Login
From their original design as simple broadcast receivers, today’s televisions have evolved into powerful, internet-connected entertainment hubs. Combining traditional viewing with online capabilities, smart TVs provide instant access to streaming platforms, web browsing, voice assistants, and personalized recommendations.
As our TVs have grown smarter, however, they’ve also become gateways to new privacy and security challenges. In a chilling echo of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, it’s possible that Big Brother, or in this case, Big Hacker, might be surveilling you through your own television.
In 2013, evidence emerged that smart TVs can be just as vulnerable to hacking as home computers, following an investigation by security analysts Aaron Grattafiori and Josh Yavor at iSEC Partners. Working with smart TV manufacturers to address potential vulnerabilities, the analysts presented their findings at the Black Hat network security conference in Las Vegas. Their demonstration highlighted the concerning possibility of smart TVs not only physically surveilling you through the built-in camera but also prying deeper into your personal life by collecting data on your web searches, app usage, and preferences.
Smart TVs can be hacked in several ways, but the gateway that opens your smart TV to these attacks is the IP address, which links with internet-driven apps such as Facebook and YouTube, as well as video streaming services, microphones, and even internal cameras. Because smart TVs often run the same code as computers and smartphones, such as JavaScript or HTML5, they are also susceptible to malware and spyware attacks. These are some of the ways your device can be hacked:
Once a hacker has compromised your smart TV, they can spy on you through several built-in technologies that collect data on your viewing habits, conversations, and online activities.
The key to managing these privacy risks is understanding what data your TV collects and taking control through privacy settings, network restrictions, and informed usage decisions.
Your smart TV data typically flows to multiple parties. It starts with the device manufacturer for product improvements, then to streaming app providers for content recommendations, on to advertising networks for targeted marketing, and analytics companies for usage insights. Recent regulatory guidance emphasizes that you should have clear visibility into these data-sharing relationships through your TV’s privacy policy.
You can limit data collection by disabling Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) in your TV’s privacy settings, turning off personalized advertising, and regularly reviewing app permissions. Consumer protection agencies require smart TV manufacturers to provide opt-out mechanisms for advertising personalization and data sharing with third parties.
Fortunately, you can significantly reduce your smart TV risks with some simple preventive measures:
Most smart TVs don’t fully turn off when you press the power button; they enter standby mode to enable quick startup. In this state, certain components may remain active and continue collecting data. It might maintain network connectivity to receive software updates, keep microphones and voice assistants ready to respond to wake words, or continue ACR that tracks your viewing habits.
To truly disconnect your TV from potential monitoring, you have several options:
It depends on your specific smart TV model and its manufacturing date. Most modern smart TVs manufactured after 2022 do not include built-in cameras. Major manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, Sony, and TCL have largely moved away from integrating cameras directly into their television sets due to privacy concerns and limited consumer adoption.
Some premium models and older smart TVs from 2018-2021 may still feature built-in cameras designed typically used for:
If your smart TV does have a camera, you still have control, as most smart TVs with cameras include physical privacy shutters, software controls to disable the camera, or the option to cover the lens. For external USB cameras, simply unplugging it ensures that no one can see you through the smart TV.
To determine if your smart TV has a camera, check the following:
If you discover your smart TV has a camera, you can take control of your privacy by disabling it in your TV’s settings, covering it with tape when not in use, or using any built-in privacy shutters.
Aside from the precautions listed above, there are other ways you can disable your smart TV’s camera:
If the thought of your living room turning into a hacker’s surveillance paradise sends a chill down your spine, you’re not alone. Fortunately, you can take some protective measures that keep your smart TV safe.
One of the best ways to protect yourself is to stay informed about the latest developments in smart TV security. Attend webinars, read articles, and follow experts in the field to stay current with the latest security threats and fixes.
Just as importantly, small but effective digital habits will also fortify your smart TV security: keep your TV’s firmware updated, stick to official app stores, secure your home Wi-Fi with strong encryption, use unique passwords for your devices, limit the use of social media and messaging apps on your TV, and be cautious about what you plug into your TV’s ports.
By following these recommendations, you can continue to relax in your living room and enjoy your digital entertainment experience without compromising your privacy and security.
The post How To Tell If Your Smart TV Spying on You appeared first on McAfee Blog.
They came by phone, by text, by email, and they even weaseled their way into people’s love lives—an entire host of scams that we covered here in our blogs throughout the year.
Today, we look back, picking five noteworthy scams that firmly established new trends, along with one in particular that gives us a hint at the face of scams to come.
Let’s start it off with one scam that pinged plenty of phones over the spring and summer: those toll road texts.
It was the hot new scam of 2025 that increased by 900% in one year: the toll road scam.
There’s a good chance you got a few of these this year,scam texts that say you have an unpaid tab for tolls and that you need to pay right away. And as always, they come with a handy link where you can pay up and avoid that threat of a “late fee.”
Of course, links like those took people to phishing sites where people gave scammers their payment info, which led to fraudulent charges on their cards. In some instances, the scammers took it a step further by asking for driver’s license and Social Security numbers, key pieces of info for big-time identity theft.
Who knows what the hot new text scam for 2026 will be, yet here are several ways you can stop text scams in their tracks, no matter what form they take:
Don’t click on any links in unexpected texts (or respond to them, either). Scammers want you to react quickly, but it’s best to stop and check it out.
Check to see if the text is legit. Reach out to the company that apparently contacted you using a phone number or website you know is real—not the info from the text.
Get our Scam Detector. It automatically detects scams by scanning URLs in your text messages. If you accidentally tap or click? Don’t worry, it blocks risky sites if you follow a suspicious link.
It started with a DM. And a few months later, it cost her $1,200.
Earlier this year, we brought you the story of 25-year-old computer programmer Maggie K. who fell for a romance scam on Instagram. Her story played out like so many. When she and her online boyfriend finally agreed to meet in person, he claimed he missed his flight and needed money to rebook. Desperate to finally see him, she sent the money and never heard from him again.
But here’s the twist—he wasn’t real in the first place.
When she reported the scam to police, they determined his images were all made with AI. In Maggie’s words, “That was the scariest part—I had trusted someone who never even existed.”
Maggie isn’t alone. Our own research earlier this year revealed that more than half (52%) of people have been scammed out of money or pressured to send money or gifts by someone they met online.
Moreover, we found that scammers have fueled those figures with the use of AI. Of people we surveyed, more than 1 in 4 (26%) said they—or someone they know—have been approached by an AI chatbot posing as a real person on a dating app or social media.
We expect this trend will only continue, as AI tools make it easier and more efficient to pull off romance scams on an increasingly larger scale.
Even so, the guidelines for avoiding romance scams remain the same:
The job offer sounds simple enough … go online, review products, like videos, or do otherwise simple tasks and get paid doing it—until it’s time to get paid.
It’s a new breed of job scam that took root this spring, one where victims found themselves “paying to get paid.”
The FTC dubbed these scams as “gamified job scams” or “task scams.” Given the way these scams work, the naming fits.
It starts with a text or direct message from a “recruiter” offering work with the promise of making good money by “liking” or “rating” sets of videos or product images in an app, all with the vague purpose of “product optimization.” With each click, you earn a “commission” and see your “earnings” rack up in the app. You might even get a payout, somewhere between $5 and $20, just to earn your trust.
Then comes the hook.
Like a video game, the scammer sweetens the deal by saying the next batch of work can “level up” your earnings. But if you want to claim your “earnings” and book more work, you need to pay up. So you make the deposit, complete the task set, and when you try to get your pay the scammer and your money are gone. It was all fake.
This scam and others like it fall right in line with McAfee data that uncovered a spike in job-related scams of 1,000% between May and July,which undoubtedly built on 2024’s record-setting job scam losses of $501 million.
A proper recruiter will reach out to you by email or via a job networking site. Moreover, per the FTC, any job that pays you to “like” or “rate” content is against the law. That alone says it’s a scam.
In the case of job offers in general, look up the company. Check out their background and see if it matches up with the job they’re pitching. In the U.S., The Better Business Bureau (BBB) offers a list of businesses you can search.
Any case where you’re asked to pay to up front, with any form of payment, refuse, whether that’s for “training,” “equipment,” or more work. It’s a sign of a scam.
Prince Harry, Taylor Swift, and now the Today show’s Al Roker, too, they’ve all found themselves as the AI-generated spokesperson for deepfake scams.
In the past, a deepfake Prince Harry pushed bogus investments, while another deepfake of Taylor Swift hawked a phony cookware deal. Then, this spring, a deepfake of Al Roker used his image and voice to promote a bogus hypertension cure—claiming, falsely, that he had suffered “a couple of heart attacks.”
The fabricated clip appeared on Facebook, which appeared convincing enough to fool plenty of people, including some of Roker’s own friends. “I’ve had some celebrity friends call because their parents got taken in by it,” said Roker.
While Meta quickly removed the video from Facebook after being contacted by TODAY, the damage was done. The incident highlights a growing concern in the digital age: how easy it is to create—and believe—convincing deepfakes.
Roker put it plainly, “We used to say, ‘Seeing is believing.’ Well, that’s kind of out the window now.”
In all, this stands as a good reminder to be skeptical of celebrity endorsements on social media. If public figure fronts an apparent deal for an investment, cookware, or a hypertension “cure” in your feed, think twice. And better yet, let our Scam Detector help you spot what’s real and what’s fake out there.
And to close things out, a look at some recent news, which also serves as a look ahead.
Last September, researchers spotted something unseen before:a cyberattack almost entirely run by agentic AI.
What is Agentic AI?
Definition: Artificial intelligence systems that can independently plan, make decisions, and work toward specific goals with minimal human intervention; in this way, it executes complex tasks by adapting to new info and situations on its own.
Reported by AI researcher Anthropic, a Chinese state-sponsored group allegedly used the company’s Claude Code agent to automate most of an espionage campaign across nearly thirty organizations. Attackers allegedly bypassed guardrails that typically prevent such malicious use with jailbreaking techniques, which broke down their attacks into small, seemingly innocent tasks. That way, Claude orchestrated a large-scale attack it wouldn’t otherwise execute.
Once operational, the agent performed reconnaissance, wrote exploit code, harvested credentials, identified high-value databases, created backdoors, and generated documentation of the intrusion. By Anthropic’s estimate, they completed 80–90% of the work without any human involvement.
According to Anthropic: “At the peak of its attack, the AI made thousands of requests, often multiple per second—an attack speed that would have been, for human hackers, simply impossible to match.”
We knew this moment was coming, and now the time has arrived: what once took weeks of human effort to execute a coordinated attack now boils down to minutes as agentic AI does the work on someone’s behalf.
In 2026, we can expect to see more attacks led by agentic AI, along with AI-led scams as well, which raises an important question that Anthropic answers head-on:
If AI models can be misused for cyberattacks at this scale, why continue to develop and release them? The answer is that the very abilities that allow Claude to be used in these attacks also make it crucial for cyber defense. When sophisticated cyberattacks inevitably occur, our goal is for Claude—into which we’ve built strong safeguards—to assist cybersecurity professionals to detect, disrupt, and prepare for future versions of the attack.
That gets to the heart of security online: it’s an ever-evolving game. As new technologies arise, those who protect and those who harm one-up each other in a cycle of innovation and exploits. As we’re on the side of innovation here, you can be sure we’ll continue to roll out protections that keep you safer out there. Even as AI changes the game, our commitment remains the same.
We’re taking a little holiday break here and we’ll be back with our weekly roundups again in 2026. Looking forward to catching up with you then and helping you stay safer in the new year.
The post This Year in Scams: A 2025 Retrospective, and a Look Ahead at 2026 appeared first on McAfee Blog.
If you’re in the market for insurance right now, keep an eye out for scammers in the mix. They’re out in full force once again this open enrollment season.
As people across the U.S. sign up for, renew, or change their health insurance plans, scammers want to cash in as people rush to get their coverage set. And scammers have several factors working in their favor.
For starters, many people find the insurance marketplace confusing, frustrating, and even intimidating, all feelings that scammers can take advantage of. Moreover, concerns about getting the right level of coverage at an affordable price also play into the hands of scammers.
Amidst all this uncertainty and time pressure, health insurance scams crop up online. Whether under the guise of helping people navigate the complex landscape or by offering seemingly low-cost quotes, scammers prey on insurance seekers by stealing their personal information, Social Security numbers, and money.
According to the FBI, health insurance scams cost families millions each year. In some cases, the costs are up front. People pay for fraudulent insurance and have their personal info stolen. And for many, the follow-on costs are far worse, where victims go in for emergency care and find that their treatment isn’t covered—leaving them with a hefty bill.
Like so many of the scams we cover here in our blogs, you can spot health insurance scams relatively quickly once you get to know their ins and outs.
Here’s how some of those scams can play out.
Some are “one and done scams” where the scammer promises a policy or service and then disappears after stealing money and personal info—much like an online shopping scam. It’s a quick and dirty hit where scammers quickly get what they want by reaching victims the usual ways, such as through texts, emails, paid search results, and social media. In the end, victims end up on a phishing site where they think they’re locking in a good deal but handing over their info to scammers instead.
Other scams play a long con game, milking victims for thousands and thousands of dollars over time. The following complaint lodged by one victim in Washington state provides a typical example:
A man purchased a plan to cover himself, his wife, and his two children, only to learn there was no coverage. He was sold a second policy, with the same result, and offered a refund if he purchased a third policy. When he filed a complaint, his family still had no coverage, and he was seeking a refund for more than $20,000 and reimbursement for $55,000 in treatments and prescriptions he’d paid out of pocket.
Scams like these are known as ghost broker scams where scammers pose as insurance brokers who take insurance premiums and pocket the money, leaving victims thinking they have coverage when they don’t. In some cases, scammers initially apply for a genuine policy with a legitimate carrier, only to cancel it later, while still taking premiums from the victim as their “broker.” Many victims only find out that they got scammed when they attempt to file a claim.
Another type of scam comes in the form of policy cancellation scams. These work like any number of other account-based scams, where a scammer pretends to be a customer service rep at a bank, utility, or credit card company. In the insurance version of it, scammers email, text, or call with some bad news—the person’s policy is about to get cancelled. Yet not to worry, the victim can keep the policy active they hand over some personal and financial info. It’s just one more way that scammers use urgency and fear to steal to commit identity theft and fraud.
As said, health insurance scams become relatively easy to spot once you know the tricks that scammers use. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offers up its list of the ones they typically use the most:
1)Someone says they’re from the government and need money or your personal info.Government agencies don’t call people out of the blue to ask them for money or personal info. No one from the government will ask you to verify your Social Security, bank account, or credit card number, and they won’t ask you to wire money or pay by gift card or cryptocurrency.
If you have a question about Health Insurance Marketplace®, contact the government directly at: HealthCare.gov or 1-800-318-2596
2) Someone tries to sell you a medical discount plan. Legitimate medical discount plans differ from health insurance. They supplement it. In that way, they don’t pay for any of your medical expenses. Rather, they’re membership programs where you pay a recurring fee for access to a network of providers who offer their services at pre-negotiated, reduced rates. The FTC strongly advises thorough research before participating in one, as some take people’s money and offer very little in return. Call your caregiver and see if they really participate in the program and in what way. And always review the details of any medical discount plan in writing before you sign up.
3) Someone wants your sensitive personal info in exchange for a price quote. The Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) official government site is HealthCare.gov. It lets you compare prices on health insurance plans, check your eligibility for healthcare subsidies, and begin enrollment. But HealthCare.gov will only ask for your monthly income and your age to give you a price quote. Never enter personal financial info like your Social Security number, bank account, or credit card number to get a quote for health insurance.
4) Someone wants money to help you navigate the Health Insurance Marketplace. The people who offer legitimate help with the Health Insurance Marketplace (sometimes called Navigators or Assisters) are not allowed to charge you and won’t ask you for personal or financial info. If they ask for money, it’s a scam. Go to HealthCare.govand click “Find Local Help” to learn more.
1)For health insurance, visit a trusted source like HealthCare.gov or your state marketplace. Doing so helps guarantee that you’ll get the kind of fully compliant coverage you want.
2) Make sure the insurance covers you in your state. Not every insurer is licensed to operate in your state. Double-check that the one you’re dealing with is. A good place to start is to visit the site for your state’s insurance commission. It should have resources that let you look up the insurance companies, agents, and brokers in your state.
3) For any insurance, research the company offering it. Run a search with the company name and add “scam” or “fraud” to it. See if any relevant news or complaints show up. And if the plan you’re being offered sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
4) Watch out for high-pressure sales. Don’t pay anything up front and be cautious if a company is forcing you to make quick decisions.
5) Guard your personal info. Never share your personal info, account details, or Social Security number over text or email. Make sure you’re really working with a legitimate company and that you submit any info through a secure submissions process.
6) Block bad links to phishing sites. Many insurance scams rely on phishing sites to steal personal info. A combination of our Web Protection and Scam Detector can steer you clear of them. They’ll alert you if a link might take you to one. It’ll also block those sites if you accidentally tap or click on a bad link.
7) Monitor your identity and credit. In some health insurance scams, your personal info winds up in wrong hands, which can lead to identity fraud and theft. And the problem is that you only find out once the damage is done. Actively monitoring your identity and credit can spot a problem before it becomes an even bigger one. You can take care of both easily with our identity monitoring and credit monitoring.
Additionally, our identity theft coverage can help if the unexpected happens with up to $2 million in identity theft coverage and identity restoration support if determined you’re a victim of identity theft.
You’ll find these protections and more in McAfee+.
The post How To Spot Health Insurance Scams This Open Enrollment Season appeared first on McAfee Blog.
Imagine a day where you didn’t have to juggle passwords.
No more sticky notes. No more notebooks with dozens of passwords scribbled in, crossed out, and scribbled in again. No more forgetting and resetting. No more typing them in all the time.
And even better, imagine secure accounts, likely even more secure than you could keep them on your own.
That’s the power of a password manager in your life.
A password manager does the work of creating strong, unique passwords for each and every one of your accounts. And considering the hundred or so accounts you have, that’s something that would take plenty of time if you did all that work on your own.
In all, a password manager can turn the pain of juggling passwords into a real comfort.
Before we get into how a password manager can make your life easier while making your accounts more secure, let’s look at what makes up a bad password. Here are a few examples:
Obvious passwords: Password-cracking programs start by entering a list of common (and arguably lazy) passwords. These may include the simple “password” or “1234567”. Others include common keyboard paths like “qwerty.” Even longer keyboard paths like “qwertyuiop” are well known to hackers and their tools as well.
Dictionary words: Hacking tools also look for common dictionary words strung together, which helps them crack longer passwords in chunks. The same goes for passwords that contain the name of the app or service in them. These are “no brainer” words found in passwords that make passwords even easier to crack.
Repeated passwords: You may think you have such an unbreakable password that you want to use it for all your accounts. However, this means that if hackers compromise one of your accounts, all your other accounts are vulnerable. This is a favorite tactic of hackers. They’ll target less secure accounts and services and then attempt to re-use those credentials on more secure services like online bank and credit card companies.
Personal information passwords: Passwords that include your birthday, dog’s name, or nickname leave you open to attack. While they’re easy for you to remember, they’re also easy for a hacker to discover—such as with a quick trip to your social media profile, particularly if it is not set to private.
If any of the above sounds familiar, you’ll want to replace any of your bad passwords with strong ones.
We can point to three things that make up a strong password, which makes it difficult to hack.
Your password is:
Long: A longer password is potentially a stronger password when it comes to a “brute force” attack, where a hacker uses an automated trial-and-error system to break it. For example, an eight-character password using uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols can get hacked in minutes. Kick it up to 16 characters and it becomes incredibly more difficult to break—provided it doesn’t rely on common words or phrases. McAfee can help you generate a strong password, for stronger security with our random password generator.
Complex: To increase the security of your password, it should have a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, symbols, and numbers like mentioned above.
Unique: Every one of your accounts should have its own password.
Now, apply this to the hundred or so accounts you keep and creating strong passwords for all of them really does call for a lot of work.
Given its ease of use and the big security boost it gives you and all your accounts, the answer is yes.
A password manager does the work of creating strong, unique passwords for your accounts. These will take the form of a string of random numbers, letters, and characters. They won’t be memorable, but the manager does the memorizing for you. You only need to remember a single password to access the tools of your manager.
A strong password manager also stores your passwords securely. Our password manager protects your passwords by scrambling them with AES-256, one of the strongest encryption algorithms available. Only you can decrypt and access your info with the factors you choose. Additionally, our password manager uses multi-factor authentication (MFA), so you’ll be verified by at least two factors before being signed in.
Aside from the comfort of convenience a password manager can give you, it gives you another level of assurance—extra protection in an age of data breaches, because you’ll have unique passwords where one compromise won’t lead to others.
And whether or not you go with a password manager to create those strong and unique passwords, make sure you use MFA on every account that offers it. MFA offers another layer of protection by adding another factor into the login process, such as something you own like a text to your phone or notification to an authentication app. That way if a hacker has your password, they’ll still be locked out of your account because they lack that MFA code.
In some cases, you really don’t need some of your old accounts and the passwords that come along with them. Maybe they’re old and unused. Or maybe they were for a one-time purchase at an online store you won’t visit again. Deleting these accounts is a smart move because they’re yet more places where your personal info is stored—and subject to a data breach.
Our Online Account Cleanup can help, which you can find in all our McAfee+ plans. It scans for accounts in your name, gives you a full list, and shows you which types of accounts might be riskier than others. From there you can decide which ones you want to delete, along with the personal info linked to them. In our McAfee+ Ultimate plans, you get full-service Online Account Cleanup, which sends the data deletion requests for you.
Between this and a password manager, you’ll have one less thing to juggle—your passwords, and one less thing to worry about—if they’re secure from hackers.
The post Why “Strong Passwords” Aren’t Enough Anymore—and What to Do Instead appeared first on McAfee Blog.
Pets, poisoned AI search results, and a phone call that sounds like it’s coming straight from the federal government, this week’s scams don’t have much in common except one thing: they’re getting harder to spot.
In today’s edition of This Week in Scams, we’re breaking down the biggest security lapses and the tactics scammers used to exploit them, and what you can do to stay ahead of the latest threats.
If you’re a Petco customer, you’ll want to know about not one but two data security lapses in the past week.
First, as reported by TechCrunch on Monday, Petco followed Texas data privacy laws by filing a data breach with the attorney general’s office. In that filing, Petco reported that the affected data included names, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers. Further info including account numbers, credit and debit card numbers, and dates of birth were also mentioned in the filing.
Also according to Techcrunch, the company filed similar notices in California and Massachusetts.
To date, Petco has not made a comment about the size of the breach and the number of people affected.
Different states have different policies for reporting data breaches. In some cases, that helps us put a figure to the size of the breach, as some states require companies to disclose the total number of people caught up in the breach. That’s not the case here, so the full scope of the attack remains in question, at least for right now.
As of Thursday, we know Petco reported that 329 Texans were affected along with seven Massachusetts residents, per the respective reports filed. California’s report does not contain the number of Californians affected, yet laws in that state require businesses to report breaches that affect 500 or more people, so at least 500 people were affected there.
Below you can see the form letter Petco sent to affected Californians in accordance with California’s data privacy laws:
In it, you can see that Petco discovered that “a setting within one of our software applications … inadvertently allowed certain files to become accessible online.” Further, Petco said that it “immediately took steps to correct the issue and to remove the files from further online access,” and that it “corrected” the setting and implemented unspecified “additional security measures.”
So while no foul play appears to have been behind the breach, it’s still no less risky and concerning for Petco’s customers. We’ll cover what you can do about that in a moment after we cover yet another data issue at Petco through its Vetco clinics.
Also within the same timeframe, yet more research and reporting from Techcrunch uncovered a second security lapse that exposed personal info online. From their article:
“TechCrunch identified a vulnerability in how Vetco’s website generates copies of PDF documents for its customers.
“Vetco’s customer portal, located at petpass.com, allows customers to log in and obtain veterinary records and other documents relating to their pet’s care. But TechCrunch found that the PDF generating page on Vetco’s website was public and not protected with a password.
“As such, it was possible for anyone on the internet to access sensitive customer files directly from Vetco’s servers by modifying the web address to input a customer’s unique identification number. Vetco customer numbers are sequential, which means one could access other customers’ data simply by changing a customer number by one or two digits.”
With the size and reach of the Petco breach still unknown, and the impact of the Vetco security lapse also unknown, we advise caution for all Petco customers. At minimum, monitor transactions and keep an eye on your credit report for any suspicious activity. And it’s always a good time to update a weak password.
For those who received a notification, we advise the following:
Check your credit, consider a security freeze, and get ID theft protection. You can get all three working for you with McAfee+ Advanced or McAfee+ Ultimate.
Monitor transactions across your accounts, also available in McAfee+ Advanced and Ultimate.
Keep an eye out for phishing attacks. Use our Scam Detector to spot any follow-on attacks.
Update your passwords. Strong and unique passwords are best. Our password manager can help you create and store them securely.
And use two-factor authentication on all your accounts. Enabling two-factor authentication provides an added layer of security.
What to do if your Social Security number was breached.
If you think your Social Security number was caught up in the breach, act quickly.
You might want to be careful when searching for customer service numbers while in AI mode. Or with an AI search engine. It could connect you to a scammer.
From The Times comes reports of scammers manipulating the AI in platforms like Google and Perplexity so that their search results return scam numbers instead of a proper customer service numbers for, say, British Airways.
How do they manipulate those results? By spamming the internet with false info that gets picked up and then amplified by AI.
“[S]cammers have started seeding fake call center numbers on the web so the AI is tricked into thinking it is genuine …
“Criminals have set up YouTube channels with videos claiming to help with customer support, which are packed with airline brand names and scam numbers designed to be scraped and reused by the AI.
“Bot-generated reviews on Yelp or video descriptions on YouTube are filled with fraudulent numbers as are airline and travel web forums.”
And with these tactics, scammers could poison the results for just about any organization, business, or brand. Not just airlines. Per The Times, “The scammers have also hijacked government sites, university domains, and even fitness sites to place scam numbers, which fools the AI into thinking they are genuine.”
This reveals a current limitation with many AI platforms. Largely they can’t distinguish when people deliberately feed them bad info, as seen in the case here.
Yet even as this attack is new, our advice remains the same: any time you want to ring up a customer service line, get the number directly from the company’s official website. Not from AI search and not by clicking a paid search result that shows up first (scammers can poison them too).
Are you under investigation for money laundering? Of course not. But this scam wants you to think so—and to pay up.
On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a consumer alert warning that people are reporting getting unexpected calls from someone saying they’re “FTC agent” John Krebs. Apparently “Agent Krebs” is telling people that they’re under investigation for money laundering—and that a deposit to a Bitcoin ATM can resolve the matter.
Of course, it’s a scam.
For starters, the FTC doesn’t have “agents.” And the idea of clearing one’s name in an investigation with a Bitcoin payment is a sure-fire sign of a scam. Lastly, any time someone asks for payment with Bitcoin or other payment methods that are near-impossible to recover (think wire transfers and gift cards), those are big red flags.
Apart from hanging up and holding on to your money, the FTC offers the following guidance, which holds true for any scam call:
As always, here’s a quick list of a few stories that caught our eye this week:
AI tools transform Christmas shopping as people turn to chatbots
National cybercrime network operating for 14 years dismantled in Indonesia
Why is AI becoming the go-to support for our children’s mental health?
We’ll see you next Friday with a special edition to close out 2025 … This Year in Scams.
The post This Week in Scams: Petco Breach Warning, and Watch Out for Fake Federal Calls appeared first on McAfee Blog.
It looks harmless enough.
A digital party invitation lands in your inbox or phone. You click to see the details. Then it asks you to log in or create an account before revealing the event.
That’s where the scam begins.
Fake e-vite phishing scams are on the rise, and they take advantage of something simple: social trust. You’re far more likely to click an invitation than a generic “account alert” or “delivery notice.”
And that’s exactly why scammers are using them.
In fact, here’s a screenshot of a fake phishing email I recently got this holiday season:
When you click the “open invitation” link, it immediately asks you to sign in or create an account with your personal information. That’s the step where scammers steal your private data.
A fake e-vite scam is a phishing attack that pretends to be a real invitation from platforms like Paperless Post or other digital invitation services.
The goal is to trick you into:
Once scammers have your login information, they can:
Here’s the most common flow:
Because this starts with something familiar and social, many people don’t realize it’s phishing until accounts are already compromised. Plus, scammers then use your email and name to trick friends and family into trusting more fake e-vites from your account.
Paperless Post has publicly acknowledged these scams and shared what legitimate messages actually look like.
Legitimate Paperless Post Emails Will Never:
Official Paperless Post Email Domains:
Legitimate invitations and account messages only come from:
Official support emails only come from:
If the sender does not match one of these exactly, it’s a scam.
Paperless Post also notes that verified emails may display a blue checkmark in supported inboxes to confirm authenticity.
If you see any of the following, do not click:
Modern phishing attacks don’t rely on sloppy design anymore. Many now use:
Invitation phishing is especially powerful because:
If you entered any information into a suspicious invitation page:
The faster you act, the more damage you can prevent.
The post Think That Party Invite Is Real? Fake E-Vite Scams Are the New Phishing Trap appeared first on McAfee Blog.
AI-powered browsers give you much more than a window to the web. They represent an entirely new way to experience the internet, with an AI “agent” working by your side.
We’re entering an age where you can delegate all kinds of tasks to a browser, and with that comes a few things you’ll want to keep in mind when using AI browsers like ChatGPT’s Atlas, Perplexity’s Comet, and others.
So, what’s the allure of this new breed of browser? The answer is that it’s highly helpful, and plenty more.
By design, these “agentic” AI browsers actively assist you with the things you do online. They can automate tasks and interpret your intentions when you make a request. Further, they can work proactively by anticipating things you might need or by offering suggestions.
In a way, an AI browser works like a personal assistant. It can summarize the pages in several open tabs, conduct research on just about any topic you ask it to, or even track down the lowest airfare to Paris in the month of May. Want it to order ink for your printer and some batteries for your remote? It can do that too. And that’s just to name a few possibilities.
As you can see, referring to the AI in these browsers as “agentic” fits. It truly works like an agent on your behalf, a capability that promises to get more powerful over time.
But as with any new technology, early adopters should balance excitement with awareness, especially when it comes to privacy and security. You might have seen some recent headlines that shared word of security concerns with these browsers.
The reported exploits vary, as does the harm they can potentially inflict. That ranges from stealing personal info, gaining access to Gmail and Google Drive files, installing malware, and injecting the AI’s “memory” with malicious instructions, which can follow from session to session and device to device, wherever a user logs in.
Our own research has shown that some of these attacks are now tougher to pull off than they were initially, particularly as the AI browser companies continue to put guardrails in place. If anything, this reinforces a long-standing truth about online security, it’s a cat-and-mouse game. Tech companies put protections in place, bad actors discover an exploit, companies put further protections in place, new exploits crop up, and so on. It’s much the same in the rapidly evolving space of AI browsers. The technology might be new, but the game certainly isn’t.
While these reports don’t mean AI browsers are necessarily unsafe to use, they do underscore how fast this space is evolving…and why caution is smart as the tech matures.
It’s still early days for AI-powered browsers and understanding the security and privacy implications of their use. With that, we strongly recommend the following to help reduce your risk:
Don’t let an AI browser do what you wouldn’t let a stranger do. Handle things like your banking, finances, and health on your own. And the same certainly goes for all the info tied to those aspects of your life.
Pay attention to confirmations. As of today, agentic browsers still require some level of confirmation from the user to perform key actions (like processing a payment, sending an email, or updating a calendar entry). Pay close attention to them, so you can prevent your browser from doing something you don’t want it to do.
Use the “logged out” mode, if possible. As of this writing, at least one AI browser, Atlas, gives you the option to use the agent in the logged-out mode.i This limits its access to sensitive data and the risk of it taking actions on your behalf with your credentials.
If possible, disable “model learning.” By turning it off, you reduce the amount of personal info stored and processed by the AI provider for AI training purposes, which can minimize security and privacy risks.
Set privacy controls to the strictest options available. Further, understand what privacy policies the AI developer has in place. For example, some AI providers have policies that allow people to review your interactions with the AI as part of its training. These policies vary from company to company, and they tend to undergo changes. Keeping regular tabs on the privacy policy of the AI browser you use makes for a privacy-smart move.
Keep yourself informed. The capabilities, features, and privacy policies of AI-powered browsers continue to evolve rapidly. Set up news alerts about the AI browser you use and see if any issues get reported and, if so, how the AI developer has responded. Do routine searches pairing the name of the AI browser with “privacy.”
McAfee’s award-winning protection helps you browse safer, whether you’re testing out new AI tools or just surfing the web.
McAfee offers comprehensive privacy services, including personal info scans and removal plus a secure VPN.
Plus, protections like McAfee’s Scam Detector automatically alert you to suspicious texts, emails, and videos before harm can happen—helping you manage your online presence confidently and safeguard your digital life for the long term. Likewise, Web Protection can help you steer you clear of suspicious websites that might take advantage of AI browsers.
The post How to Stay Safe on Your New AI Browser appeared first on McAfee Blog.
For this week in scams, we have fake AI-generated shopping images that could spoil your holidays, scammers use an Apple Support ticket in a takeover attempt, and a PlayStation scam partly powered by AI.
Let’s start with those fake ads, because holiday shopping is in full swing.
Turns out that three-quarters of people (74%) can’t correctly identify a fake AI-generated social media ad featuring popular holiday gifts—which could leave them open to online shopping scams.
That finding, and several others, comes by way of research from Santander, a financial services company in the UK.
Here’s a quick rundown of what else they found:
From the study … could you tell these ads are both fake?
In all, cheap and readily available AI tools make spinning up fake ads quick and easy work. The same goes for launching websites where those “goods” can get sold. In the past, we’ve seen scammers take two different approaches when they use social media ads and websites to lure in their victims:
During the holidays, scammers pump out ads that offer seemingly outstanding deals on hot items. Of course, the offer and the site where it’s “sold” is fake. Victims hand over their personal info and credit card number, never to see the items they thought they’d purchased. On top of the money a victim loses, the scammer also has their card info and can run up its tab or sell it to others on the dark web.
In this case, the scammer indeed sells and delivers something. But you don’t get what you paid for. The item looks, feels, fits, or works entirely differently than what was advertised. In this way, people wind up with a cheaply made item cobbled together with inferior materials. Worse yet, these scams potentially prop up sweatshops, child labor, and other illegal operations in the process. Nothing about these sites and the things they sell on them are genuine.
So, fake AI shopping ads are out there. What should you look out for? Here’s a quick list:
“I almost lost everything—my photos, my email, my entire digital life.”
So opens a recent Medium post from Eric Moret recounting how he almost handed over his Apple Account to a scammer armed with a real Apple Support ticket to make this elaborate phishing attack look legit.
Over the course of nearly 30 minutes, a scammer calmly and professionally walked Moret through a phony account takeover attempt.
It started with two-factor authentication notifications that claimed someone was trying to access his iCloud account. Three minutes later, he got a call from an Atlanta-based number. The caller said they were with Apple Support. “Your account is under attack. We’re opening a ticket to help you. Someone will contact you shortly.”
Seconds later came another call from the same number, which is where the scam fully kicked in. The person also said they were from Apple Support and that they’d opened a case on Moret’s behalf. Sure enough, when directed, Moret opened his email and saw a legitimate case number from a legitimate Apple address.
The caller then told him to reset his password, which he did. Moret received a text with a link to a site where he could, apparently, close his case.
Note that at no time did the scammers ask him for his two-factor authentication code throughout this process, which is always the sign of a scam. However, the scammers had another way to get it.
The link took him to a site called “appeal-apple dot com,” which was in fact a scam site. However, the page looked official to him, and he entered a six-digit code “confirmation code” sent by text to finish the process.
That “confirmation code” was actually a fresh two-factor authentication code. With that finally in hand, the scammers signed in. Moret received a notice that a new device had logged into his account. Moret quickly reset his password again, which kicked them out and stopped the attack.
Maybe you didn’t get a scam call from “Emma” or “Carl” at Wal-Mart, but plenty of people did. Around eight million in all. Now the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Enforcement Bureau wants to put a stop to them.
“Emma” and “Carl” are in fact a couple of AI voices fronting a scam framed around the bogus purchase of a PlayStation. It’s garnered its share of complaints, so much that the FCC has stepped in. It alleges that SK Teleco, a voice service provider, provisioned at least some of these calls, and that it must immediately stop.
According to the FCC, the call plays out like this:
“A preauthorized purchase of PlayStation 5 special edition with Pulse 3D headset is being ordered from your Walmart account for an amount of 919 dollars 45 cents. To cancel your order or to connect with one of our customer support representatives, please press ‘1.’ Thank you.”
Pressing “1” connects you to a live operator who asks for personal identifiable such as Social Security numbers to cancel the “purchase.”
If you were wondering, it’s unlawful to place calls to cellphones containing artificial or prerecorded voice messages absent an emergency purpose or prior express consent. According to the FCC’s press release, SK Teleco didn’t respond to a request to investigate the calls. The FCC further alleges that it’s unlikely the company has any such consent.
Per the FCC, “If SK Teleco fails to take swift action to prevent scam calls, the FCC will require all other providers to no longer accept call traffic from SK Teleco.”
We’ll see how this plays out, yet it’s a good reminder to report scam calls. When it comes to any kind of scam, law enforcement and federal agencies act on complaints.
Here’s a quick list of a few stories that caught our eye this week:
Scammers pose as law enforcement, threaten jail time if you don’t pay (with audio)
Deepfake of North Carolina lawmaker used in award-winning Brazilian Whirlpool video
What happens when you kick millions of teens off social media? Australia’s about to find out
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: Phony AI Ads, Apple Account Takeover Attempts, and a PlayStation Scam appeared first on McAfee Blog.
The holidays are the season of giving; unfortunately, it’s also the season when scammers try to cash in on the spirit of generosity
If you’re seeing a heartfelt charity ad on social media, a touching email, or a surprise text asking you to donate, it’s worth pausing for a moment. Is it genuine charity—or a scam built to tug at your heartstrings?
The good news: staying safe doesn’t mean stopping your generosity. With a few quick checks, you can give confidently and protect yourself.
Charity fraud is when scammers pose as legitimate nonprofits—or misuse the name of a real charity—to trick people into donating money or giving away personal information.
In some cases, the organization is completely fake. In others, it’s a real charity that uses donations in misleading or unethical ways, passing very little money to the actual cause.
The first type involves flat-out fraud, where the organization is a front for a scam, through and through. Any money you give goes straight into the scammer’s pocket. As does your personal and payment info, which can lead to further fraud.
These are real, registered charities. But They keep the majority of donations for overhead instead of helping the cause.
This second type often involves questionable practices by the organization. According to the Better Business Bureau, reputable organizations keep 35% or less of their funds for operations.
Meanwhile, some less-than-reputable organizations keep up to 95% of funds, leaving only 5% for advancing the cause they advocate. (For a closer look at some examples, the independent watchdog group Charity Watch published a blog highlighting some of the worst charities they audited in 2024.)
Common to both, they’ll indeed play on your emotions, and they’ll urge you to donate now. As it is with so many scams and shady deals on the internet, you’ll find a sense of urgency central to their message.
For starters, reputable charities often have dot-org as their domain extension—versus dot-com or any one of the hundreds of permutations available today.
Charities leave a paper trail, one that can get audited. And fake ones won’t leave a trail at all. With a quick look at some reputable online resources, you can quickly find out if the charity you want to support is legit.
In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a site full of resources so that you can make your donation truly count. Resources like Charity Watch and Charity Navigator, along with the BBB’s Wise Giving Alliance can also help you identify the best charities. You can also look up a charity’s Form 990 tax return online.
This goes hand-in-hand with the above. If you feel like you’re getting rushed to donate, it could be a sign of a scam. Step back and indeed do your research with a few clicks to the resources listed above.
This protects you in two ways. If you fall victim to a scam, you can contest the charges with your credit card company. And if a scammer tries to use your card again for other purchases, you can contest those too. Also, 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 following is a sure-fire red flag: requests for payment in cash, gift cards, cryptocurrency, or wire transfers. Don’t ever use these forms of payment for charities, let alone anything else online.
Better yet, donate directly. Rather than respond to calls, ads, emails or texts, donate on your terms. After you give your possible donation some time and thought, you can go directly to the website of a charitable organization that you’ve researched.
Get a scam detector. You can combine your healthy skepticism and awareness with the right technology, like our Scam Detector and Web Protection.
Both will alert you if a link you received might take you to a sketchy site. It’ll also block those sites if you accidentally tap or click on a bad link.
Clean up your personal info online. Scams over email, phone, and text all require the same thing: your contact info.
In many cases, scammers get it from data broker sites. Data brokers buy, collect, and sell detailed personal info, which they compile from several public and private sources, such as local, state, and federal records, plus third parties like supermarket shopper’s cards and mobile apps that share and sell user data.
Moreover, they’ll sell it to anyone who pays for it, including people who’ll use that info for scams. You can help reduce those scam texts and calls by removing your info from those sites. Our Personal Data Cleanup scans some of the riskiest data broker sites and shows you which ones are selling your personal info.
Monitor your identity and credit. The problem with many scams is that you only find out about it once the damage is done, like when a scammer uses your phished card number to make additional purchases in your name.
Actively monitoring your identity and credit can spot a problem before it becomes an even bigger one. You can take care of both easily with our credit monitoring and identity monitoring.
Additionally, our identity theft coverage can help if the unexpected happens with up to $2 million in identity theft coverage and identity restoration support if determined you’re a victim of identity theft.
You’ll find these protections, and plenty more, in McAfee+.
If you want to give back and help protect people from online fraud, McAfee has partnered with Fight Cyber Crime, a legitimate U.S. nonprofit dedicated to helping victims of online scams.
You might remember them from our Scam Stories partnership earlier this year, sharing real stories from real scam victims to raise awareness about threats facing us every day on and offline.
Visit their site to learn more or make a donation: https://fightcybercrime.org/about/donate/
Supporting validated charities like Fight Cyber Crime is one way to make a real impact this holiday season—without putting yourself at risk.
The post How to Spot Charity Scams and Donate Safely this Giving Season appeared first on McAfee Blog.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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 …
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let’s review some ways you can remove your personal information from data brokers and other sources on the internet.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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 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:
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.
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:
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:
While some states like California have stronger consumer privacy rights, most data removal still depends on voluntary compliance from companies.
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.
The value of Bitcoin has had its ups and downs since its inception in 2013, but its recent skyrocket in value has created renewed interest in this virtual currency. The rapid growth of this alternative currency has dominated headlines and ignited a cryptocurrency boom that has consumers everywhere wondering how to get a slice of the Bitcoin pie. For those who want to join the craze without trading traditional currencies like U.S. dollars (i.e., fiat currency), a process called Bitcoin mining is an entry point. However, Bitcoin mining poses a number of security risks that you need to know.
Mining for Bitcoin is like mining for gold—you put in the work and you get your reward. But instead of back-breaking labor, you earn the currency with your time and computer processing power. Miners, as they are called, essentially maintain and secure Bitcoin’s decentralized accounting system. Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a digital ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin miners update the ledger by downloading a special piece of software that allows them to verify and collect new transactions. Then, they must solve a mathematical puzzle to secure access to add a block of transactions to the chain. In return, they earn Bitcoins, as well as a transaction fee.
As the digital currency has matured, Bitcoin mining has become more challenging. In the beginning, a Bitcoin user could mine on their home computer and earn a good amount of the digital currency, but these days the math problems have become so complicated that it requires a lot of expensive computing power. This is where the risks come in. Since miners need an increasing amount of computer power to earn Bitcoin, some have started compromising public Wi-Fi networks so they can access users’ devices.
One example of this security breach happened at a coffee shop in Buenos Aires, which was infected with malware that caused a 10-second delay when logging in to the cafe’s Wi-Fi network. The malware authors used this time delay to access the users’ laptops for mining. In addition to public Wi-Fi networks, millions of websites are being compromised to access users’ devices for mining. When an attacker loads mining software onto devices without the owner’s permission, it’s called a cryptocurrency mining encounter or cryptojacking.
It’s estimated that 50 out of every 100,000 devices have encountered a cryptocurrency miner. Cryptojacking is a widespread problem and can slow down your device; though, that’s not the worst that can happen. Utility costs are also likely to go through the roof. A device that is cryptojacked could have 100 percent of its resources used for mining, causing the device to overheat, essentially destroying it.
Now that you know a little about mining and the Bitcoin security risks associated with it, here are some tips to keep your devices safe as you monitor the cryptocurrency market:
The post Bitcoin Security: Mining Threats You Need to Know appeared first on McAfee Blog.
FreshRSS 