Bree Fowler

4 weeks ago | yahoo.com | Bree Fowler

American consumers lost a reported $470 million last year to scams that started with fraudulent text messages, according to Federal Trade Commission data released Wednesday. The losses marked a 26% increase from 2023's total of $373 million and a five-fold jump from 2020's total of $85 million. The FTC says the numbers likely represent just a fraction of the actual money lost to scams  because most financial scams go unreported.

1 month ago | cnet.com | Bree Fowler

Consumers around the world are concerned about how both companies and their governments are treating their personal data, and some of them are doing something about it. According to the results of a survey from Malwarebytes released Wednesday, 89% of people are concerned that corporations are inappropriately accessing and using their data, while 72% are worried that the government is doing the same thing.

1 month ago | cnet.com | Bree Fowler

Tech Services & Software The president says he's signing an executive order to push back enforcement of the ban again, pushing back the previous deadline of Saturday. Bree Fowler Senior Writer Bree Fowler writes about cybersecurity and digital privacy. Before joining CNET she reported for The Associated Press and Consumer Reports.

1 month ago | msn.com | Bree Fowler

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.

1 month ago | cnet.com | Bree Fowler

We've all seen those emails pushing amazing offers that seem too good to be true, dire warnings that your computer has been compromised, or even threats of jail time if you don't pay your back taxes right away. Those are all common pitches from online scammers trying to get you to panic and click on a link you shouldn't, hand over money or personal information, or download an attachment that turns out to be a computer virus.