims to open new accounts in their name. For this reason, cleaning up your personal information online makes a great deal of sense.

Types of personal details to remove online

Understanding which data types pose the greatest threat can help you prioritize your removal efforts. Here are the high-risk personal details you should target first, ranked by their potential for harm.

Highest priority: Identity theft goldmines

  • Social Security Number (SSN) with full name and address: This combination provides everything criminals need for identity theft, leading to fraudulent credit accounts, tax refund theft, and employment fraud that may take years to resolve, according to the FTC.
  • Financial account information: Bank account numbers, credit card details, and investment account information enable direct financial theft. Even partial account numbers can be valuable when combined with other personal details from data breaches.
  • Driver’s license and government-issued ID information: These serve as primary identity verification for many services and can be used to bypass security measures at financial institutions and government agencies.

High priority: Personal identifiers

  • Full name combined with home address: This pairing makes you vulnerable to targeted scams and physical threats, while enabling criminals to gather additional information about your household and family members.
  • Date of birth: Often used as a security verification method, your DOB combined with other identifiers can unlock accounts and enable age-related targeting for scams.
  • Phone numbers: This information enables SIM swapping, where criminals take control of your phone number to bypass two-factor authentication and access your accounts.

Medium-high priority: Digital and health data

  • Email addresses: Your primary email serves as the master key to password resets across multiple accounts, while secondary emails can reveal personal interests and connections that criminals exploit in social engineering.
  • Medical and health app data: This is highly sensitive information that can be used for insurance discrimination, employment issues, or targeted health-related scams.
  • Location data and photos with metadata: Reveals your daily patterns, workplace, home address, and frequented locations. Photos with embedded GPS coordinates can expose your exact whereabouts and enable stalking or burglary.

Medium priority: Account access points

  • Usernames and account handles: These help criminals map your digital footprint across platforms to discover your personal interests, connections, and even potential security questions answers. They also enable account impersonation and social engineering against your contacts.

When prioritizing your personal information removal efforts, focus on combinations of data rather than individual pieces. For example, your name alone poses minimal risk, but your name combined with your address, phone number, and date of birth creates a comprehensive profile that criminals can exploit. Tools such as McAfee Personal Data Cleanup can help you identify and remove these high-risk combinations from data broker sites systematically.

Step-by-step guide to finding your personal data online

  1. Targeted search queries: Search for your full name in quotes (“John Smith”), then combine it with your city, phone number, or email address. Try variations like “John Smith” + “123 Main Street” or “John Smith” + “555-0123”. Don’t forget to search for old usernames, maiden names, or nicknames you’ve used online. Aside from Google, you can also check Bing, DuckDuckGo, and people search engines.
  2. Major data broker and people search sites: Search for yourself in common data aggregators: Whitepages, Spokeo, BeenVerified, Intelius, PeopleFinder, and Radaris. Take screenshots of what you find as documentation. To make this process manageable, McAfee Personal Data Cleanup scans some of the riskiest data broker sites and shows you which ones are selling your personal info.
  3. Social media platforms and old accounts: Review your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other platforms for publicly visible personal details. Check old accounts—dating sites, forums, gaming platforms, or professional networks. Look for biographical information, location data, contact details, photos, and even comment sections where you may have shared details.
  4. Breach and dark web monitoring tools: Have I Been Pwned and other identity monitoring services can help you scan the dark web and discover if your email addresses or phone numbers appear in data breaches.
  5. Ongoing monitoring alerts: Create weekly Google Alerts for your and your family member’s full name, address combinations, and phone number. Some specialized monitoring services can track once your information appears on new data broker sites or gets updated on existing ones.
  6. Document everything in a tracker: Create a spreadsheet or document to systematically track your findings. Include the website name and URL, the specific data shown, contact information for removal requests, date of your opt-out request, and follow-up dates. Many sites require multiple follow-ups, so having this organized record is essential for successful removal.

This process takes time and persistence, but services such as McAfee Personal Data Cleanup can continuously monitor for new exposures and manage opt-out requests on your behalf. The key is to first understand the full scope of your online presence before beginning the removal process.

Remove your personal information from the internet

Let’s review some ways you can remove your personal information from data brokers and other sources on the internet.

Request to remove data from data broker sites

Once you have found the sites that have your information, the next step is to request to have it removed. You can do this yourself or employ services such as McAfee’s Personal Data Cleanup, which can help manage the removal for you depending on your subscription. ​It also monitors those sites, so if your info gets posted again, you can request its removal again.

Limit the data Google collects

You can request to remove your name from Google search to limit your information from turning up in searches. You can also turn on “Auto Delete” in your privacy settings to ensure your data is deleted regularly. Occasionally deleting your cookies or browsing in incognito mode prevents websites from tracking you. If Google denies your initial request, you can appeal using the same tool, providing more context, documentation, or legal grounds for removal. Google’s troubleshooter tool may explain why your request was denied—either legitimate public interest or newsworthiness—and how to improve your appeal.

It’s important to know that the original content remains on the source website. You’ll still need to contact website owners directly to have your actual content removed. Additionally, the information may still appear in other search engines.

Delete old social media accounts

If you have old, inactive accounts that have gone by the wayside such as Myspace or Tumblr, you may want to deactivate or delete them entirely. For social media platforms that you use regularly, such as Facebook and Instagram, consider adjusting your privacy settings to keep your personal information to the bare minimum.

Remove personal info from websites and blogs

If you’ve ever published articles, written blogs, or created any content online, it is a good time to consider taking them down if they no longer serve a purpose. If you were mentioned or tagged by other people, it is worth requesting them to take down posts with sensitive information.

Delete unused apps and restrict permissions in those you use

Another way to tidy up your digital footprint is to delete phone apps you no longer use as hackers are able to track personal information on these and sell it. As a rule, share as little information with apps as possible using your phone’s settings.

Remove your info from other search engines

  • Bing: Submit removal requests through Bing’s Content Removal tool for specific personal information like addresses, phone numbers, or sensitive data. Note that Bing primarily crawls and caches content from other websites, so removing the original source content first will prevent re-indexing.
  • Yahoo: Yahoo Search results are powered by Bing, so use the same Bing Content Removal process. For Yahoo-specific services, contact their support team to request removal of cached pages and personal information from search results.
  • DuckDuckGo and other privacy-focused engines: These search engines don’t store personal data or create profiles, but pull results from multiple sources. We suggest that you focus on removing content from the original source websites, then request the search engines to update their cache to prevent your information from reappearing in future crawls.

Escalate if needed

After sending your removal request, give the search engine or source website 7 to 10 business days to respond initially, then follow up weekly if needed. If a website owner doesn’t respond within 30 days or refuses your request, you have several escalation options:

  • Contact the hosting provider: Web hosts often have policies against sites that violate privacy laws
  • File complaints: Report to your state attorney general’s office or the Federal Trade Commission
  • Seek legal guidance: For persistent cases involving sensitive information, consult with a privacy attorney

For comprehensive guidance on website takedown procedures and your legal rights, visit the FTC’s privacy and security guidance for the most current information on consumer data protection. Direct website contact can be time-consuming, but it’s often effective for removing information from smaller sites that don’t appear on major data broker opt-out lists. Stay persistent, document everything, and remember that you have legal rights to protect your privacy online.

Remove your information from browsers

After you’ve cleaned up your data from websites and social platforms, your web browsers may still save personal information such as your browsing history, cookies, autofill data, saved passwords, and even payment methods. Clearing this information and adjusting your privacy settings helps prevent tracking, reduces targeted ads, and limits how much personal data websites can collect about you.

  • Clear your cache: Clearing your browsing data is usually done by going to Settings and looking for the Privacy and Security section, depending on the specific browser. This is applicable in Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, as well as mobile phone operating systems such as Android and iOS.
  • Disable autofill: Autofill gives you the convenience of not having to type your information every time you accomplish a form. That convenience has a risk, though—autofill saves addresses, phone numbers, and even payment methods. To prevent websites from automatically populating forms with your sensitive data, disable the autofill settings independently. For better security, consider using a dedicated password manager instead of browser-based password storage.
  • Set up automatic privacy protection: Set up your browsers to automatically clear cookies, cache, and site data when you close them. This ensures your browsing sessions don’t leave permanent traces of your personal information on your device.
  • Use privacy-focused search engines: Evaluate the possibility of using privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo as your default. These proactive steps significantly reduce how much personal information browsers collect and store about your online activities.

Get your address off the internet

When your home address is publicly available, it can expose you to risks like identity theft, stalking, or targeted scams. Taking steps to remove or mask your address across data broker sites, public records, and even old social media profiles helps protect your privacy, reduce unwanted contact, and keep your personal life more secure.

  1. Opt out of major data broker sites: The biggest address exposers are Whitepages, Spokeo, and BeenVerified. Visit their opt-out pages and submit removal requests using your full name and current address. Most sites require email verification and process removals within 7-14 business days.
  2. Contact public records offices about address redaction: Many county and state databases allow address redaction for safety reasons. File requests with your local clerk’s office, voter registration office, and property records department. Complete removal isn’t always possible, but some jurisdictions offer partial address masking.
  3. Enable WHOIS privacy protection on domain registrations: If you own any websites or domains, request your domain registrar to add privacy protection services to replace your personal address with the registrar’s information.
  4. Review old forum and social media profiles: Check your profiles on forums, professional networks, and social platforms where you may have shared your address years ago. Delete or edit posts containing location details, and update bio sections to remove specific address information.
  5. Verify removal progress: Every month, do a search of your name and address variations on different search engines. You also can set up Google Alerts to monitor and alert you when new listings appear. Most data broker removals need to be renewed every 6-12 months as information gets re-aggregated.

The cost to delete your information from the internet

The cost to remove your personal information from the internet varies, depending on whether you do it yourself or use a professional service. Read the guide below to help you make an informed decision:

DIY approach

Removing your information on your own primarily requires time investment. Expect to spend 20 to 40 hours looking for your information online and submitting removal requests. In terms of financial costs, most data brokers may not charge for opting out, but other expenses could include certified mail fees for formal removal requests—about $3-$8 per letter—and possibly notarization fees for legal documents. In total, this effort can be substantial when dealing with dozens of sites.

Professional removal services

Depending on which paid removal and monitoring service you employ, basic plans typically range from $8 to $25 monthly while annual plans, which often provide better value, range from $100 to $600. Premium services that monitor hundreds of data broker sites and provide ongoing removal can cost $1,200-$2,400 annually.

The difference in pricing is driven by several factors. This includes the number of data broker sites to be monitored, which could cover more than 200 sites, and the scope of removal requests which may include basic personal information or comprehensive family protection. The monitoring frequency and additional features such as dark web monitoring, credit protection, and identity restoration support and insurance coverage typically command higher prices.

The value of continuous monitoring

The upfront cost may seem significant, but continuous monitoring provides essential value. A McAfee survey revealed that 95% of consumers’ personal information ends up on data broker sites without their consent. It is possible that after the successful removal of your information, it may reappear on data broker sites without ongoing monitoring. This makes continuous protection far more cost-effective than repeated one-time cleanups.

Services such as McAfee Personal Data Cleanup can prove invaluable, as it handles the initial removal process, as well as ongoing monitoring to catch when your information resurfaces, saving you time and effort while offering long-term privacy protection.

Aside from the services above, comprehensive protection software can help safeguard your privacy and minimize your exposure to cybercrime with these offerings such as:

  • An unlimited virtual private network to make your personal information much more difficult to collect and track
  • Identity monitoring that tracks and alerts you if your specific personal information is found on the dark web
  • Identity theft coverage and restoration helps you pay for legal fees and travel expenses, and further assistance from a licensed recovery pro to repair your identity and credit
  • Other features such as safe browsing to help you avoid dangerous links, bad downloads, malicious websites, and more online threats when you’re online

So while it may seem like all this rampant collecting and selling of personal information is out of your hands, there’s plenty you can do to take control. With the steps outlined above and strong online protection software at your back, you can keep your personal information more private and secure.

Essential steps if your information is found on the dark web

Unlike legitimate data broker sites, the dark web operates outside legal boundaries where takedown requests don’t apply. Rather than trying to remove information that’s already circulating, you can take immediate steps to reduce the potential harm and focus on preventing future exposure. A more effective approach is to treat data breaches as ongoing security issues rather than one-time events.

Both the FTC and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have released guidelines on proactive controls and continuous monitoring. Here are key steps of those recommendations:

  1. Change your passwords immediately and enable multi-factor authentication. Start with your most critical accounts—banking, email, and any services linked to financial information. Create unique, strong passwords for each account and enable MFA where possible for an extra layer of protection.
  2. Monitor your financial accounts and credit reports closely. Check your bank statements, credit card accounts, and investment accounts for any unauthorized activity. Request your free annual credit reports from all three major bureaus and carefully review them for accounts you didn’t open or activities you don’t recognize.
  3. Place fraud alerts or credit freezes. Contact Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to place fraud alerts, which require creditors to verify your identity before approving new accounts. Better yet, consider a credit freeze to block access to your credit report entirely until you lift it.
  4. Replace compromised identification documents if necessary. If your Social Security number, driver’s license, or passport information was exposed, contact the appropriate agencies to report the breach and request new documents. IdentityTheft.gov provides step-by-step guidance for replacing compromised documents.
  5. Set up ongoing identity monitoring and protection. Consider using identity monitoring services that scan the dark web and alert you to new exposures of your personal information.
  6. Document everything and report the incident. Keep detailed records of any suspicious activities you discover and all steps you’ve taken. File a report with the FTC and police, especially if you’ve experienced financial losses. This documentation will be crucial for disputing fraudulent charges or accounts.

Legal and practical roadblocks

As you go about removing your information for the internet, it is important to set realistic expectations. Several factors may limit how completely you can remove personal data from internet sources:

  • The United States lacks comprehensive federal privacy laws requiring companies to delete personal information upon request.
  • Public records, court documents, and news articles often have legal protections that prevent removal.
  • International websites may not comply with U.S. deletion requests.
  • Cached copies could remain on search engines and archival sites for years.
  • Data brokers frequently repopulate their databases from new sources even after opt-outs.

While some states like California have stronger consumer privacy rights, most data removal still depends on voluntary compliance from companies.

Final thoughts

Removing your personal information from the internet takes effort, but it’s one of the most effective ways to protect yourself from identity theft and privacy violations. The steps outlined above provide you with a clear roadmap to systematically reduce your online exposure, from opting out of data brokers to tightening your social media privacy settings.

This isn’t a one-time task but an ongoing process that requires regular attention, as new data appears online constantly. Rather than attempting to complete digital erasure, focus on reducing your exposure to the most harmful uses of your personal information. Services like McAfee Personal Data Cleanup can help automate the most time-consuming parts of this process, monitoring high-risk data broker sites and managing removal requests for you.

The post How to Remove Your Personal Information From the Internet appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Best Ways to Check for a Trojan on Your PC

By: McAfee

Trojan horse malware was recently in the news after researchers discovered that an email contained an innocent-looking .pdf file attachment. CSO Online magazine reported that when the attachment was clicked, a permission request popped up and the email recipient clicked “allow,” initiating the document download and save, and executing the malware.

Trojans continue to be one of the most widespread cyberthreats globally, accounting for 58% of all malware as reported by Dataprot.net, as criminals adapt their methods to bypass advancing security measures. But all is not lost. In this guide, we will take a closer look at how you can detect Trojans on your computer, and share ways to detect and remove them.

What is a Trojan?

A Trojan, often called a Trojan horse, is a type of malicious software that disguises itself as a legitimate program to deceive you into installing it on your device. Its name is taken from the story of Odysseus who hid his Greek soldiers inside a wooden gift horse to infiltrate the city of Troy.

While the term “Trojan virus” is commonly used, a Trojan is not technically a virus. Both are types of malware, but they behave differently. A virus is a piece of code that attaches itself to other programs and, when run, replicates itself to spread to other files and systems. A Trojan, however, is a standalone program that cannot self-replicate. It relies entirely on tricking the user into downloading and executing it.

From their beginnings in the 1980s as simple social engineering tricks with limited technical sophistication, modern Trojans have dramatically transformed to become multi-stage campaigns that use legitimate-looking emails, fake software updates, and compromised websites to deliver malware that can remain undetected for months. Recently, Trojan attacks have exploited the supply chain to target software vendors directly, allowing criminals to distribute the malware through channels that consumers trust.

The dangers that Trojans bring

The dangers of a Trojan are extensive, ranging from direct financial loss to a complete invasion of your privacy. Once a Trojan enters your PC, cybercriminals can steal sensitive credentials for your banking and credit card accounts, leading directly to theft. They can also access and exfiltrate personal files, photos, and documents, creating a serious privacy exposure.

Beyond theft, an attacker can use this access to take complete control of your device. They might install other types of malware like ransomware or spyware, use your computer as part of a botnet to attack others, or simply monitor your every keystroke. This total loss of device control and privacy is one of the biggest dangers. However, these risks are manageable if caught early. This demonstrates the importance of layered protection with real-time monitoring and community intelligence. As cybercrime attack methods evolve, your security needs to adapt, too.

Methods of spreading Trojans

  • Phishing emails: These legitimate-looking emails contain malicious attachments or links that, when opened, install the Trojan. To avoid getting infected, never open attachments from unsolicited sources.
  • Cracked software: Websites offering free versions of paid software often bundle Trojans with the download. That “free” software could cost you everything. View such offers with a healthy dose of skepticism. Always use legitimate, official software.
  • Fake updates: Pop-ups pretending to be legitimate updates for software like Adobe Flash Player can trick you. If you wish to update your software, it is best to go directly to the official website.
  • Malvertising: Malicious ads on legitimate websites can redirect you to pages that automatically download malware. When these online ads pop-up, be cautious about clicking them.

The Trojan invasion process

A Trojan infection follows a stealthy, multi-stage process. The delivery stage begins with a lure, where social engineering tactics, such as a convincing email or a free software offer, trick you into downloading and opening a malicious file. In the execution stage, you run the seemingly harmless program and unknowingly trigger the Trojan’s installation. The malware then often embeds itself into your system’s startup processes to ensure it persistently runs every time you turn on your PC. From there, it connects to a remote command-and-control server operated by the attacker, awaiting instructions for its malicious actions, such as stealing your credentials or monitoring your activity.

Types of Trojan malware

Trojans come in different forms, each with their own process of attack. Here are some of them:

  • Backdoor Trojans: These create a hidden backdoor, bypassing normal authentication measures. These backdoors often remain hidden for long periods, allowing attackers to steal files, or install additional malware without your knowledge.
  • Keylogger Trojans: Once installed, these Trojans remotely control your PC persistently, recording your keyboard strokes to capture passwords, accessing your files, and taking screen captures.
  • Banker Trojans: As the name suggests, these Trojans are designed to steal your login credentials for online banking, payment systems, and credit card accounts. They work by hijacking browser sessions, injecting fake login pages, or capturing keystrokes to steal your credentials and manipulate your transactions.
  • Downloader Trojans: These Trojans act as delivery mechanisms for other malware. One type—downloaders—connect to remote servers to fetch additional malicious payloads after initial infection. Another type known as droppers carry other malware within their code and deploy it directly upon execution.
  • DDoS Trojans: They turn infected computers into zombie-like “bots” that participate in Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks that overwhelm and crash websites, servers, and online services, causing outages or financial damage.
  • Scareware or fake antivirus Trojans: This type of malware mimics legitimate security software, showing fake virus alerts to scare you into paying for a “premium” but useless version or further compromise the device.

Real-life Trojan attacks

  • Banking credential theft: The Zeus Trojan family spread through fake banking emails with links to infected websites. Once installed, it secretly captured online banking passwords and credit card details as users typed them. This led to millions of dollars in stolen funds and compromised accounts worldwide, forcing banks to implement stronger authentication measures.
  • Corporate data exfiltration: Emotet initially appeared as urgent invoice attachments and shipping notifications in business emails. After infection, it silently collected email contacts, login credentials, and sensitive documents from corporate networks. Companies faced significant data breaches, regulatory fines, and damaged customer trust as their confidential information was sold on criminal marketplaces.
  • Botnet recruitment: The Mirai Trojan targeted smart home devices by exploiting default login credentials on routers and security cameras. Infected devices became part of massive botnets used to launch devastating attacks that temporarily shut down major websites and services, while users were oblivious that their gadgets were being used for cyberattacks.
  • Multi-stage attacks: TrickBot masqueraded as software updates and legitimate business documents. Aside from stealing banking information, it installed ransomware that encrypted entire networks. Organizations faced operational shutdowns, hefty ransom demands, and costly recovery efforts that sometimes took months to complete.

By understanding the signs of a Trojan virus presence on your computer and using comprehensive security software, you dramatically reduce the danger and protect your digital life.

Signs of Trojan presence on your PC

A Trojan attack isn’t just a single event; it’s the entire process a cybercriminal uses to trick you into running malicious software. Recognizing the early warning signs is key. Here are some of the most common cues that can help you know if you have a Trojan virus attack in progress.

  • Slower than usual computer performance: Trojans tend to install additional malware that consumes computer processing units and memory resources. This can significantly slow your computer down and cause your operating system to become unstable and sluggish.
  • Unauthorized apps appear: A common symptom of Trojan infection is the sudden appearance of apps you don’t recall downloading or installing. If you notice an unfamiliar app from an unverified developer in your Windows Task Manager, there’s a good chance that it is malicious software installed by a Trojan.
  • Operating system crashes and freezes: Trojans can overwhelm your system and cause recurring crashes and freezes. An example of this is the Blue Screen of Death, a Windows error screen that means the system can no longer operate due to hardware failure or the termination of an important process.
  • Frequent browser redirects: A Trojan can manipulate your browser or modify domain name system settings to redirect the user to malicious websites. Frequent redirects are a red flag, so you should scan your computer the moment you notice an uptick in these redirect patterns.
  • Aggressive popups: If you’re noticing more pop-up ads than usual, especially those claiming your web browser or a media player is out of date, there’s a strong possibility that a Trojan has installed a malicious adware program on your PC. These fake alerts trick you into installing the Trojan instead of a real update.
  • Disabled security and other software. Trojans can interfere with applications and prevent them from running. A common mid-attack behavior is the Trojan deactivating your browser, apps such as word processing and spreadsheet software, or your antivirus or firewall, it’s a major red flag.
  • Unexpected password requests: The Trojan may display a fake system prompt asking you to re-enter your computer password or credentials for an online account, which it then captures.
  • Constant, unexplained network activity: Your computer’s internet connection may seem unusually busy even when you’re not using it. This could be the Trojan communicating with a remote server.

Recognizing these signs early allows you to act quickly. If something feels off, trusting your instinct and running a scan can help you find and contain a threat before it does significant harm.

4 best ways to check for a Trojan on your PC

If you’re noticing any of the symptoms above, it’s time to investigate further using automated tools and manual checks. A layered approach is the best way to find and confirm a Trojan infection. To get started, follow the steps below:

1. Scan your PC

The first step is to scan your PC using an antivirus software. Plenty of scan options are available on the market offering real-time protection from all types of malicious software threats, including viruses, rootkits, spyware, adware, ransomware, and Trojans. Some even feature on-demand and scheduled scanning of files and apps, advanced firewall for home network security, and compatibility with Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices.

2. Search for Trojans while in safe mode

The next step is to search for Trojans while your computer is in safe mode. In this phase, your device will run only the basic programs needed for Microsoft Windows operation, making it easy to spot any unfamiliar or suspicious programs. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Type “MSCONFIG.” in the search bar from the Start menu.
  2. Click on the “Boot” tab in the System Configuration box.
  3. Tick “Safe Mode” and click “Apply,” then “OK.”
  4. After the system restarts, re-open the configuration box.
  5. Click on “Startup.”
  6. Examine the list and see if there are any suspicious files.
  7. Disable any you deem suspicious.

3. Check processes in Windows Task Manager

Another effective way to detect if Trojans are in your system is to check the processes running in Windows Task Manager. This will allow you to see if there are any unfamiliar and unauthorized malicious programs or suspicious activity.

To go to the Task manager, press Ctrl+Alt+Del and click on the “Processes” tab. Review the list of active applications and disable the apps without verified publishers or ones you don’t remember downloading and installing.

4. Scan with Windows security

You can also scan your PC using built-in Windows virus and threat protection tools. Microsoft Defender (called Windows Defender Security Center in older versions of Windows 10) can perform virus scans and detect various types of malware. These are the parts to note:

Windows’ built-in security, known as Microsoft Defender, is a capable tool that can detect and remove many common Trojans. For basic protection, it provides a solid first line of defense and is far better than having no security at all. It handles known threats well and is constantly updated by Microsoft.

However, a dedicated security suite offers more comprehensive, layered protection. This goes beyond simple malware removal to include advanced features like a robust firewall, real-time phishing protection that blocks malicious websites before they load, identity safeguards, and a VPN for secure browsing. These layers work together to stop threats *before* they can infect your PC, which is always better than removing them after the fact.

Think of it as the difference between a standard lock on your door and a full home security system. For everyday, low-risk browsing, the built-in tool may be enough. But for anyone who banks, shops, or shares personal information online, the added protection of a full security suite provides essential peace of mind against a wider range of threats.

Remember to check your network

Most Trojans communicate with a remote command-and-control server to receive instructions or send stolen data through your internet connection. By monitoring your network activity, you can spot these hidden connections early. Unusual outbound traffic, unfamiliar IP addresses, or constant background data transfers are all red flags that something malicious might be operating behind the scenes.

  • Monitor active connections: Use the Resource Monitor tool in Windows (resmon.exe) to see which applications are using your network. Look for any unfamiliar processes making outbound connections.
  • Verify DNS and proxy settings: In your Windows network settings, check that your DNS server and proxy settings haven’t been changed. Trojans often alter these to redirect your traffic through malicious servers.
  • Firewall logs: Firewall logs can show repeated attempts by a specific program to connect to the internet, which is a strong indicator of a Trojan trying to communicate with its operator.

Choose the best Trojan scanner & removal tool

If you’re in the market for a tool that scans and removes Trojans, you have the option of free or premium tools. Whichever you choose, the key is to act quickly but carefully before the Trojan can cause any lasting damage.

Free tools are a great step

A free scan is the perfect first step to determine if you have a Trojan virus on your system. These no-cost tools provide an immediate way to detect potential threats and give you peace of mind about your PC’s security status.

Free Trojan scanners work by examining your system files, running processes, and common hiding spots where malware typically lurks. They check for known Trojan signatures, suspicious file behaviors, and registry modifications that indicate a possible infection. While they may not catch every advanced threat, they’re excellent for identifying common Trojans and giving you a clear starting point.

Simple steps to run your free scan

  1. Choose your scanner: Download a reputable free scanning tool from a trusted security provider’s official website. Ensure your scanner has the latest threat definitions for maximum effectiveness.
  2. Close other programs: Restart your PC in Safe Mode and close any unnecessary applications to improve scan performance and accuracy.
  3. Run a full system scan: Make sure you select the free tool’s comprehensive scan option to check all files, not just a quick scan.
  4. Review the results: Carefully examine any detected threats, noting their names and file locations. When threats are found, most free scanners will categorize them by risk level and provide recommended actions.
  5. Take action on findings: Quarantine or delete identified threats as recommended by the scanner. High-risk items should be immediately quarantined or deleted, while suspicious files may need further analysis. Be careful as some legitimate files can occasionally trigger false positives.
  6. Restart and rescan: Reboot your PC and run another scan to confirm that the Trojan or any threat was completely removed.

Free scanning tools give you valuable insight into your system’s health and serve as an excellent diagnostic tool to check Trojan presence. However, they typically offer detection and removal only, without the real-time protection needed to prevent future infections.

Comprehensive scanning with McAfee antivirus

For comprehensive security that stops threats before they can infect your system, consider upgrading to a complete security solution that provides continuous monitoring and advanced threat protection. Modern antivirus suites like McAfee Total Protection are expertly designed to detect and block Trojans. They use a layered security model that includes signature detection to identify known malware, behavioral analysis to spot suspicious activities characteristic of a Trojan, and artificial intelligence to protect against the very latest threats. Real-time protection actively scans files as you access them, while scheduled and manual scans allow you to thoroughly check your entire system for any hidden malware.

McAfee software is especially effective when it comes to scanning for Trojans and other types of malware and removing them before they can cause any damage to your computer system. With real-time, on-demand, and scheduled scanning of files and applications at your disposal, we’ll help you detect and eliminate any emerging threat in a timely manner.

Remove the Trojan from any platform

In any computer platform—Windows or macOS—the process of scanning and removing a Trojan with McAfee software is similar and absolutely achievable. These steps will help you regain control of your device:

  1. Disconnect your PC: Unplug your ethernet cable or turn off Wi-Fi to stop the Trojan from communicating online.
  2. Reboot in Safe Mode: Restart your computer in Safe Mode to prevent most malware from loading.
  3. Run a full antivirus scan: Use a trusted tool like McAfee to run a complete scan and quarantine or delete any threats it finds.
  4. For Mac: Run a full system scan with trusted security software designed for this device.
  5. Reset your browsers: Return your web browsers to their default settings to remove any malicious or unfamiliar extensions or changes. Update macOS to the latest version to patch security vulnerabilities.
  6. Reboot and rescan: Restart your PC normally and run another full scan to confirm the Trojan is completely gone.
  7. Change all your passwords: Once your computer is clean, immediately change passwords for your email, banking, and other important accounts.

Once you’ve completed the removal process, strengthen your defenses by enabling automatic updates, using reputable security software, and being cautious about downloads and email attachments. Regular system scans and keeping your software current are your best protection against future infections. With these steps, you can confidently clean your devices and prevent repeat attacks.

Quick tips to prevent a Trojan virus invasion

  • Keep software updated: Enable automatic updates for your operating system, web browser, and applications to patch security vulnerabilities.
  • Scrutinize emails: Do not open attachments or click links from unknown or suspicious senders. Verify requests for information.
  • Use strong, unique passwords: Employ a password manager to create and store complex passwords for each of your online accounts.
  • Enable a firewall: Ensure your network firewall is active to monitor and control incoming and outgoing network traffic.
  • Backup data regularly: Keep regular backups of your important files so you can restore them in case of a ransomware attack or data corruption.
  • Avoid risky downloads: Only download applications from official websites and trusted app stores.
  • Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA): Add this extra security layer to your important online accounts.
  • Use real-time protection: Ensure a comprehensive security suite like McAfee is always running to detect threats instantly.

FAQs about Trojans

What is a Trojan horse?

A Trojan is malware that disguises itself as a legitimate file or program. Once you run it, it can perform malicious actions such as stealing data or giving an attacker remote control of your PC.

How does a Trojan spread?

Trojans don’t spread on their own. They rely on you to download and run them. This often happens through phishing emails with fake attachments, malicious ads, or downloads of cracked software.

Can Macs and phones get infected by Trojans?

Yes. While less common than on Windows PCs, Trojans exist for all major operating systems, including macOS, Android, and iOS. It’s crucial to only install apps from official app stores to stay safe.

What is the quickest way to check for a Trojan?

The fastest and most reliable method to check for a Trojan in your computer is to run a full system scan with a trusted antivirus program. This will check all files and running processes for known threats.

How long does it take to remove a Trojan?

Removal time can vary. A good antivirus scan might find and remove it in under an hour. However, some complex Trojans may require more steps, like booting into Safe Mode, which can take longer.

What should I do immediately after removing a Trojan?

Once your system is clean, the first thing you should do is change the passwords for all your important accounts, especially email, banking, and social media, as the Trojan may have stolen them.

Final thoughts

Wondering if your computer has been infected by a Trojan can be worrying, but it’s a manageable issue with the right approach. By understanding the signs of a Trojan virus and using the detection methods outlined, you can take back control of your device’s security. To prevent getting infected by a Trojan, proactive measures such as safe online habits and the layered defense of a trusted security suite like McAfee are your best defenses. Stay vigilant and keep your software updated, so you can confidently navigate the digital world.

The post Best Ways to Check for a Trojan on Your PC appeared first on McAfee Blog.

This Is the Platform Google Claims Is Behind a 'Staggering’ Scam Text Operation

By: Matt Burgess
Google is suing 25 people it alleges are behind a “relentless” scam text operation that uses a phishing-as-a-service platform called Lighthouse.

Why shadow AI could be your biggest security blind spot

From unintentional data leakage to buggy code, here’s why you should care about unsanctioned AI use in your company

Holiday Shopping Scams: What to Watch as Black Friday & Cyber Monday Approach

By: Brooke Seipel

It’s an all-too-familiar trap. You’re scrolling TikTok when an ad for your favorite shoe brand pops up. Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are everywhere, and this one—buy one, get one free—looks completely legit.

The site it links to looks real too. The logo, the product pages, even the checkout cart all match what you’d expect from the brand. You place your order and move on.

A few days later, you notice the charge on your bank statement. It’s the right amount—but the payment didn’t go to the store you thought. Instead, there’s a company name you don’t recognize.

That’s when it hits you: the site wasn’t real at all. You’ve been scammed.

Peak shopping season is peak scam season, with fake deals and ads making up one major tactic used to deceive shoppers.

Nearly all U.S. adults plan to shop online this season, with about half planning to do so daily or more. Scammers know that when people are rushing to buy gifts and click “checkout,” they’re also less likely to slow down and verify what they’re seeing.

That’s when fraudsters strike, often using artificial intelligence to make their fake messages and websites look authentic.

McAfee’s 2025 holiday shopping research revealed that almost half of Americans (46%) say they’ve already encountered these AI-powered scams while shopping.

How AI is Powering Holiday Scammers

The era of “obvious scams” is over.

Generative AI tools have made it simple to clone brand websites, copy influencer voices, and even create realistic video ads promoting fake sales. And our recent State of the Scamiverse research found  people struggle identifying deepfakes, with 39% of people saying deepfake video scams are getting more sophisticated and harder to spot.

That’s why deepfake-driven scams utilizing advanced tactics are multiplying across platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Scammers are impersonating celebrity likenesses, or well-known brands, to advertise “exclusive” promotions or fake giveaways. For holiday shoppers, the line between what is authentic and fraudulent continues to blur.

By the Numbers

  • 1 in 5 Americans say they’ve been scammed during a past holiday season
  • The average loss per victim is $840
  • 57% of those surveyed are more concerned about AI scams this year than last
  • 38% of those surveyed believe they can spot scams, yet 22% have fallen for one
  • Detected deepfakes surged 1,740% in North America last year

 

What to Watch For in 2025

1. Fake Retail Sites and Counterfeit “Deal” Pages

These scams mimic major brand websites down to the logo, product photography, and even customer service pages. The only difference is the URL—a single extra letter or misplaced period (“target-sale.com” instead of “target.com”).

When shoppers enter their payment details or passwords on these fraudulent websites, that information goes directly to criminals. According to McAfee research, this fear of scams while shopping has stopped 40% of consumers from completing a holiday purchase.

How to spot it: Always check the full web address, look for “https,” and avoid clicking through from an ad or social post. It’s best to just type the retailer’s name directly into your browser instead to reach the official site.

2. TikTok and Social Media Scams

Even cybercriminals follow trends, and short-form videos are scam hotspots. Scammers use deepfakes or stolen influencer content to make “exclusive” deals look legitimate.

For example, a TikTok clip may show a celebrity promoting a discount code that redirects to a counterfeit store.

According to McAfee research, 1 in 5 people (20%) say they or someone they know has fallen victim to a deepfake scam in the past year. And overwhelmingly, respondents said they came across deepfakes on social media.

How to spot it: Check if the creator’s account is verified. Look at past posts and engagement patterns. Real brands rarely share one-off videos with unfamiliar links.

3. Delivery and Shipping Text Scams

You’ll receive a text saying a package can’t be delivered or that a small fee is needed to confirm your address.

McAfee found that have encountered fake delivery notifications, and many victims say they entered credit card information thinking they were resolving a legitimate issue.

How to spot it: Real shipping companies rarely send texts with clickable payment links. Visit the carrier’s official website or app to verify any delivery problems.

4. Gift Card and Account Verification Scams

These scams pressure you to “verify” your account or make an urgent payment. Messages may claim your PayPal or Amazon account is locked and request you to confirm details. Others ask for gift cards to “resolve” a billing issue.

Scammers count on urgency—once you send a code or card number, the funds are gone instantly.

How to spot it: No legitimate company will ask for payment in gift cards or ask you to share one-time codes over text. Always log in to your account directly, never through a link sent via message.

How to Shop Safely This Holiday Season

Go straight to the source. If you see an offer on social media, type the retailer’s URL yourself instead of clicking through the post. Fraudulent ads often lead to look-alike domains.

Pause before you click. Take a moment to verify emails and DMs. Check the sender’s address, look for misspellings, and hover over links to preview where they lead.

Use AI to fight AI. McAfee’s Scam Detector can identify suspicious messages, fake websites, and deepfake content before harm occurs.

Keep your software up to date. Many scams exploit outdated browsers or apps. Regular updates patch vulnerabilities before criminals can use them.

Avoid public Wi-Fi while shopping. Public networks are easy for hackers to monitor. Use a secure or mobile connection instead. Check out McAfee’s VPN to stay protected while browsing and shopping.

Never pay with gift cards: Legitimate companies and businesses will never ask for you to pay or verify a purchase in exchange for gift cards.

Be suspicious of requests to pay with crypto: A legitimate company will not force you to pay in crypto or other specific crypto assets.

How McAfee Can Help

McAfee’s Scam Detector uses advanced artificial intelligence to automatically detect scams across text, email, and video. It blocks dangerous links, identifies deepfakes, and stops harm before it happens.

McAfee’s identity protection tools also monitor for signs that your personal information may have been exposed and guide you through recovery steps.

You can sign in to your McAfee account to scan for recent breaches linked to your email, or try a free trial of McAfee antivirus to keep your devices secure throughout the shopping season.

The post Holiday Shopping Scams: What to Watch as Black Friday & Cyber Monday Approach appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Drilling Down on Uncle Sam’s Proposed TP-Link Ban

By: BrianKrebs

The U.S. government is reportedly preparing to ban the sale of wireless routers and other networking gear from TP-Link Systems, a tech company that currently enjoys an estimated 50% market share among home users and small businesses. Experts say while the proposed ban may have more to do with TP-Link’s ties to China than any specific technical threats, much of the rest of the industry serving this market also sources hardware from China and ships products that are insecure fresh out of the box.

A TP-Link WiFi 6 AX1800 Smart WiFi Router (Archer AX20).

The Washington Post recently reported that more than a half-dozen federal departments and agencies were backing a proposed ban on future sales of TP-Link devices in the United States. The story said U.S. Department of Commerce officials concluded TP-Link Systems products pose a risk because the U.S.-based company’s products handle sensitive American data and because the officials believe it remains subject to jurisdiction or influence by the Chinese government.

TP-Link Systems denies that, saying that it fully split from the Chinese TP-Link Technologies over the past three years, and that its critics have vastly overstated the company’s market share (TP-Link puts it at around 30 percent). TP-Link says it has headquarters in California, with a branch in Singapore, and that it manufactures in Vietnam. The company says it researches, designs, develops and manufactures everything except its chipsets in-house.

TP-Link Systems told The Post it has sole ownership of some engineering, design and manufacturing capabilities in China that were once part of China-based TP-Link Technologies, and that it operates them without Chinese government supervision.

“TP-Link vigorously disputes any allegation that its products present national security risks to the United States,” Ricca Silverio, a spokeswoman for TP-Link Systems, said in a statement. “TP-Link is a U.S. company committed to supplying high-quality and secure products to the U.S. market and beyond.”

Cost is a big reason TP-Link devices are so prevalent in the consumer and small business market: As this February 2025 story from Wired observed regarding the proposed ban, TP-Link has long had a reputation for flooding the market with devices that are considerably cheaper than comparable models from other vendors. That price point (and consistently excellent performance ratings) has made TP-Link a favorite among Internet service providers (ISPs) that provide routers to their customers.

In August 2024, the chairman and the ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party called for an investigation into TP-Link devices, which they said were found on U.S. military bases and for sale at exchanges that sell them to members of the military and their families.

“TP-Link’s unusual degree of vulnerabilities and required compliance with PRC law are in and of themselves disconcerting,” the House lawmakers warned in a letter (PDF) to the director of the Commerce Department. “When combined with the PRC government’s common use of SOHO [small office/home office] routers like TP-Link to perpetrate extensive cyberattacks in the United States, it becomes significantly alarming.”

The letter cited a May 2023 blog post by Check Point Research about a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group dubbed “Camaro Dragon” that used a malicious firmware implant for some TP-Link routers to carry out a sequence of targeted cyberattacks against European foreign affairs entities. Check Point said while it only found the malicious firmware on TP-Link devices, “the firmware-agnostic nature of the implanted components indicates that a wide range of devices and vendors may be at risk.”

In a report published in October 2024, Microsoft said it was tracking a network of compromised TP-Link small office and home office routers that has been abused by multiple distinct Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups since 2021. Microsoft found the hacker groups were leveraging the compromised TP-Link systems to conduct “password spraying” attacks against Microsoft accounts. Password spraying involves rapidly attempting to access a large number of accounts (usernames/email addresses) with a relatively small number of commonly used passwords.

TP-Link rightly points out that most of its competitors likewise source components from China. The company also correctly notes that advanced persistent threat (APT) groups from China and other nations have leveraged vulnerabilities in products from their competitors, such as Cisco and Netgear.

But that may be cold comfort for TP-Link customers who are now wondering if it’s smart to continue using these products, or whether it makes sense to buy more costly networking gear that might only be marginally less vulnerable to compromise.

Almost without exception, the hardware and software that ships with most consumer-grade routers includes a number of default settings that need to be changed before the devices can be safely connected to the Internet. For example, bring a new router online without changing the default username and password and chances are it will only take a few minutes before it is probed and possibly compromised by some type of Internet-of-Things botnet. Also, it is incredibly common for the firmware in a brand new router to be dangerously out of date by the time it is purchased and unboxed.

Until quite recently, the idea that router manufacturers should make it easier for their customers to use these products safely was something of an anathema to this industry. Consumers were largely left to figure that out on their own, with predictably disastrous results.

But over the past few years, many manufacturers of popular consumer routers have begun forcing users to perform basic hygiene — such as changing the default password and updating the internal firmware — before the devices can be used as a router. For example, most brands of “mesh” wireless routers — like Amazon’s Eero, Netgear’s Orbi series, or Asus’s ZenWifi — require online registration that automates these critical steps going forward (or at least through their stated support lifecycle).

For better or worse, less expensive, traditional consumer routers like those from Belkin and Linksys also now automate this setup by heavily steering customers toward installing a mobile app to complete the installation (this often comes as a shock to people more accustomed to manually configuring a router). Still, these products tend to put the onus on users to check for and install available updates periodically. Also, they’re often powered by underwhelming or else bloated firmware, and a dearth of configurable options.

Of course, not everyone wants to fiddle with mobile apps or is comfortable with registering their router so that it can be managed or monitored remotely in the cloud. For those hands-on folks — and for power users seeking more advanced router features like VPNs, ad blockers and network monitoring — the best advice is to check if your router’s stock firmware can be replaced with open-source alternatives, such as OpenWrt or DD-WRT.

These open-source firmware options are compatible with a wide range of devices, and they generally offer more features and configurability. Open-source firmware can even help extend the life of routers years after the vendor stops supporting the underlying hardware, but it still requires users to manually check for and install any available updates.

Happily, TP-Link users spooked by the proposed ban may have an alternative to outright junking these devices, as many TP-Link routers also support open-source firmware options like OpenWRT. While this approach may not eliminate any potential hardware-specific security flaws, it could serve as an effective hedge against more common vendor-specific vulnerabilities, such as undocumented user accounts, hard-coded credentials, and weaknesses that allow attackers to bypass authentication.

Regardless of the brand, if your router is more than four or five years old it may be worth upgrading for performance reasons alone — particularly if your home or office is primarily accessing the Internet through WiFi.

NB: The Post’s story notes that a substantial portion of TP-Link routers and those of its competitors are purchased or leased through ISPs. In these cases, the devices are typically managed and updated remotely by your ISP, and equipped with custom profiles responsible for authenticating your device to the ISP’s network. If this describes your setup, please do not attempt to modify or replace these devices without first consulting with your Internet provider.

This Week in Scams: Fake Steaks and Debit Card Porch Pirates

By: McAfee

We’re back with a new edition of “This Week in Scams,” a roundup of what’s current and trending in all things sketchy online.

This week, we have fake steaks, why you should shop online with a credit card, and a new and utterly brash form of debit card fraud.

Fake steaks from “0maha Steaks”

Yes, the letter “O” for Omaha in the subject line of this email scam is actually a zero. And that’s not the only thing that’s off with this email, it’s a total scam.

An image of a scam 0maha Steaks email.

 

If you like your choice cuts, the name Omaha Steaks might be a familiar one. They’ve been around for almost 110 years, and since 1953 they’ve been in the mail order meat business. Today, they sell, well, just about anything you can picture in the butcher or seafood case. With that, the company enjoys a premium reputation, so it’s little surprise scammers have latched onto it and built a phishing attack around the brand—one they garnish with a nod to concerns over rising food prices.

A few things can quickly tip you off to this scam. For starters, the scammers oddly spell Omaha with a zero in the subject line, as mentioned. From there, the sender’s email address is a straight ref flag. In this case, it’s the curiously spelled “steaksamplnext” followed by a (redacted) domain name that isn’t the legitimate omahasteaks dot-com address. Also curious is the lack of an actual price for the bogus “Gourmet Box.” And lastly, you might think that a premium foods brand would showcase some pictures of their famous fare in the email. Not so here.

Rounding it out, you’ll see the classic scammer tactics of scarcity and urgency, which scammers hope will pressure people to act immediately. In this case, only 500 of these supposed boxes are available, and the offer “concludes tomorrow.”

How to avoid Omaha Steak scams and phishing scams like them

Even as this scam makes the rounds, it’s easy to spot if you give it a closer look and a little thought—giving it a sort of old-school feel to it. However, more and more of today’s phishing emails look increasingly legit, thanks to AI tools, which might get you to click.

As for phishing attacks like this in general, you can protect yourself by:

Always checking the email address of the sender. If it doesn’t match the proper address of the company or brand that’s supposedly sending the email, it’s a scam. In this case, from the people at Omaha Steaks themselves, “If it doesn’t show OmahaSteaks.com and @OmahaSteaks, it’s not us!”

Looking for addresses and links that look like they’ve been slightly altered so that they seem “close enough” to the real thing. In this case, the scammer didn’t even bother to try. However, you could expect an alteration like “omahasteakofferforyou.com” to try and look legit.

Getting a scam detector. Our Scam Detector, found in all core McAfee plans, helps you stay safer with advanced scam detection technology built to spot and stop scams across text messages, emails, and videos. It’ll also block those sites if you accidentally tap or click on a bad link.

One good reason for using your credit card when shopping online.

What’s the most common kind of fraud? If you said, “credit card,” you’ll find it number five on the list. The top form is debit cards, according to 2025 findings from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

As reported by financial institutions, the Fed found that attempts at debit card fraud rose to 73% with 52% of those attempts being successful.

There’s a good reason for that debit card fraud ranks highest for attempts and success rate. It’s the same reason that credit card fraud is relatively low. Debit cards don’t have the same fraud protections in place that credit cards do.

As you might have read in our blogs before, credit cards offer additional protection thanks to the Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA). Your maximum liability is $50 for fraudulent charges on a lost or stolen card if you report the loss to your issuer within 60 days. In the case of relatively unprotected debit cards, those losses often go unrecovered.

Keep this in mind as you sit down for your online shopping for the holidays: use a credit card instead of a debit card. That gives you the protection of the FCBA if your shopping session gets hacked or if the retailer experiences a data breach somewhere down the road. Also think about making it even safer by shopping with a VPN. Our VPN creates an encrypted “tunnel” that protects your data from crooks and prying eyes, so your card info stays private.

A new debit card scam with a porch pirate twist

First reported by the FBI last year, we’re seeing continued reports of a brash and bold form of debit card scam—people physically handing over their cards to scammers.

The scam starts like many card scams do, with a phone call. Scammers spoof the caller ID of the victim’s bank or credit union, ring them up, and tell them there’s a “problem” with their account. From there, scammers direct victims to cut up their current card—but with a twist. They tell victims to keep the little EMV chip for tap-and-go payments intact.

Why? Victims get instructed to leave the cut-up card and intact chip in the mailbox for a “courier” to pick up for “security purposes.” Once in hand, scammers get access to the bank account associated with the chip. Even if the scammers don’t wrangle a PIN number out of their victims with a little social engineering trickery, they can still make purchases with the chip as some points of sale don’t require a PIN number when tapping to pay.

Here’s how you can avoid the “porch pirate” debit card scam

Shred your old cards in a paper shredder. Then, take the next step. Grab the shredded pieces and throw them away in separate batches. This will all make it fantastically tough for a scammer to piece together your card and steal your info.

Call back your bank yourself. If you get a call, voicemail, or text saying there’s an issue with your account, you can verify any possible issue yourself by calling the number on the back of your card.

Know that banks won’t send “couriers” for cards. And they’ll simply never ask you to leave your card in your mailbox.

Other scam and cybersecurity headlines this week

That’s our roundup for this week. We’ll catch you next Friday with more updates, scam news, and ways you can stay safer out there.

The post This Week in Scams: Fake Steaks and Debit Card Porch Pirates appeared first on McAfee Blog.

In memoriam: David Harley

Former colleagues and friends remember the cybersecurity researcher, author, and mentor whose work bridged the human and technical sides of security

The who, where, and how of APT attacks in Q2 2025–Q3 2025

ESET Chief Security Evangelist Tony Anscombe highlights some of the key findings from the latest issue of the ESET APT Activity Report

The Government Shutdown Is a Ticking Cybersecurity Time Bomb

By: Lily Hay Newman
Many critical systems are still being maintained, and the cloud provides some security cover. But experts say that any lapses in protections like patching and monitoring could expose government systems.

Mexico City Is the Most Video-Surveilled Metropolis in the Americas

By: Dalila Sarabia
Despite 83,000 public cameras, crime in Mexico City remains high—and widespread surveillance raises myriad ethical issues.

The Louvre Used Its Own Name as a Password. Here’s What to Learn From It

By: Brooke Seipel
The Louvre at night

If you’ve been watching the news, you’ve probably seen the headlines out of Paris: one of the most audacious heists in decades took place at the Louvre, where thieves made off with centuries-old crown jewels worth tens of millions of dollars.

But amid the cinematic drama, a quieter detail emerged that’s almost harder to believe—according to French newspaper Libération (via PC Gamer), auditors discovered that the password protecting the museum’s video surveillance system was simply “Louvre.”

While it’s not yet confirmed whether this played a direct role in the robbery, cybersecurity experts point out that weak or reused passwords remain one of the easiest ways for criminals—digital or otherwise—to get inside.

Safety Lessons You Can Learn from The Louvre

The Louvre’s cybersecurity audits, dating back to 2014, reportedly revealed a pattern of outdated software and simple passwords that hadn’t been updated in years. Subsequent reviews noted “serious shortcomings,” including security systems running on decades-old software no longer supported by developers.

That situation mirrors one of the most common security issues individuals face at home. Whether it’s an email account, a social media login, or your home Wi-Fi router, using an easy or repeated password is like leaving the front door open. Hackers don’t need to break in when they can just walk through.

As experts here at McAfee have explained, cybercriminals routinely rely on “credential stuffing” attacks, in which they test stolen passwords from one breach against other sites to see what else they can access. If you’ve used the same password for your streaming account and your online banking, it’s not hard to imagine what could go wrong.

What’s A Bad Password?

  • Obvious or guessable: Anything like “password,” “123456,” or even the name of the service (“Louvre,” “Netflix,” “Chase”) can be cracked in seconds.
  • Dictionary words: Real words or phrases are easier for hacking programs to guess, even when combined creatively.
  • Repeated passwords: Reusing a password across multiple sites means one breach can expose everything.
  • Personal details: Pet names, birthdays, and favorite bands can all be scraped from social media—making them the first thing a hacker will try.

What Makes A Strong Password

A strong password is long, complex, and unique. Cybersecurity experts recommend at least 12–16 characters that mix uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. A short password can be guessed in minutes; a long one can take decades to crack.

If that sounds like a lot to juggle, you’re not alone. That’s why password managers exist.

Why A Password Manager Is Your Best Guard

A password manager takes the work—and the guesswork—out of creating and remembering complex passwords. It generates random combinations that are nearly impossible to crack, then stores them securely using advanced encryption.

The added bonus? You’ll never have to reuse a password again. Even if one account is theoretically compromised in a breach, your others remain protected because each password is unique.

McAfee’s password manager also uses multi-factor authentication (MFA), meaning you’ll need at least two forms of verification before signing in—like a code sent to your phone. That extra step can stop hackers cold, even if they somehow get your password.

How to protect yourself

To keep your digital treasures safer than the Louvre’s jewels:

  • Use strong, unique passwords for every account. Longer is better.
  • Change passwords regularly and especially after any breach or suspicious activity.
  • Turn on MFA wherever possible—it’s one of the simplest and most effective protections.
  • Avoid public Wi-Fi for sensitive logins, or use a secure VPN.
  • Store passwords safely with a reputable password manager instead of your browser or a notepad.

The bottom line

Reports of the Louvre’s weak password might make for an easy punchline, but the truth is that millions of people make the same mistake every day—reusing simple passwords across dozens of accounts. Strong, unique passwords (and the right tools to manage them) are still one of the most powerful defenses against data theft and identity fraud.

As scams and breaches continue to evolve, your best defense is awareness and protection that adapts just as fast. McAfee’s built-in Scam Detector, included in all core plans, automatically detects scams across text, email, and video, blocks dangerous links, and identifies deepfakes—stopping harm before it happens.

The post The Louvre Used Its Own Name as a Password. Here’s What to Learn From It appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Why a Unified Email Security Platform is Your Best Defense

By: Kevin Potts
Email Threat Defense’s enhanced capabilities integrate gateway-level prevention with supplemental, API-based post-delivery remediation.

Scam Ads Are Flooding Social Media. These Former Meta Staffers Have a Plan

By: Craig Silverman
Rob Leathern and Rob Goldman, who both worked at Meta, are launching a new nonprofit that aims to bring transparency to an increasingly opaque, scam-filled social media ecosystem.

2 Billion Email Addresses Were Exposed, and We Indexed Them All in Have I Been Pwned

By: Troy Hunt
2 Billion Email Addresses Were Exposed, and We Indexed Them All in Have I Been Pwned

I hate hyperbolic news headlines about data breaches, but for the "2 Billion Email Addresses" headline to be hyperbolic, it'd need to be exaggerated or overstated - and it isn't. It's rounded up from the more precise number of 1,957,476,021 unique email addresses, but other than that, it's exactly what it sounds like. Oh - and 1.3 billion unique passwords, 625 million of which we'd never seen before either. It's the most extensive corpus of data we've ever processed, by a significant margin.

Edit: Just to be crystal clear about the origin of the data and the role of Synthient (who you’ll read about in the next paragraph): this data came from numerous locations where cybercriminals had published it. Synthient (run by Ben during his final year of college) indexed that data and provided it to Have I Been Pwned solely for the purpose of notifying victims. He’s the good guy shining a light on the bad guys, so keep that in mind as you read on. (Some of the feedback Ben has received is exactly what I foreshadowed in the final paragraph of this post.)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the 183M unique email addresses that Synthient had indexed in their threat intelligence platform and then shared with us. I explained that this was only part of the corpus of data they'd indexed, and that it didn't include the credential stuffing records. Stealer log data is obtained by malware running on infected machines. In contrast, credential stuffing lists usually originate from other data breaches where email addresses and passwords are exposed. They're then bundled up, sold, redistributed, and ultimately used to log in to victims' accounts. Not just the accounts they were initially breached from, either, because people reuse the same password over and over again, the data from one breach is frequently usable on completely unrelated sites. A breach of a forum to comment on cats often exposes data that can then be used to log in to the victim's shopping, social media and even email accounts. In that regard, credential stuffing data becomes "the keys to the castle".

Let me run through how we verified the data, what you can do about it and for the tech folks, some of the hoops we had to jump through to make processing this volume of data possible.

Data Verification

The first person whose data I verified was easy - me 😔 An old email address I've had since the 90s has been in credential stuffing lists before, so it wasn't too much of a surprise. Furthermore, I found a password associated with my address, which I'd definitely used many eons ago, and it was about as terrible as you'd expect from that era. However, none of the other passwords associated with my address were familiar. They certainly looked like passwords that other people might have feasibly used, but I'm pretty sure they weren't mine. One was even just an IP address from Perth on the other side of the country, which is both infeasible as a password I would have used, yet eerily close to home. I mean, of all the places in the world an IP address could have appeared from, it had to be somewhere in my own country I've been many times before...

Moving on to HIBP subscribers, I reached out to a handful and asked for support verifying the data. I chose a mix of subscribers with many who'd never been involved in any data breach we'd ever seen before; my experience above suggested that there's recycled data in there, and we had previously verified that when investigating those other incidents. However, is the all-new stuff legitimate? The very first response I received was exactly what I was looking for:

#1 is an old password that I don't use anymore. #2 is a more recent password. Thanks for the heads up, I've gone and changed the password for every critical account that used either one. 

Perfectly illustrating most people's behaviour with passwords, #2 referred to above was just #1 with two exclamation marks at the end!! (Incidentally, these were simple six and eight-character passwords, and neither of them was in Pwned Passwords either.) He had three passwords in total, which also means one of them, like with my data, was not familiar. However, the most important thing here is that this example perfectly illustrates why we put the effort into processing data like this: #2 was a real, live password that this guy was actively using, and it was sitting right next to his email address, being passed around among criminals. However, through this effort, that credential pair has now become useless, which is precisely what we're aiming for with this exercise, just a couple of billion times over.

The second respondent only had one password against their address:

Yes that was a password I used for many years for what I would call throw away or unimportant accounts between 20 and 10 years ago

That was also only eight characters, but this time, we'd seen it in Pwned Passwords many times before. And the observation about the password's age was consistent with my own records, so there's definitely some pretty old data in there.

The following response was not at all surprising:

I am familiar with that password... I used it almost 10 years ago... and cannot recall the last time I used it.

That was on a corporate account, too, and the owner of the address duly forwarded my email to the cybersecurity team for further investigation. The single password associated with this lady's email address had a massive nine characters, and also hadn't previously appeared in Pwned Passwords.

Next up was a respondent who replied inline to my questions, so I'll list them below with the corresponding answers:

Is this familiar? Yes  
Have you ever used it in the past? Yes and is still on some accounts I do not use any longer.
And if so, how long ago? Unfortunately, it is still on some active accounts that I have just made a list of to change or close immediately.

This individual's eight-character password with uppercase, lowercase, numbers and a "special" character also wasn't in Pwned Passwords. Similarly, as with the earlier response, that password was still in active use, posing a real risk to the owner. It would pass most password complexity criteria and slip through any service using Pwned Passwords to block bad ones, so again, this highlights why it was so important for us to process the data.

The next person had three different passwords against rows with their email address, and they came back with a now common response:

Yes, these are familiar, last used 10 years ago

We'd actually seen all three of them in Pwned Passwords before, many times each. Another respondent with precisely the kind of gamer-like passwords you'd expect a kid to use (one of which we hadn't seen before), also confirmed (I think?) their use:

maybe when i was a kid lol

Responses that weren't an emphatic "yes, that's my data" were scarce. The two passwords against one person's name were both in Pwned Passwords (albeit only once each), yet it's entirely possible that neither of them had been used by this specific individual before. It's also possible they'd forgotten a password they'd used more than a decade ago, or it may have even been automatically assigned to them by the service that was subsequently breached. Put it down as a statistical anomaly, but I thought it was worth mentioning to highlight that being in this data set isn't a guarantee of a genuine password of yours being exposed. If your email address is found in this corpus then that's real, of course, so there must be some truth in the data, but it's a reminder that when data is aggregated from so many different sources over such a long period of time, there's going to be some inconsistencies.

Searching Pwned Passwords

As a brief recap, we load passwords into the service we call Pwned Passwords. When we do so, there is absolutely no association between the password and the email address it appeared next to. This is for both your protection and ours; can you imagine if HIBP was pwned? It's not beyond the realm of possibility, and the impact of exposing billions of credential pairs that can immediately unlock an untold number of accounts would be catastrophic. It's highly risky, and completely unnecessary when you can search for standalone passwords anyway without creating the risk of it being linked back to someone.

Think about it: if you have a password of "Fido123!" and you find it's been previously exposed (which it has), it doesn't matter if it was exposed against your email address or someone else's; it's still a bad password because it's named after your dog followed by a very predictable pattern. If you have a genuinely strong password and it's in Pwned Passwords, then you can walk away with some confidence that it really was yours. Either way, you shouldn't ever use that password again anywhere, and Pwned Passwords has done its job.

Checking the service is easy, anonymous and depending on your level of technical comfort, can be done in several different ways. Here's a copy and paste from the last Synthient blog post:

  1. Use the Pwned Passwords search page. Passwords are protected with an anonymity model, so we never see them (it's processed in the browser itself), but if you're wary, just check old ones you may suspect.
  2. Use the k-anonymity API. This is what drives the page in the previous point, and if you're handy with writing code, this is an easy approach and gives you complete confidence in the anonymity aspect.
  3. Use 1Password's Watchtower. The password manager has a built-in checker that uses the abovementioned API and can check all the passwords in your vault. (Disclosure: 1Password is a regular sponsor of this blog, and has product placement on HIBP.)
2 Billion Email Addresses Were Exposed, and We Indexed Them All in Have I Been Pwned

My vested interest in 1Password aside, Watchtower is the easiest, fastest way to understand your potential exposure in this incident. And in case you're wondering why I have so many vulnerable and reused passwords, it's a combination of the test accounts I've saved over the years and the 4-digit PINs some services force you to use. Would you believe that every single 4-digit number ever has been pwned?! (If you're interested, the ABC has a fantastic infographic using a heatmap based on HIBP data that shows some very predictable patterns for 4-digit PINs.)

This Is Not a Gmail Breach

It pains me to say it, but I have to, given the way the stealer logs made ridiculous, completely false headlines a couple of weeks ago:

This story has suddenly gained *way* more traction in recent hours, and something I thought was obvious needs clarifying: this *is not* a Gmail leak, it simply has the credentials of victims infected with malware, and Gmail is the dominant email provider: https://t.co/S75hF4T1es

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) October 27, 2025

There are 32 million different email domains in this latest corpus, of which gmail.com is one. It is, of course, the largest and has 394 million unique email addresses on it. In other words, 80% of the data in this corpus has absolutely nothing to do with Gmail, and the 20% of Gmail addresses have absolutely nothing to do with any sort of security vulnerability on Google's behalf. There - now let reporting sanity prevail!

The Technical Bits

I wanted to add this just to highlight how painful it has been to deal with this data. This corpus is nearly 3 times the size of the previous largest breach we'd loaded, and HIBP is many times larger than it was in 2019 when we loaded the Collection #1 data. Taking 2 billion records and adding the ones we hadn't already seen in the existing 15 billion corpus, whilst not adversely impacting the live system serving millions of visitors a day, was very non-trivial. Managing the nuances of SQL Server indexes such that we could optimise both inserts and queries is not my idea of fun, and it's been a pretty hard couple of weeks if I'm honest. It's also been a very expensive period as we turned the cloud up to 11 (we run on Azure SQL Hyperscale, which we maxed out at 80 cores for almost two weeks).

A simple example of the challenge is that after loading all the email addresses up into a staging table, we needed to create SHA1 hashes of each. Normally, that would involve something to the effect of "update table set column = sha1(email)" and you're done. That crashed completely, so we ended up doing "insert into new table select email, sha1(email)". But on other occasions the breach load required us to do updates on other columns (with no hash creation), which, on mulitple occasions, we had to kill after a day or more of execution with no end in sight. So, we ended up batching in loops (usually 1M records at a time), reporting on progress along the way so we had some idea of when it would actually finish. It was a painful process of trial, waiting ages, error then taking a completely different approach.

Notifying our subscribers is another problem. We have 5.9 million of them, and 2.9 million are in this data 🫨 Simply sending that many emails at once is hard. It's not so much hard in terms of firing them off, rather it's hard in terms of not ending up on a reputation naughty list or having mail throttled by the receiving server. That's happened many times in the past when loading large, albeit much smaller corpuses; Gmail, for example, suddenly sees a massive spike and slows down the delivery to inboxes. Not such a biggy for sending breach notices, but a major problem for people trying to sign into their dashboard who can no longer receive the email with the "magic" link.

What we've done to address that for this incident is to slow down the delivery of emails for the individual breach notification. Whilst I'd originally intended to send the emails at a constant rate over the period of a week, someone listening to me on my Friday live stream had a much better suggestion:

the strategy I've found to best work with large email delivery is to look at the average number of emails you've sent over the last 30 days each time you want to ramp up, and then increase that volume by around 50% per day until you've worked your way through the queue

Which makes a lot of sense, and stacked up as I did more research (thanks Joe!). So, here's what our planned delivery schedule now looks like:

2 Billion Email Addresses Were Exposed, and We Indexed Them All in Have I Been Pwned

That's broken down by hour, increasing in volume by 1.015 times per hour, such that the emails are spread out in a similar, gradually increasing cadence. On a daily basis, that works out at a 45% increase in each 24-hour period, within Joe's suggested 50% threshold. Plus, we obviously have all the other mechanisms such as a dedicated IP, properly configured DKIM, DMARC and SPF, only emailing double-opted-in subscribers and spam-friendly message body construction. So, it could be days before you receive a notification, or just run a haveibeenpwned.com search on demand if you're impatient.

We've sent all the domain notification emails instantly because, by definition, they're going to a very wide range of different mail servers; it's just the individual ones we're drop-feeding.

Lastly, if you've integrated Pwned Passwords into your service, you'll now see noticeably larger response sizes. The numbers I mentioned in the opening paragraph increase the size of each hash range by an average of about 50%, which will push responses from about 26kb to 40kb. That's when brotli compressed, so obviously, make sure you're making requests that make the most of the compression.

Conclusion

This data is now searchable in HIBP as the Synthient Credential Stuffing Threat Data. It's an entirely separate corpus from that previous Synthient data I mentioned earlier; they're discrete datasets with some crossover, but obviously, this one is significantly larger. And, of course, all the passwords are now searchable per the Pwned Passwords guidance above.

If I could close with one request: this was an extremely laborious, time-consuming and expensive exercise for us to complete. We've done our best to verify the integrity of the data and make it searchable in a practical way while remaining as privacy-centric as possible. Sending as many notifications as we have will inevitably lead to a barrage of responses from people wanting access to complete rows of data, grilling us on precisely where it was obtained from or, believe it or not, outright abusing us. Not doing those things would be awesome, and I suggest instead putting the energy into getting a password manager, making passwords strong and unique (or even better, using passkeys where available), and turning on multi-factor auth. That would be an awesome outcome for all 😊

Edit: I've closed off comments on this blog post. As you'll see below, there was a constant stream of questions that have already been answered in the post itself, plus some comments that were starting to verge on precisely what I predicted in the last para above. Reading, responding and engaging is time-consuming and at this point, all the answers are already here both above and below this edit in the comments.

Cloudflare Scrubs Aisuru Botnet from Top Domains List

By: BrianKrebs

For the past week, domains associated with the massive Aisuru botnet have repeatedly usurped Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft in Cloudflare’s public ranking of the most frequently requested websites. Cloudflare responded by redacting Aisuru domain names from their top websites list. The chief executive at Cloudflare says Aisuru’s overlords are using the botnet to boost their malicious domain rankings, while simultaneously attacking the company’s domain name system (DNS) service.

The #1 and #3 positions in this chart are Aisuru botnet controllers with their full domain names redacted. Source: radar.cloudflare.com.

Aisuru is a rapidly growing botnet comprising hundreds of thousands of hacked Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as poorly secured Internet routers and security cameras. The botnet has increased in size and firepower significantly since its debut in 2024, demonstrating the ability to launch record distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks nearing 30 terabits of data per second.

Until recently, Aisuru’s malicious code instructed all infected systems to use DNS servers from Google — specifically, the servers at 8.8.8.8. But in early October, Aisuru switched to invoking Cloudflare’s main DNS server — 1.1.1.1 — and over the past week domains used by Aisuru to control infected systems started populating Cloudflare’s top domain rankings.

As screenshots of Aisuru domains claiming two of the Top 10 positions ping-ponged across social media, many feared this was yet another sign that an already untamable botnet was running completely amok. One Aisuru botnet domain that sat prominently for days at #1 on the list was someone’s street address in Massachusetts followed by “.com”. Other Aisuru domains mimicked those belonging to major cloud providers.

Cloudflare tried to address these security, brand confusion and privacy concerns by partially redacting the malicious domains, and adding a warning at the top of its rankings:

“Note that the top 100 domains and trending domains lists include domains with organic activity as well as domains with emerging malicious behavior.”

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told KrebsOnSecurity the company’s domain ranking system is fairly simplistic, and that it merely measures the volume of DNS queries to 1.1.1.1.

“The attacker is just generating a ton of requests, maybe to influence the ranking but also to attack our DNS service,” Prince said, adding that Cloudflare has heard reports of other large public DNS services seeing similar uptick in attacks. “We’re fixing the ranking to make it smarter. And, in the meantime, redacting any sites we classify as malware.”

Renee Burton, vice president of threat intel at the DNS security firm Infoblox, said many people erroneously assumed that the skewed Cloudflare domain rankings meant there were more bot-infected devices than there were regular devices querying sites like Google and Apple and Microsoft.

“Cloudflare’s documentation is clear — they know that when it comes to ranking domains you have to make choices on how to normalize things,” Burton wrote on LinkedIn. “There are many aspects that are simply out of your control. Why is it hard? Because reasons. TTL values, caching, prefetching, architecture, load balancing. Things that have shared control between the domain owner and everything in between.”

Alex Greenland is CEO of the anti-phishing and security firm Epi. Greenland said he understands the technical reason why Aisuru botnet domains are showing up in Cloudflare’s rankings (those rankings are based on DNS query volume, not actual web visits). But he said they’re still not meant to be there.

“It’s a failure on Cloudflare’s part, and reveals a compromise of the trust and integrity of their rankings,” he said.

Greenland said Cloudflare planned for its Domain Rankings to list the most popular domains as used by human users, and it was never meant to be a raw calculation of query frequency or traffic volume going through their 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver.

“They spelled out how their popularity algorithm is designed to reflect real human use and exclude automated traffic (they said they’re good at this),” Greenland wrote on LinkedIn. “So something has evidently gone wrong internally. We should have two rankings: one representing trust and real human use, and another derived from raw DNS volume.”

Why might it be a good idea to wholly separate malicious domains from the list? Greenland notes that Cloudflare Domain Rankings see widespread use for trust and safety determination, by browsers, DNS resolvers, safe browsing APIs and things like TRANCO.

“TRANCO is a respected open source list of the top million domains, and Cloudflare Radar is one of their five data providers,” he continued. “So there can be serious knock-on effects when a malicious domain features in Cloudflare’s top 10/100/1000/million. To many people and systems, the top 10 and 100 are naively considered safe and trusted, even though algorithmically-defined top-N lists will always be somewhat crude.”

Over this past week, Cloudflare started redacting portions of the malicious Aisuru domains from its Top Domains list, leaving only their domain suffix visible. Sometime in the past 24 hours, Cloudflare appears to have begun hiding the malicious Aisuru domains entirely from the web version of that list. However, downloading a spreadsheet of the current Top 200 domains from Cloudflare Radar shows an Aisuru domain still at the very top.

According to Cloudflare’s website, the majority of DNS queries to the top Aisuru domains — nearly 52 percent — originated from the United States. This tracks with my reporting from early October, which found Aisuru was drawing most of its firepower from IoT devices hosted on U.S. Internet providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

Experts tracking Aisuru say the botnet relies on well more than a hundred control servers, and that for the moment at least most of those domains are registered in the .su top-level domain (TLD). Dot-su is the TLD assigned to the former Soviet Union (.su’s Wikipedia page says the TLD was created just 15 months before the fall of the Berlin wall).

A Cloudflare blog post from October 27 found that .su had the highest “DNS magnitude” of any TLD, referring to a metric estimating the popularity of a TLD based on the number of unique networks querying Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 resolver. The report concluded that the top .su hostnames were associated with a popular online world-building game, and that more than half of the queries for that TLD came from the United States, Brazil and Germany [it’s worth noting that servers for the world-building game Minecraft were some of Aisuru’s most frequent targets].

A simple and crude way to detect Aisuru bot activity on a network may be to set an alert on any systems attempting to contact domains ending in .su. This TLD is frequently abused for cybercrime and by cybercrime forums and services, and blocking access to it entirely is unlikely to raise any legitimate complaints.

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Kickoffs and Rip-offs—Watch Out for Online Betting Scams This Football Season

By: McAfee

Football season is in full swing — tailgates, rivalries, fantasy leagues, and Sunday afternoons glued to the screen. Alongside the highlights and heartbreaks, there’s another game playing out online: the rush to place bets.

Every break in the action brings another sportsbook promo — risk-free wagers, bonus bets, exclusive odds — flooding your feed and inbox. But what you don’t see between the ads and sponsorships is how much money is really in play, or how scammers have joined the lineup.

Last year, legally licensed online and retail sportsbooks took nearly $150 billion in bets, a 22.2% jump from 2023 according to the American Gaming Association. And with so much of that money flowing through apps and websites, scammers are finding creative new ways to cash in.

They’re setting up fake betting sites, phishing for logins, and spinning up unlicensed offshore platforms that operate without oversight. Even self-proclaimed “insider tipsters” are pitching guaranteed wins that never exist.

If sports betting is legal in your state and you’re planning to make some wagers this season, here’s how to keep your money — and your data — safe.

Is online sports betting legal in my state?

Since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2018, individual states can determine their own laws for sports betting. Soon after, sports betting became legal in waves. In all, 39 states and Washington D.C. currently offer sports betting through licensed retail locations. Of them, 31 further offer legal sports betting through licensed online apps and websites. The map below offers a quick view as to how all that plays out.

Map of US states that have legalized sports betting.

Image from https://sportsdata.usatoday.com/legality-map 

Even as online sportsbooks must be licensed to operate legally, be aware that the terms and conditions they operate under vary from service to service. Per the Better Business Bureau (BBB), that calls for closely reading their fine print. For one, you might come across language that says the company can “restrict a user’s activity,” meaning that they can freeze accounts and the funds associated with them based on their terms and conditions. Also, the BBB cautions people about those promo offers that are often heavily advertised, because “like any sales pitch, these can be deceptive.”

What do online betting scams look like?

Fake betting sites

This form of scam follows the same playbook scammers use for all kinds of bogus sites in general. They cook up a copycat site that looks like a legitimate betting site, create a web address that looks like it could be legitimate, and then flood the web with sponsored search results, ads, and social media posts to drive traffic to them. From there, scammers capture payment info and take bogus bets that they never pay out on. Once the site gets discovered as a scam, they pull it down and spin up other scam sites. With the aid of AI tools to help with the process, scammers can turn around scam sites quickly.

Sports app phishing scams

Scammers piggyback on legitimate betting apps and sites another way. They’ll create phony customer support sites that they promote online, with the addition of scam texts and emails to lure in victims. Under the guise of support, they gain a victim’s login info, hack the account, and clean out the victim’s cash.

Unlicensed offshore platforms

These form a gray area when it comes to scams. Some of these offshore platforms, while unlicensed, are legitimate to varying degrees. What makes them dangerous is that they have no regulatory oversight, which means they can do things like charge hidden costs, lock accounts, and refuse payment without users having any way to dispute those actions. Some of these platforms might have suspect security measures as well, which could lead to account hacks. And of course, some of these offshore platforms are simply fake betting sites, as mentioned above.

Handicapper scams

Earlier this year, the BBB shared word of a growing scam where self-proclaimed experts with “insider information to place sure-thing bets” reach out to victims via email and social media posts. Per the BBB, “A handicapper’s goal isn’t to win bets for their members, it’s to get people to buy their picks. Once you’ve purchased their picks, the handicapper has already won. It doesn’t matter if the pick wins or loses, the handicapper keeps the payment.”

Of course, that “insider info” is entirely fake. It’s all just a smokescreen to draw in victims.

Ready to place your bet online? Keep these things in mind.

1) Stick with legitimate betting sites and apps. Use only legal, regulated sportsbooks when you place a bet.

If you’re a sports fan, you probably know the names, like BetMGM, DraftKings, FanDuel, bet365 and Fanatics Sportsbook. In addition, check out the organization’s BBB listing at BBB.org. Here you can get a snapshot of customer ratings, complaints registered against the organization, and the organization’s response to the complaints, along with its BBB rating, if it has one.

2) Use a secure payment method other than your debit card. Credit cards are a good way to go when buying, or betting, online.

One reason why is the Fair Credit Billing Act, which offers protection against fraudulent charges on credit cards by giving you the right to dispute charges over $50 for goods and services that were never delivered or otherwise billed incorrectly. Your credit card companies may have its own policies that improve upon the Fair Credit Billing Act as well. Debit cards don’t get the same protection under the Act.

3) Protect yourself from fake betting sites and bogus offers.

You can steer clear from all kinds of fake sites and bogus offers with the combination of our Web Protection and Scam Detector, found in our McAfee+ plans. They’ll alert you if a link might take you to a sketchy site, and they’ll block those sites if you accidentally tap or click on a bad link.

In addition to the latest virus, malware, spyware, and ransomware protection, it also includes strong password protection by generating and automatically storing complex passwords to keep your winnings and payment info safer from hackers and crooks.

 

Editor’s Note:

If gambling is a problem for you or someone you know, you can seek assistance from a qualified service or professional. Several states have their own helplines, and nationally you can reach out to resources like http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ or https://www.ncpgambling.org/help-treatment/.

The post Kickoffs and Rip-offs—Watch Out for Online Betting Scams This Football Season appeared first on McAfee Blog.

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