David Balaban

The Internet is full of fraud. It is easier to scam people online than to do it on the street. At the same time, many online scams are well known and easy to avoid. Fraudsters know this and use different social engineering tricks to look like legitimate businesses. Most scammers operate from countries where there is almost no control. They act in the gray area of the digital world and use popular security tools that make them anonymous, invisible and inaccessible to regulators, law enforcement agencies and victims. Scammers work just like ordinary businesses. They have offices, secretaries, shifts, payrolls and even holidays. How do I avoid online fraud and scams? This is usually easy since many of them are pretty clear. In most cases, you just need to train yourself to understand the difference between fake and real websites. Below are seven of the most common online frauds, as well as tips on how to stay safe. 1. Binary options Binary options is a simple way to trade financial...

It’s not only investors and traders who benefit from using cryptocurrencies. Security analysts emphasize that digital tokens are becoming a means for money laundering, tax evasion, drug trafficking, as well as an instrument for funding terrorism, totalitarian regimes and unrecognized states. 1. The perfect match for money laundering A report by Europol highlights a very disconcerting trend: many people treat cryptocurrencies as an immaculate money laundering mechanism . Criminals often take advantage of anonymity assurance techniques to conceal shady deals and transactions. European officials have done more than merely stating the fact, though. In late 2017, they adopted some strict cryptocurrency-related regulations aimed at preventing money laundering schemes and terrorism funding. The EU’s initiatives boil down to the following: Mandatory user identification at Bitcoin platforms and digital wallet services. Restrictions for prepaid card transactions. Allowing investigators to...

During the last year, the vocabulary of ordinary internet users has been enriched with previously unfamiliar words: proxy server and VPN . If earlier such words were used in conversations only by system administrators, programmers or advanced users, now in the street, in public transport, in offices and cafes you always hear that one needs to download and install the VPN. What is the reason for such a keen interest in VPN and proxy servers? It is all very simple: in most cases to bypass the blocking of forbidden social networks and services or encrypt their Internet traffic. That is why the journalists and advanced users started talking about proxy servers and VPNs. People began to wonder what this VPN is. Why is it needed and how to use it? Let us find out everything about proxy servers and VPN technology, how they work and what benefits they bring. Also, is it safe to use free VPN services and proxy servers? What are proxy servers? The main function of the proxy server is to send...

The following tips will help your company avoid phishing attacks and mitigate the risk if the breach gets through. Companies are juicy targets for threat actors from the dark web because their proprietary data is a commodity that can be traded and leveraged for industrial espionage, blackmail, unfair competition or outright theft of funds. To their credit, lots of organizations use high-end defenses to thwart unauthorized access nowadays, including sophisticated IDS and IPS (Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems) that stop the classic hacker incursions in their tracks. Under the circumstances, cybercrooks are increasingly focusing on social engineering techniques to pull off their breaches. They know human factor is one of the most vulnerable segments in an organization’s security posture, and the overall protection of enterprise assets is only as strong as its weakest link. Whereas there are numerous different flavors of social engineering, phishing is by far the most common one....