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  Geebo 9:00 am on January 29, 2020 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: cybersecurity ( 34 ), data breach ( 31 ), LabCorp, privacy ( 46 ), Ring, Wawa   

  Recent data breaches can affect your money, health, and privacy! 

  

  If you’ve ever been to the East Coast especially the Pennsylvania and South Jersey areas you may be familiar with the convenience store chain Wawa. They recently had a data breach that could have exposed up to 30 million payment cards of its customers. Reportedly, hackers had installed malware into the payment processors at multiple stores at both the register area and their gas pumps. Some of the payment card information has even ended up on the web for sale to malicious actors. If you used a debit or credit card at a Wawa store in the past couple of months you’ll want to keep an eye on your account for unauthorized purchases.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyT4SabnV2w%5D

  LabCorp is one of the nation’s largest medical testing companies. They recently had a flaw in their website that allowed 10,000 patient records to be exposed. This information included dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and lab results among other medical data. This is the second breach for LabCorp in the past year as their payment system was exposed back in June which resulted in the compromise of close to 8 million payment records. This latest breach could result in heavy fines for LabCorp under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). LabCorp has said that they will be notifying patients who had their data exposed.

  Lastly, it seems we can’t talk about data breaches without talking about Ring. While Ring’s most recent incident may not be a data breach per se, it does show how your information can be put at risk. The internet privacy advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) claim they have discovered that the Android version of the Ring camera app sends user information to several third-parties. One of those third-parties is said to be Facebook and it doesn’t matter if you have a Facebook account or not. Some of the information sent to these third-parties include users’ full names, email addresses, and app settings including the number of locations they have Ring devices installed in.

   

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  Geebo 9:00 am on January 9, 2020 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: cybersecurity ( 34 ), privacy ( 46 ), Ring, security ( 46 ), Smart Home ( 5 )   

  Was Ring caught looking at customer cameras? 

  

  Amazon-owned Ring Cameras did not have the best 2019. If customer camera feeds weren’t being hacked then user information was allegedly being exposed in a data breach. Unfortunately for Ring, it doesn’t look like their 2020 is shaping up to be any better. In previous gaffes made by Ring, there was a kernel of truth in their claim that some of these privacy invasions could have been prevented by better user security. For example, by enabling two-factor authentication and not using the same password on all online accounts. But what happens when the security company is the one invading your privacy.

  Motherboard is reporting that Ring had to fire a number of employees who were caught accessing customer data that was not part of their jobs. In short, they were looking at customer video that they should not have been. While it can be expected for a company to monitor some of the user data for quality control purposes, it’s alleged that this was not the reason that certain employees were viewing customer videos. Considering that many Ring customers use the cameras inside their homes this can be especially off-putting knowing that Ring employees may be watching you at home.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWg85eJDFu4%5D

  Depending on how this story gets picked up by the media, this could be a devastating blow to Ring’s reputation. How are consumers supposed to trust a company to help keep us safe when their employees are violating the privacy of the consumers? Granted, the number of people who were said to be doing this at Ring was low and they’ve all been relieved from their positions. But still, this seems to be yet another black eye for the security company that used to be the darling of families everywhere.

   
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  Geebo 9:00 am on December 24, 2019 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: cybersecurity ( 34 ), data breach ( 31 ), internet of things/ ( 7 ), IoT ( 7 ), Ring, security ( 46 )   

  Ring denies massive data breach 

  

  Ring’s cameras have been in the news a lot lately. Sometimes it’s for good reasons like footage from a Ring camera led to the arrest or conviction of a criminal. However, most of the news seems to have been bad for Ring. Throughout 2019, there was a rash of news stories where hackers and internet pranksters would access someone’s Ring security camera to try to harass or scare a random family. Ring keeps claiming that these security breaches happen due to two-factor authentication not being enabled. But how can that explain close to 4,000 Ring account credentials being exposed on the web?

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxcYimzcTik%5D

  BuzzFeed News reported on the alleged breach after they were contacted by a security researcher who found the exposed credentials online. When Ring was asked about the breach, they claimed that there was no breach at all. A Ring spokesperson claims that the credentials were harvested from other data breaches outside of Ring and that Ring customers were just using the same passwords and logins as their Ring service. While that’s statistically improbable, it could be true. Except, BuzzFeed showed the customer credentials to more security experts who noted that the credentials contained Ring specific data such as camera names that customers use. Reportedly, this kind of information can’t be gleaned from outside of Ring’s network.

  If you are a Ring customer, we would recommend changing your login and password as soon as possible and to enact two-factor authentication. With 2FA enabled, it will make it more difficult for someone to access your home cameras. Also, if you’re using the same login and password for other online accounts as you do with your Ring setup, you change them immediately as well. And never use the same password across multiple online accounts. Once one of those accounts become compromised, then they all do.