anti-harassment - PSafe Blog

Your Mobile Number Is a Target for Identity Theft

Jeannie Mark — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Identity theft takes many different forms. While most people are conscious about protecting personal information such as their social security numbers, banking information and passwords to various accounts, one often overlooked item is their mobile phone number.

How Hackers Steal Your Phone Number
Hackers can hijack your mobile phone number in the same way they can take over your email account. Known as porting, cybercriminals use stolen personal information to impersonate you and contact your mobile carrier to make changes to your account. The term porting comes from Wireless Local Number Portability (WLNP), a law dating back to 2003 that requires carriers to allow mobile users to move their existing number to a new carrier.

To help prevent this from happening, use the Identity Theft Reports feature to track multiple logins and ensure none of your data is breached:

What is Porting?
Porting is dependent on social engineering, or the use of deception to manipulate someone into divulging personal information to commit fraud. In this case, the hacker gains access to personal information to convince your wireless carrier they are you to get your mobile number moved to another service without your knowledge. In order to accomplish this, the hacker needs security information such as your social security number, date of birth and other personal data that is generally obtained through phishing attacks.

The Impact of a Stolen Number
Once hackers port your phone number, they can change passwords and security questions on your account, add unauthorized charges to your bill such as long distance calls, text charges and data usage fees and even add additional devices and services. Additionally, they can bypass two-factor identification such as verification codes texted to you for security purposes.

There are several ways you can protect yourself and prevent thieves from porting your number.

ONE, keep your number safe is to use an alternate Virtual Phone Number (also called a VOIP). These services are readily available and you can keep your real number private and set up the service to forward calls and texts to your phone.

TWO, regularly check your monthly statement for suspicious charges and activity. If your service is abruptly disconnected or you begin receiving authentication codes you didn’t request, you should contact your service provider immediately.

THIRD, dfndr security also protects your phone from phishing attacks. Features like Anti-hacking can alert you to potential malware links in texts, messengers apps, and emails.

FOURTH, never give out sensitive information from anyone that contacts you directly claiming to be a representative from a company you do business with. Instead, find out what they are calling about, what information they need and why, and then contact the business at a published number to verify the problem.

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Twitter is Testing an Anti-Harassment Feature

PSafe Newsroom — Wed, 03 May 2017 16:00:18 +0000

Twitter is often found in the crossfire between promoting free speech and being criticized for not doing enough to protect its users against online abuse. That being said, the site isn’t a safe haven for trolls, abusers, and bullies. Their team actively deletes accounts that endorse hate speech, racism, xenophobia, and terrorism. In 2016, Twitter says they blocked 360,000 users due to hate speech. That number is impressive, but their methods could be more efficient. Up until now, the site was investigating serial online abusers on a case-by-case basis. Many users considered this approach ineffective and time-consuming, because it likely couldn’t keep up with the sheer volume of accounts.

Recently, the team at Twitter announced a trio of features meant to discourage harassment on their social media site. Twitter’s aim isn’t to crush expressions of free speech. Their goals are to remove repeat offenders (who routinely harass other users) and hide questionable tweets. If Twitter’s plans are successful, you can expect to see a more user-friendly version of the popular site. The following will tell you about the three anti-harassment features Twitter is currently working on.

Cracking Down on New, Abusive Accounts

Twitter says they’re working hard to identify users who create accounts with the goal of harassing, bullying, and abusing others. These people are often repeat offenders, who have been permanently banned from the site. This new policy is meant to keep these individuals from creating new accounts, which allows Twitter to better track and prevent future abuse from happening in their online community.

Adding Safer Search Features

While it’s still in the works, Twitter is creating a feature to filter a user’s search results. “Not safe for work” (NSFW), hate speech, and abusive content will no longer appear, including tweets from accounts that have been muted or suspended. Most of these questionable tweets won’t be deleted off of Twitter, though — if you go digging, you’ll likely still be able to find them.

Hiding Harassing and Low-Quality Tweets

Soon, Twitter will have a feature to collapse tweets that are considered “low-quality” or harassing. Since the site is also a host for productive, fruitful discussion, its loyal users can opt to only see the high-quality tweets, making it easier for them to participate in the conversation. If you want to read what the trolls are saying, you can simply click a “show less relevant replies” button to see everything. Finally, you can automatically mute accounts where the user has the default “egg” profile picture, or where they haven’t confirmed their email address and phone number.

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The New “Anti-Harassment” Twitter Features

PSafe Newsroom — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 21:42:27 +0000

Before, it seemed like you had to be a celebrity to get Twitter’s full protection from bothersome users. Finally, twitter is dispersing their anti-harassment technology to the masses. We’ve got the details to make sure you have all the tools to make your feed what you want it to be.

In the past, Twitter has let high-profile users filter their feed, but now Twitter wants to improve the quality of tweets you see. Twitter started letting blue-checked accounts filter this a year ago, but they’ve transformed their platform to make these features more accessible and easy to use.

Notifications Settings
First, Twitter has created a new notifications tab that will allow you to easily control your notifications settings. By clicking on the new notifications tab you will see an a settings option. The symbol for this option looks like a gear. By clicking on that option you will see a button that says “Only people you follow.” By selecting this button you will only see tweets from people you follow on the mobile twitter app and on twitter.com. This way you will only receive notifications from accounts you like and want to hear from.

Quality Filter
Twitter just unraveled their newest filtering option, the Quality Filter control, which they’ve been testing out since last year. This option scans tweets by their origin and the behavior of the account. The filter takes out lower-quality content which includes automated tweets or duplicated tweets. This will not filter out any tweets from accounts you follow or interact with on a daily basis. You can try it out, and if you feel like it’s negatively affecting your twitter experience, just turn it off and your twitter will go back to the way it was before. The San Francisco based company explains that the purpose of this feature is to learn and improve the entire twitter experience, so stay tuned to new changes and upgrades if you believe that the filter could be improved.

These two features will definitely take a step closer in protecting you from users who look to negatively impact your twitterverse. What they can’t do? Protect your android from viruses. Download PSafe Total to make sure you have the a virus protection that rated the highest in AV-Testing. Now your twitter and your phone will be free from hackers, tweet on!

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