The next big thing
The list of data breaches goes on and on. They started relatively small, a single company that would lose a hundred thousand or so credit card numbers and personal information, then grew in size until Equifax was hacked. And just when everyone thought it might not get any worse, along came Facebook. Now, it’s Twitter.
But in the wake of these massive lapses of security, there comes a new wrinkle, the offering of services to check whether your accounts have been hacked across all data breaches. The email I received this week is shown here.
Fscore — it’s a real thing
I won’t bore you with the details, but there really is something called an “Fscore.” It’s used in statistics to determine how accurate a model is by using—well, never mind. If you’re a geek, you probably already know. I suppose whoever sent me this email may have at least some knowledge about science, math, and statistics. Either that, or they got lucky when they grabbed a term out of the air.
The .bid domain names — another real thing
I’d never heard of the .bid domain names until this week, but apparently they’re designed for those who want to—you guessed it, sell stuff. So, in the Internet’s continuing efforts to become something wilder than the wild west ever was, we now have the potential for millions of domains like MyAwesomestBidWarEver.bid. Why do I consider this so wild? Because these domains can contain up to sixty-three characters. Oh, sigh, just what we needed, more peddlers of you-know-what.
The Fscore email — a questionable thing
I can’t be sure whether this is an outright scam or not. When I scanned the site for malware, it came up clean. When I tried going to the domain name, I ended up on a CBSLocal website out of Florida. As far as I can tell, if the links in this email are not malicious, they may be an attempt to sell unnecessary services. I’m also pretty sure this is going to become a fabulous opportunity for scammers. After all, who wouldn’t be tempted to pay to find out exactly what data of theirs had already been compromised?
Oh, wait, we already know what’s been stolen—it’s almost everything. And some of it has been stolen multiple times. I don’t need someone to charge me money to tell me what I already know.
Stay safe…don’t click…avoid the trick. That’s my motto and I’m sticking to it.
