How many online accounts do you have? Dozens? Hundreds? You probably have more than you think, and deleting a bunch of them might be the right call.   You have two good reasons: savings and security.  Certainly, you have trusted accounts you use all the time, like the one with your bank and a few others with major retailers. Yet you probably have armloads of other accounts on top of those. Within that broader mix, you’ll find accounts for apps, streaming services, online publications, and for retailers where you made one-off purchases years ago.  Sure, you still access some of ..read more

When my boys were in the thick of their teen years (pre pandemic), bad mouthing their seeming gaming obsession was almost a sport amongst my mum friends. And it would sound something like this:  ‘They just waste so much time on those stupid games’. ‘No matter what I try, I just can’t seem to get them off that silly Xbox’. ‘Can you believe they want to spend all their pocket money on the new version of COD?’ ‘I am so close to throwing all their gaming stuff in the bin!!’  Fast forward to life post pandemic and I think it’s fair to say that most of us have changed our attitude around ..read more

If you’ve got teens, then no doubt you’ve received the SOS texts. ‘Mum, I need a haircut, can you just spot me $30?’ or ‘I’ve just finished footy and I’m starving, can you transfer me some money?’. Where would the modern parent be without online banking? How did our non-digital forefathers ever cope?? Online banking is just so convenient and basically a necessity of modern life. If you’ve recently tried to conduct a transaction at a branch, then you’ll know exactly what I mean. One of my boys recently tried to set up a new account at a local banking branch and they were told to come back the ..read more

The dark web. The name raises all kinds of questions. What is the dark web, really? Where is it? Can anyone hop on it?  Answering these questions can help you stay safer online.  The story of the dark web is a complicated one. It’s a small and highly anonymous layer of the internet. As a result, it has a reputation for harboring criminal activity. We often mention the dark web in our blogs, typically when the conversation turns to identity theft, data breaches, and stolen personal information. Rightfully so. Plenty of cybercrime can get traced right back to the dark web.  Yet c ..read more

Anyone can try ChatGPT for free. Yet that hasn’t stopped scammers from trying to cash in on it.   A rash of sketchy apps have cropped up in Apple’s App Store and Google Play. They pose as Chat GPT apps and try to fleece smartphone owners with phony subscriptions.   Yet you can spot them quickly when you know what to look for.  What is ChatGPT, and what are people doing with it?  ChatGPT is an AI-driven chatbot service created by OpenAI. It lets you have uncannily human conversations with an AI that’s been programmed and fed with information over several generatio ..read more

It’s only a smart lightbulb. Why would anyone want to hack that?  Great question. Because it gets to the heart of security matters for your IoT smart home devices.   Internet of Things (IoT) devices have certainly made themselves at home in recent years. Once a novelty, they’ve become far more commonplace. The numbers bear that out. Recent research indicates that the average U.S. household has 20.2 connected devices. Europe has 17.4 on average, while Japan trails at 10.3.  Of course, those figures largely account for computers, tablets, phones, and internet-connected smart ..read more

Waiting in the checkout line. Waiting to fall asleep. Waiting for your boring work call to finally end.  When you find yourself in these situations, do you usually have your phone in hand? And does it usually include scrolling through videos on TikTok? You’re far from alone! The app has 150 million users in the United States and more than a billion daily users worldwide.1  However, governments around the world believe that while you’re exploring the world through short-form video, unscrupulous characters are lurking in the background collecting your personal data. Here’s the real sto ..read more

The time has come. Your kids are chafing at the bit to get on social media and you can no longer hold them back. But you’re terrified. ‘What if they say the wrong thing? What if they meet some unsavoury types or worst case, what if they get bullied?’ I hear you – everything you are concerned about is completely normal and totally valid. But this is not the time to put your head in the sand people, tempting as it is.   So, make yourself a cuppa. I’m going to run you through the basics so you can get your offspring (and yourself) through this quite significant moment in the best shape ..read more

Everyone loves a great deal when they shop online. Until they discover it’s a rip-off.  Social media ads for vintage wear. Website ads for home entertainment gear. Search ads for handbags. Some of these ads aren’t what they seem. Instead of leading you to deals on a trustworthy ecommerce site, the ads take you to a bogus page designed to steal your money and personal info.  Unfortunately, it happens. And one global report estimated that online shoppers lost $41 billion to fraud in 2022. How do scammers pull it off? With the same tools that legitimate businesses use.   Let ..read more

Maybe you know that sinking feeling all too well. “Where did I leave my phone?”  The minutes pass as you search around the house, then you head into the garage to look between the driver’s seat and console of your car. No luck. So it’s back into the house where you turn over every couch cushion. Still nothing. Maybe panic is too strong a word, but you’re starting to get a little worried.  Then comes the relief. You found it.  But what if your smartphone really was lost? Or worse yet, stolen?  Not a pretty thought. But you can put protections in place that can help you reco ..read more