Author archives

Pete Weiss, formerly a Systems Engineer in Teleprocessing at The Pennsylvania State University

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 15, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Protect Yourself Online; Study: OpenAI Has Been Breached More Than 1000 Times; Feds warn: Hang up on phone scammers pretending to be border patrol agents; and Cybercriminals Are Hiding Malicious Web Traffic in Plain Sight.

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Subjects: Cybersecurity, Privacy, Social Media

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 7, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Deepfake Scams Are Distorting Reality Itself; Why does Amazon use palm scanners at Whole Foods and doctors’ offices? Crypto news: Why shocking and violent “wrench attacks” are going to get worse; Privacy Alarm: Meta Caught De-Anonymizing Android Web Activity; and When the FBI Has a Phone It Can’t Crack, It Calls These Israeli Hackers.

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Subjects: AI, Big Data, Cryptocurrency, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Financial System, Government Resources, Privacy, Shopping, Social Media, Technology Trends

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 31, 2025

On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Most AI chatbots devour your user data – these are the worst offenders; The US Is Building a One-Stop Shop for Buying Your Data; Digital Corruption Takes Over DC; A Starter Guide to Protecting Your Data From Hackers and Corporations; and Cybercriminals exploit AI hype to spread ransomware, malware.

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Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Cryptocurrency, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Economy, Financial System, Legal Research, Privacy

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 24, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: A Judge Just Cracked Open the Can of Worms AI Firms Were Hoping to Avoid; How to Shield Yourself From Social Media Abuse; AI hallucinations and their risk to cybersecurity operations; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is withdrawing its Notice of Proposed Rule: Protecting Americans from Harmful Data Broker Practices; Philadelphia woman spends months fixing Social Security error that declared her dead.

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Subjects: AI, Cryptocurrency, Cybersecurity, Economy, Financial System, Privacy, Social Media

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 17, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: License Plate Reader Company Flock Is Building a Massive People Lookup Tool, Leak Shows; Senators want TSA to scale back facial recognition at airports; How Signal, WhatsApp, Apple, and Google Handle Encrypted Chat Backups; Deepfakes, Scams, and the Age of Paranoia; Does One Line Fix Google?

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, KM, Legal Research, Privacy, Search Engines, Social Media, Spyware

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 10, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Using AI Can Be Ethically Iffy. Here’s How to Do It Right; How to Make Your iPhone as Secure as Possible; After $243M Crypto Heist, a Crucial Mistake; Postal Service Data Sharing to Deport Immigrants; and AI is getting “creepy good” at geo-guessing.

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Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Cryptocurrency, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Privacy

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 3, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: US State Privacy Legislation Tracker; Social Security Administration Introduces Secure Digital Access to Social Security Numbers; I Scammed My Bank With Just an AI Voice Generator and a Phone Call; European regulators fined TikTok $600 million – social media giant unlawfully transferred users’ personal data from the EU to China; and Internet crimes increased 33 percent in 2024.

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Subjects: AI, Courts & Technology, Cybersecurity, Privacy, Social Media

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 26, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: How to prevent your streaming device from tracking your viewing habits (and why it makes a difference); Your private health data may have fueled Google’s ads; Businesses Failing to Prevent Cyber Attacks, Says Report; and How to block Meta AI from using your Instagram or Facebook posts for training.

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Subjects: Cybersecurity, E-Commerce, Health, Healthcare, Privacy, Search Engines, Social Media

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 19, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Text Message Scams Cost Consumers $470 Million in 2024, FTC Reports; Trump is shifting cybersecurity to the states, but many aren’t prepared; Homeland Security Email Tells a US Citizen to ‘Immediately’ Self-Deport; OpenAI Tightens Access As Evidence Mounts of AI Model Mimicry; and ICE Just Paid Palantir Tens of Millions for ‘Complete Target Analysis of Known Populations.

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Subjects: AI, Big Data, Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Email, Financial System, Legal Research, Privacy, Search Engines

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 12, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Biometrics vs. passcodes: What lawyers recommend if you’re worried about warrantless phone searches; DDoS Attacks Now Key Weapons in Geopolitical Conflicts, NETSCOUT Warns; Google Maps doubles down on preventing fake reviews; Large number of US adults view AI as a threat: Report; and Explosive Growth of Non-Human Identities Creating Massive Security Blind Spots.

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Subjects: AI, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Privacy
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