The Dirty Dozen tax scams: Identity theft, phone scams and phishing schemes, oh my!

It’s that time of the year again – tax season is upon us. Recently, the Internal Revenue Service wrapped up its annual “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams. This year, identity theft topped the list, but phone scams and phishing schemes also deserve special mentions. It’s important that taxpayers guard against ploys to steal their […]

25 days offline: I’m not insane (yet) – Part III

Keeping my mind occupied without the  Internet is not that difficult… but you need to learn how to live in this situation.   Day 15. About 10 days to go… I have a lot of time and no worries. You should test this offline vacation idea for yourself. I’m reading Fiódor Dostoiévski much faster than when […]

Avast finds personal data on phones sold at pawn shops

Many people sell their used smartphones but fail to ensure their personal data is wiped away. A year and half ago, Avast mobile security researchers bought 20 used phones from online consumer-to-consumer sites, like eBay and Amazon, in the USA. Using easily available recovery software, they were able to access more than 40,000 personal photos, emails, […]

Avast free Wi-Fi experiment fools Mobile World Congress attendees

Avast Mobile Security researchers camped out at the Barcelona Airport, threw up a few fake Wi-Fi hotspots, and waited to see who would connect.   That’s already an interesting premise for an experiment, but this was the weekend when attendees of Mobile World Congress, “the world’s biggest and most influential mobile event” were arriving, making […]

Avast finds personal data on phones sold at pawn shops

Many people sell their used smartphones but fail to ensure their personal data is wiped away.

A year and half ago, Avast mobile security researchers bought 20 used phones from online consumer-to-consumer sites, like eBay and Amazon, in the USA. Using easily available recovery software, they were able to access more than 40,000 personal photos, emails, and text messages.

Since then, smartphone technology has progressed and numerous educational articles have been published to inform people about cleaning their phones before selling, so we wanted to see what would happen if we did a similar experiment now. This time, our researchers bought phones from pawn shops: Five devices each in New York, Paris, Barcelona, and Berlin — and again, used widely available free recovery software to detect the data found on the devices.

infograph_used_smartphone_pk_v3 Install Avast Anti-Theft from the Google Play Store for free

Avast free Wi-Fi experiment fools Mobile World Congress attendees

Travelers often connect to free Wi-Fi  to save money Travelers often connect to free Wi-Fi to save money. image via www.shbarcelona.com

Avast Mobile Security researchers camped out at the Barcelona Airport, threw up a few fake Wi-Fi hotspots, and waited to see who would connect.

 

That’s already an interesting premise for an experiment, but this was the weekend when attendees of Mobile World Congress, “the world’s biggest and most influential mobile event” were arriving, making this not only interesting but fun! You would think with such a savvy group that the results would be rather ho-hum, but think again!

Thousands of smartphone users threw caution to the wind and connected to one of Avast’s bogus Wi-Fi hotspots, risking being spied on and hacked by cybercriminals.

Avast SecureMe protects iPhones when connected to Wi-Fi

Your iPhone data may require a court order for the FBI to look into the contents, but if you log onto an unsecure Wi-Fi hotspot without protection, any old snoop can eavesdrop on what you’re doing. That’s right, while you’re busily messaging, shopping, banking, and uploading a photo of your lunch to Instagram, a hacker with […]

Surprising Twist: Men have cleaner phones than women

Just like their closets, women have more clutter on their phones than men. Our free Avast Cleanup app for Android has removed more than 9,000 petabytes of photos, videos and other unwanted files, to make room for data that matters, since its launch during last year’s Mobile World Congress. In a surprising twist, an analysis of […]