Pros of Find My Friends
This app makes it easy and fun to locate where your friends and family are. All you have to do is request for them to add you as a contact on the app, and once you accept, you will be given access to where they are.

Read More: Best Apps for Planning Your Summer Party

There are also many privacy controls on the app that are very helpful. If there’s a moment where you don’t want certain friends to see where you’re located (maybe a surprise party or you’re on a date and don’t want to be bothered), you can mute those friends and they won’t be able to see you. The app is also great because it can help you keep your friends safe. If you’re concerned about a friend’s well being and haven’t heard from them in a while, you can simply use the app to see where they are.

Cons of Find My Friends
One downside to the app is that it does cost money to use. Find My Friends has a small, one-time fee of 99 cents. This fee may deter many people from downloading the app, so the app does have a smaller user base than other popular apps like Twitter and Facebook. Another negative aspect of Find my Friends is that you may get requests from people you don’t know and people you don’t want to have access to your location. This isn’t a big deal often, but it is a bit of a hassle to constantly reject strangers from accessing your location.

Finally, this app has a major downside because hackers can access the app, hack your personal information, and be able to locate you. Once the hackers have your location, they may have access to your address. Think about the pros and cons before downloading this app.

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Lock Down Your Admin Account
When you first signup for a WordPress account or you decide to self-host, your website is controlled by an administrator account. By default, the name of a WordPress administrator account is ‘admin.’ While this username is easy to remember when you want to log in, it also gives hackers half the information they need to hack your website. Start by changing the default ‘admin’ login to something different – think of a username that is easy to remember, but also not obvious such as your business name. In addition, be sure that your password is a strong alphanumeric combination and isn’t based on something easily guessable such as your birthday or a pet’s name.

Read More: Here Are the Most Common Passwords, Ranked

Keep Everything Up To Date
No matter what device or service you’re trying to protect, it’s essential that your WordPress site is updated regularly to combat security threats. Unfortunately, in a recent survey, it was found that almost half of all WordPress sites are not updated to the latest version. Don’t concern yourself with the momentary downtime to perform a critical update, many hosting companies now do automatic updates for you. If your hosting company doesn’t provide this service — don’t ignore notifications to update, it really is painless and only takes a few minutes.

Change Your Login Address
You can generally access the login of a WordPress site by typing in the website address and adding ‘/wp-admin/’ to the URL. For example, if Google was hosted on WordPress, you would head to ‘www.google.com/wp-admin/’ to gain access to their login prompt. By leaving this login address at the default value, you’ve basically shown hackers to the front door. Consider changing the default login to something more unique to keep hackers guessing. After all, if you knowingly give them access, can you blame them once they break in?

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Read More: 5 Ways to Turbo Charge Your Smartphone’s Internet Speed

Read more to learn which 5 best apps your dad deserves on Father’s Day.

Get Dad to Download StubHub
One of the most popular apps of the last 5 years has been StubHub, which compares ticket prices from various websites in order to find your dad the best deal. Whatever his musical taste or favorite sport may be, StubHub can be tailored to find tickets for the right event on any given night. The app can be linked to your dad’s Spotify, plus it can connect to various e-payment platforms to ensure every transaction is hassle-free.

Help Dad Find His Dream Home
If your father is on the hunt for some new real estate, Zillow.com will help him find a more comfortable home for the entire family. The home search app has an intuitive and logical user interface to search for the ideal home based on your dad’s price range. It can also help him sell his current home by valuing properties in his neighborhood.

For the BBQ Hero of Your Life
If your dad loves to grill meats, check out hundreds of recipes on the Weber Grills app. Each recipe has step-by-step instructions, a built-in grill timer, and a grocery list feature to keep your father’s grilling days organized.

When Your Dad is Mad About Sports
Perhaps the hottest sports app at the moment is Bleacher Report, which offers timely scores and news in football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and just about any sport imaginable. The app can be programmed to fit your dad’s interests so he gets notified of the latest stats for his favorite teams.

Improve Your Dad’s Mobile Performance
The best app for optimizing your dad’s mobile device is dfndr performance, which has a quick cleanup feature that gets rid of old files that could be slowing down his phone. It also has an app manager function to remove unused apps he no longer needs. A memory booster feature can enhance his device’s RAM speed as well. After all, you have to help him make room for all these awesome apps.

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Read More: Vulnerability Found in Alexa App, What Should You Do?

There are lots of positives to using these devices, but they may know more about you than you’d like. Here’s a breakdown of why Alexa and Google Home could be a detriment and not a help.

How It Works
These devices may not be listening to everything you say, but once you request an interaction with “Alexa” or “OK Google,” they will record you. As soon as these devices hear these keywords, they will instantly upload everything uttered to cloud servers.

The reason for this action is Alexa and Google Home need to store information in the cloud in order to respond back to you. The data is processed into machine-comprehensible instructions and the devices return with an answer to your command. For example, if you ask Alexa to read you an email or an SMS, this information could be stored on cloud servers forever.

What Else Should I Know?
An estimated 31 million Alexa devices have been sold already, as well as 14 million Google Home devices, which is a dream for marketers. Your data could be compiled and used for marketing purposes and all your data will be concentrated in a central place. Having all your data exposed in one area could make it easy for hackers and cybercriminals to target you.

What Can I Do?
You are able to delete the information that Alexa and Google Home collects about you by going to your Amazon or Google account and deleting old recordings. But, if you do this, the devices will unlearn some of the information they know about like your email account to read messages out loud or your musical preferences.

Be careful which devices you link to Alexa or Google Home. Remember that sensitive, personal information may belong to the device as much as it belongs to you. Another option is you can choose when to turn off a smart home device’s connection to your information. For example, if you’re not using an online shopping feature on your device, turn it off.

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New Features to Secure Your Online Life
For starters, the company will be including new anti-phishing capabilities based on machine learning algorithms from Gmail user scenarios. The service will now be able to flag emails as suspicious; it can also alert you to odd attachment files that may pose a threat. It can be a tiring practice to be on your toes continually looking out for malware, so these new features could be quite beneficial.

Read More: What You Need to Know About Google’s Security Patch Record

The anti-phishing system will also be able to scan images and expand shortened URLs in order to look for signs of malicious content. Basically, while you browse your Gmail inbox, Google has implemented a collection of new tools to watch your back. Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep your eyes peeled for trouble!

Advanced Changes to Google’s Backend
Other changes introduced include modifications made to Google’s Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution, which offers new mechanisms that detect how a user interacts with the platform. On a security level, it monitors strange activity, like logging in from halfway around the world, or sending emails that don’t sound like you. These occurrences will be noted by the system.

Remember: Keep Your Eyes Open!
Overall, Google has introduced new security protocols that many users will find useful. However, it’s important to note that a basic patch of security doesn’t give complete protection. In fact, Google Play Protect, an essential part of the Android ecosystem continues to fail third-party testing by independent security firm, AV-TEST.

To make sure your entire Google life is safe and secure it’s worth downloading a third-party app such as dfndr security to watch your back. With features including full virus scanning abilities, anti-phishing fueled by AI, along with cleanup and performance features – it really is an excellent option to keep you moving forward. Go ahead, try it!

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Read More: Bitcoin Scams Are Coming Your Way

However, the technology has other applications that could help with your cybersecurity needs.

What Is Blockchain Technology?
The concept of a block is a digital ledger that stores anything from cryptocurrencies to medical information, voting records, or other types of transactions. A blockchain is the combination of several blocks containing multiple records about a particular topic. The technology is effective when dealing with encrypted pieces of information, such as cryptocurrencies.

In the cryptocurrency world, blockchain technology processes these encrypted transactions by solving complicated math problems, which become more complex as the blockchain grows in size. Programmers who solve these equations are rewarded with cryptocurrency in a process called ‘mining’. The technology is seen as a solid alternative to traditional bank transactions because it can keep personal information confidential.

How Can It Help You?
A rising problem with cybersecurity is the increasing complexity of cyberattacks, which are usually geared towards stealing financial data, personal information, intellectual property or health records. Criminals obtain this information through phishing scams, DDoS attacks, ransomware or by blackmailing victims in sophisticated ways.

Blockchain technology can help detect fraudulent activity by encrypting data that may otherwise be out in the open. The encryption process makes it harder to detect a point of entry for hackers because information on these digital ledgers is decentralized, meaning they are stored in numerous databases around the world rather than in one location.

This makes it harder for hackers to tap into a single database that contains vast amounts of your transactions.

No Passwords Necessary
With blockchain technology one day becoming the norm, you may not need a password to access your data, which is a plus since current authentication methods are susceptible to cyberattacks. This technology instead creates a security system that can only be accessed with a distributed public key. In other words, an SSL certificate is provided instead of a password, making it nearly impossible for attackers to use fake certificates.

Until blockchain becomes a reality, for now you’ll have to keep fighting cyberattacks the old fashioned way — with antivirus software and strong password combinations.

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The study looked at tens of millions simulated phishing attacks conducted over the course of a year through and reviewed more than 15 industries to see how susceptible each one is. The results may surprise you.

Read More: dfndr lab Discovery: McDonald’s Phishing Scam

The Stack Up of Other Industries
It was discovered that education workers were less likely to fall for a phishing scam than industries such as technology, entertainment, hospitality, government consumer goods, retail, and telecommunications. There are also some industries that are less susceptible to these cyberattacks than higher education, including transportation, energy and finance.

What Makes Higher Education Workers Different?
A number of universities have started implementing phishing awareness campaigns on their websites in order to help workers avoid compromising the privacy of students, colleagues or teaching staff. For example, the University of Pittsburgh created special inboxes where students and staff can report suspicious messages to the institution’s IT team.

What Organizations Can Do to Avoid Phishing Scams
There are some telltale signs of phishing attacks that everyone should know about, such as emails that appear suspicious. A phishing scam can entail a few things, but a big one is when an email impersonates an institution’s domain name from an account that looks similar to the real deal, but isn’t (such as “@harvard.edu” vs. “@harvardu.edu”). If the email is prompting you to click on a link, it could be a scam. Don’t click it!

What Can You Do Personally
If you’re attending college or work at one, one vulnerable point that is missed are smartphones. A smartphone is sometimes glued to your side and is necessary for school work or your profession.

To skirt the vulnerability that your phone can pose, consider using antivirus software there too, not just for  your computer. dfndr security’s advanced anti-hacking feature blocks phishing threats when you’re surfing, chatting, or studying. Best of all, it does the work for you by alerting you and blocking malicious links before you click on them.

While it’s interesting to peek at other industries and their cybersecurity measures, security actually begins with you first.

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Here’s what you should know about the dangers of this vulnerability and why it’s important to patch your browser right now.

Read More: How Vulnerable Is Your Email Account to Malware?

An ‘Arbitrary Code Execution’ Flaw
Mozilla released the Firefox update a week after the release of the company’s new Firefox Quantum browser, also known as Firefox 58. The new browser includes an improved graphics engine, as well as performance optimizations and patches for more than 30 browser vulnerabilities.

Cisco released a security advisory that stated this update for Firefox 58.0.1 fixes an ‘arbitrary code execution’ vulnerability.

Could Hackers Get to You?
The vulnerability opens the doors for hackers to run arbitrary code on a victim’s computer that tricks them into opening a file with malware containing malicious code. Cybercriminals could then take control of a user’s privileges and completely compromise their system. They could do everything from installing programs to creating new accounts, to changing or deleting data.

If a user’s configurations offer fewer user rights, the impact on their device could be less harmful. Owners of Firefox 56 (.0, .0.1, .0.2), 57 (.0, .0.1, .0.2, .0.3, .0.4) and 58 (.0) could be affected. You can download the update on the company’s website. The vulnerability was discovered by Mozilla developer Johann Hofmann and it does not affect Firefox browser for Android and Firefox 52 ESR.

How Can Chrome Users Protect Themselves?
If you don’t use Firefox, this update doesn’t apply to you, but Chrome users may have to deal with other vulnerabilities. Google recently released a new update for Chrome in version 64, which includes changes to the browser that should help deal with speculative side-channel browser attacks. These are malicious ways in which hackers try to gain access to a system’s memory.

The biggest lesson here? Always update your browser because important security patches within updates keep your online experiences safer than not.

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The truth is blunt and surprising, but if you’re a ‘millennial’, guess what? You’re more susceptible to cyber attacks. What the heck, you might ask. Even though you have experience with surfing the web, and know that a pop-up on your phone isn’t going to lead to a free plane ticket or a large cash prize, 20% of millennials are more likely to fall for these traps than their older counterparts.

Read More: Google Chrome and the Safe Browsing Feature

Read on for the reasons why you’re easier targets for security breaches online than your grandma is.

Born With a Smartphone in Hand
The youngest generation that can now legally drive vehicles in the United States were born in 2002.They arrived in an era that’s currently progressing through young adulthood and when they made an appearance on planet earth, Apple had already released the second generation iPod. Time does fly!

Being born with technology creates a level of comfort; it’s produced a collection of individuals who don’t take much caution when approaching technology but instead expect technology to be at the ready, without risks, when you need something done. The idea of a safe technology Utopia that’s there to help, and not to harm, has almost been drilled into younger minds.

Our grandparents and parents were taught about the importance of privacy, but the latest generation has been born into a society where privacy is becoming obsolete. With being connected by various social media accounts, posting photos and videos online, while also “checking in” on Foursquare and sharing an exact location with strangers — keeping personal information private is not a cultural mindset for millennials. The latest generation wasn’t taught about security or trained to approach technology with caution – it was always there, and that makes it dangerous.

Pure Apathy for Security Procedures
The current generation conveys a general naivety regarding security, as a recent Fortune article pointed out that “millennial employees could be your company’s biggest cybersecurity risk.” 

A recent study carried out reported that about 30% of younger employees leave their sensitive passwords on post-it-notes or other scraps of paper in clear sight. That surprising number can be compared with only 20% of Gen X individuals, such as your parents, keeping their information out in the open, and only 11% of Baby Boomers, like your grandparents, doing the same.

The Why and How
The apathy problem might stem from merely being born with technology in-hand. Security can seem troublesome to millennials who are used to a fast-moving digital culture.

Having to wait for IT to approve taking files home, creating a two-factor authentication to secure online accounts, or even creating different passwords might make this generation lose patience, wanting things to move quicker. After being accustomed to a level of simplicity and ease, it’s difficult to reel everything in by introducing more detailed procedures, even for the sake of security.

Don’t lose hope if you’re a millennial, though. You can become more conscious of your online life. It begins with following some simple security tips:

One, don’t use a single password for all your accounts – create various passwords with random letters, numbers, and symbols

Two, don’t share your passwords – they are yours and should be kept secure, even from your girlfriend or boyfriend.

Three, don’t ignore your company’s security guidelines – reach out to your IT department for help if something seems too hard.

Seems like a boring thing to say, but cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility. Together, we can remove the stigma attached to any generation and create a more secure internet experience for all.

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The Simple Option – Patterns
Back in 2009, when users were introduced to the second version of Android, known as ‘Eclair,’ individuals were treated to something sweet, the ability to unlock their phones with simple patterns. A grid of nine dots was presented to users, swiping between these dots in a specific manner would create an easy way to unlock your smartphone. It was a convenient solution that could be mastered with one hand on the go, but is it secure?

Read More: How Safe is it to Use Finger Recognition with Your Bank App?

Pattern unlock has remained on Android phones to this very day. However, don’t be fooled by a simple trick — unlocking your phone with a pattern is the most insecure option you could select. As with other authentication methods, it all starts with how complex of a pattern you choose, with most users opting for short ‘dot’ combinations or ones that could be easily guessed. Even with a complex passcode, your finger will typically leave oil trails on the screen that are easy to see, giving away your code. This is one ‘security’ method that’s best to avoid.

The Trusty Familiar – Pincodes
Pincodes remain a stable and secure option to protect your smartphone as long as best practices are followed. Choosing a four-digit code such as ‘1234’ or ‘1111’ is extremely easy to guess and won’t fool anyone attempting to break into your phone. The top recommendation for those creating a pincode is to use as many digits as possible. Older devices typically suggest four numbers, but newer smartphones will almost always default to six.

Again, how secure is this method of locking your phone? The answer is that it all depends on how complicated you choose to make your pincode. Avoid repetitive numbers, memorable dates, or other information that may be guessable if someone knows a bit about your background. Create a random six-digit code, and you’ll have a more secure solution to protect your data.

The New Kid on the Block – Facial Recognition
In recent years, facial recognition has hit the market. Introduced in 2011, Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich Android release brought about the ability for ‘Face Unlock.’ Android users could easily unlock their phones quicker than ever before. But, if this feature was released seven years ago — why is it just taking off now? The answer is simple; the technology was premature. Now, device manufacturers aren’t faced with the same limitations as before, and users have found facial recognition quite useful as it has advanced.

When it comes to facial recognition on Android devices though, it just isn’t the most secure at the moment. Trustworthy facial recognition is a careful marriage between hardware and software. Your experience will vary significantly between the smartphone manufacturer and the facial ID system being employed. As of now, we suggest keeping a secure passcode on your device as the majority of manufacturer solutions, including Samsung’s Iris unlock, have had their systems easily beat by photographs being held in front of the camera.

Another potential option is to protect specific content you care about most, like your photos or videos. Using solutions like dfndr vault’s premium facial recognition feature allows you to hide what matters most. For example, unlock your phone with a complex passcode and then add an extra step of facial recognition for your videos and photos. Consider it the perfect marriage of simplicity and security.

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