Every new customer that came to us last week all shared the same problem; their email had been hacked. Most were on Gmail, a few on Hotmail, and recently we haven't seen many coming from AOL or Yahoo, but expect that to change soon.
We're witnessing the first innings of a supercycle of cybercrime and for the time being, "free" email is the lowest hanging fruit.
Last week's worst case came to us from a real estate transaction hacked over the agent's "free" email account. The client, the buyer in the deal, lost vital financial and personal information, and no one will know the full damages of the breach potentially for years to come.
The fallout will be watched closely by many inside and out of the industry, and the breach comes just after we wrote about the nation's largest title insurer issuing a memorandum to agents and offices warning against using "free" email for real estate closings.
http://www.totaldigitalsecurity.com/blog/cyber-security-for-real-estate-professionals
We're witnessing the first innings of a supercycle of cybercrime and for the time being, "free" email is the lowest hanging fruit. Using public WiFi's without protection, and Windows computers without device-based defenses, are tied for second. But, for the moment, "free" email is where things are catching fire.
Why? Because the billion+ email addresses and passwords Russian cyber-gangs have stolen over the past couple of years, have been curated, sorted, sifted, and engineered into sophisticated attacks that steal, scam, blackmail, and extort from individuals and their personal technology. In volume. The money is big, and for the professional criminal; the job is scalable into potential riches that are multiples of anything else going today - including drugs.
We were not alone finding the "free" email breach driving our activity last week as the topic showed up in headlines around the world. This isn't surprising or just coincidental - we protect individuals and their personal technology and from our distinct perch in the business, we are a remarkably accurate barometer for real issues taking place in real life and that matter to the customers we serve.
The numbers are staggering, the "red flags" are waving, and the risks of using "free" email services are too significant to be ignored.
Watch the video to see how to establish a private email domain for yourself, your profession, and your family with an approach that will provide security, privacy, and the best pre-emptive defenses available against spam, incoming viruses, and email-targeted attacks.
Video - How to Establish a Private Email Domain
Hacker-for-Hire
This could get ugly.
Vendetta? Score to settle? Crave revenge? With the advances in the hacker-for-hire market, anyone's most heated and primal urges are just key strokes from instant gratification.Hard to believe? Just Google it and see. I wrote about it last week, here: http://www.totaldigitalsecurity.com/blog/the-rise-of-the-hacker-for-hire
Free, no-obligation quote:
Because it won't be getting better any time soon.
