Greg's Corner

Tech Security news to protect your privacy!

Today we have a handful of stories that could potentially affect your privacy and we start off with Google Calendar. You may not realize that you even use Google Calendar but if you use Gmail to make any kind of appointments, the odds are you’ll receive a reminder from your Google Calendar. Now, reports are being circulated the Google Calendars are being used for phishing attacks. Reports say that you’ll receive a Google Calendar notification that says things like that you’ve received a cash reward or asking you to take a survey. Attached will be a link the phishers will want you to click on to try to glean your personal or financial information. Mental Floss has some tips on how to block these annoying invitations in Calendar, but as always you should never click on strange links from correspondents that you don’t know.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3rJYhzKXy0&feature=youtu.be&t=350%5D

If you’ve recently purchased a used Nest cam for your home you may want to know that in some instances the previous owners could still access the cameras. While that does sound scary it does not apply to all previously owned Nest cameras. The cameras must have previously been connected to a Wink branded home hub then the previous owners could still access the cameras through the Wink app. If you own a Nest camera and you feel it could be potentially compromised you may want to consider purchasing a new set of cameras as so far there has yet to be a fix for the issue. According to The Wirecutter, even a factory reset won’t help.

Lastly, if you use the Firefox web browser you’ll want to perform an update as soon as possible. Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, recently issued a statement asking users to update their browsers after an exploit was found that could compromise user security. Mozilla didn’t go into detail about what the exploit was except to say that there have been documented accounts of attacks against the exploit. It’s relatively easy to perform an update on Firefox. All you need to is click on the open menu icon on the upper right of the browser. Scroll down the menu to the help option, click on help, then click on About Firefox. Then a prompt should come up asking you to update Firefox. Click on the update button and Firefox will update and your browser will be more secure.

Hopefully, these tips will keep your privacy and security a little more private and secure.