Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryCrime

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Machine learning , artificial intelligence, ai, deep learning blockchain neural network concept.

The Man Behind the First Billion-Dollar AI Business

Robert Hecht-Nielsen (1947‒2019) was a significant figure in the second wave of AI. His company specialized in fraud detection
He led a full life marked by remarkable achievements but he also had a near-death experience that transformed him spiritually. Read More ›
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Digital Espionage: Vector Art of a Hacker in Action

Last Year Saw the Worst Telecom Hack in Our Nation’s History

While millions of Americans’ metadata were compromised, the specific targets seem to be important political figures and people of interest to the Chinese government
Who is responsible for allowing the Salt Typhoon hack to go on so long and infiltrate so deeply? Government and telecoms currently blame each other. Read More ›
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secure connection or cybersecurity service concept of compute motherboard closeup and safety lock with login and connecting verified credentials as wide banner design

“Personhood Credentials”: The Next Big Thing in online security?

“I’m a human” credentials, intended to combat fraud, would likely start out voluntary but then, by degrees, become mandatory

Rather than simplifying our lives, the internet has made our lives more complicated, what with having to continually change passwords, the use of multiple security levels, the threat of hacking, and the like. Now, with the threat of AI creating fraudulent content, some technologists are proposing “personhood credentials” to thwart incursions and impersonations. From the MIT Technology Review story: Personhood credentials work by doing two things AI systems still cannot do: bypassing state-of-the-art cryptographic systems, and passing as a person in the offline, real world. To request credentials, a human would have to physically go to one of a number of issuers, which could be a government or other kind of trusted organization, where they would be asked to provide evidence that they’re Read More ›

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Cyberpunk hacker den in a dark, underground space with screens and tech equipment, Intriguing cyberpunk hacker hideout nestled in a dimly lit, underground location

Yes, the Billion-Records Data Breach Is Real

My family and I were victims. Here’s how to find out if you are too and what you can do about it
AI systems could analyze the huge database of stolen identities to refine their knowledge and attempt thousands of data breaches daily. Read More ›
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phishing on the internet is represented by a scary fish made with Generative AI

Identity Theft: You’d Be Amazed At What You Did Last Night Online

All the more so if you didn't do it — that is, if your identity was stolen online
Of course, many people end up learning the most when they do get scammed, hopefully over something that doesn’t cost too much. Read More ›
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Upset senior elderly man holding credit card by laptop having trouble worry finance safety data or online payment security. Bank client concerned about problem with credit card, financial fraud threat

Interpol Crackdown: Have You Been Scammed on Social Media Too?

Some details of the law enforcement release hint at the intimate reach of international online crime as well as its broad scope
It’s not that you’re naive. Rather, it is much easier than it used to be to fake up all kinds of things using social media — much easier than hacking computers. Read More ›
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A choice of two ways. Woman at a crossroads.

Free Will: Never Let Mere Atoms Near a Keyboard

No free will — and therefore no responsibility — may sound more “cool” than free will but we had better be careful about what we admire
If there is no free will, you can’t say “I didn’t do it” if sociologically, you have a higher probability of doing it than someone else might. Read More ›
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Man paying at the self-service counter entering credit card pin code for security password in credit card swipe machine. shopping time

Why Are Some Retail Stores Ditching Self-Checkout?

Rising theft rates are a key motivator but other problems have arisen, like preventing alcohol sales to minors
Brand marketing strategist Melinda Deines points to a study that shows that self-checkouts cause shoppers to view theft differently. Read More ›
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The word ban on wooden cubes with internet www icon background. Internet ban and censorship concept.

Musk vs Australia: Down Under Is Down One For Now

A federal court has refused to extend the demand that Musk’s X platform remove videos showing the stabbing attack on Rev. Mar Mari Emmanuel
The story highlights once again, the way X (Twitter) is one of the few important social media to resist government censorship. Read More ›
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internet security and privacy challenges. Use a human eye and digital binary code to convey the idea of surveillance by cybercriminals.

We’re Slowly Learning About China’s Extensive Hacking Network

China’s state-backed hackers have embedded malware within U.S. programs used to manage clean drinking water, the power grid, and air traffic, among others
Hackers’ advantage: One of the biggest security weaknesses in U.S. digital networks and infrastructure is out-of-date, no-longer-supported technology. Read More ›
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Stop violence and abused children.traumatized children concept.

How One Woman’s Campaign Nearly Destroyed Pornhub

In 2020 it was the 10th most visited website on the internet, now just a shell of its former days
Mickelwait explained that shutting Pornhub down rather than merely forcing it to enact reforms is necessary because of how much damage has been wrought. Read More ›
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Money making machine printing fake counterfeit dollar bills. Generative AI.

If Information Is Wealth, Are Deepfakes a Form of Counterfeiting?

The current tech media overdose on panic over deepfakes. They could be drowning out practical ways of fighting back
To whatever extent digital information is a form of wealth, its digital producers must always fight counterfeiters — just as currency issuers must do. Read More ›
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This illustration aims to highlight the emerging threat of deepfakes in political misinformation need for vigilance in the face of advanced disinformation technology.

Will Deepfakes Be Used to “Show” Us That Computers Can Now Think?

As the deepfake technology advances, William Dembski wonders whether some AI zealots might try to “fake it till they make it,” Theranos-style
As the technology advances, companies whose customers will likely be harmed by deepfakes lag behind in strategies to counter them. Read More ›
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Modern day slavery, illegal trade of human organs on the black market and forced organ harvesting of death row inmates concept theme with a liver, heart and kidney with price tags and a barcode

Organ Transplants: How the Internet Enables the Dark Side

Euthanasia activists offer to "ease" the donor organ shortage, and so do cartels that exploit the world’s most vulnerable poor
Africans are lured abroad in hopes of a job, maybe in high tech even, and it sometimes turns out that the job is — organ donor. Read More ›
Stripe shirt eyes covered
Little Caucasians blond boy child 3-4 years old covered his face with his hands alone in the dark and is afraid. The concept of social problems and dysfunctional families, child abuse. Copy space.

Twitter’s Censorship — Child Porn (Shrug… ), MDs’ Doubts: NO!

Twitter censored doctors and researchers who raised doubts about COVID strategies but seemed helpless about child porn

Earlier this week, we looked at The Verge’s groundbreaking coverage of Twitter’s inability to prioritize and address child porn (and non-consensual nudity) at the site. One of the authors, Casey Newton, followed up Wednesday at Platformer,, filling readers in on new facts that he and Zoe Schiffer learned from a former Twitter employee after their story was published. One was that “Twitter’s move would draw Apple’s attention to the significant amount of porn on the service, and potentially place new restrictions on its iOS app or even remove it from the App Store.” That’s no idle threat, Newton reminds us. In 2018, Tumblr was dropped from the Apple app store when “child sexual abuse material (CSAM) was found on the Read More ›

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Police tactical team gathered round a house

Swatting Goes Into Politics — as Congresswoman Greene Discovered

Swatting — calling the police and pretending that a violent incident is taking place at a given address — can kill the victim

This has been a summer to remember for U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia). She was “swatted” twice. The first false report that brought the police to her home was Wednesday, August 23: According to the first Rome PD report, five officers responded to a call on Wednesday during the initial attempted swatting. The caller claimed that a man had been “shot five times in a bathtub” at Greene’s home, and there was a woman and possibly children still in potential danger. On the way to Greene’s house, police realized who the homeowner was, but “due to the nature of the call,” police “formed up” at a nearby intersection and made a “tactical approach.” Rome PD provided Ars with no Read More ›

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Ransomware

What To Do If Your Business Is Hit With a Ransomware Demand

A roundup of advice for small businesses and their employees and contract workers, on site or remote

Ransomware attacks have reportedly continued to grow in 2022, as criminals hone their skills in grabbing our data and wanting money to release it. Today, it’s not just government and large businesses that are at risk. Small to mid-size businesses are at greatest risk. That’s because a) they often don’t have enough security in place and b) let’s face it, today’s attacker might be content with $300,000 each from a cluster of them rather than $30 million from a giant firm. Attracts less attention, for one thing. Here’s Blackfog’s monthly list of publicly reported attacks in 2022. In the first 30 minutes… Don’t just panic and agree to pay: [Kevin] Epstein says international law enforcement and white hat hackers usually Read More ›

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3D Rendering of binary tunnel with led leading light. Concept for data mining, big data visualization, machine learning, data discovery technology, customer product analysis.

Deep Web? Dark Web? What’s Dangerous? What’s to Know?

The Deep Web hosts information like bank statements and health records so a search on your name won't turn them up

The terms deep and dark sound glamorous and forbidding, maybe criminal. Both terms just mean that we can’t reach a site on that portion of the web via a conventional search engine. The Surface Web, the part that we can reach via a conventional search engine like Google, DuckDuckGo, or Brave, is estimated roughly to be 0.03% of the internet (Britannica). The Deep Web contains email accounts, bank statements, health records, and other services that can only be accessed by passwords. It’s the main reason that our private business can’t be accessed just by searching on our names. Both the Surface Web and the Deep Web are growing as more people go online. Now, about the Dark Web: By comparison, Read More ›

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Hacking and malware concept

Largest Data Grab Ever Stole Shanghai’s Mass State Surveillance

The police, dutiful in monitoring everyone, flunked data security. Now it’s all for sale on the Dark Web

Beijing wants to create a centralized database with personal information on everyone living in China. To do that, the government saves massive amounts of data acquired through surveillance technologies such facial and voice recognition and cell phone monitoring. In a previous article, we saw that the Chinese government’s surveillance network is much more extensive than once thought. However, while the Chinese government has prioritized collecting massive amounts of data, it has not prioritized protecting it. Thus, a hacker has acquired police data files on 1 billion Chinese residents (approximately 23 terabytes of data) from the Shanghai National Police database. The files include name, national ID number, cell phone number, birthdate, birthplace, ethnicity, education level, marital status, and delivery records. They Read More ›

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Black male person in warm denim jacket uses smartphone to pay for purchase at self-checkout point in supermarket close view

Could the Self-Checkout Ruin Your Reputation?

As Big Retail’s war on shoplifting goes digital, honest customers risk getting nabbed for goofs — and then facing a shakedown

In 2018, it was noted at The Atlantic that shoplifting via self-serve checkouts was common. How does it work? Self-checkout theft has become so widespread that a whole lingo has sprung up to describe its tactics. Ringing up a T-bone ($13.99/lb) with a code for a cheap ($0.49/lb) variety of produce is “the banana trick.” If a can of Illy espresso leaves the conveyor belt without being scanned, that’s called “the pass around.” “The switcheroo” is more labor-intensive: Peel the sticker off something inexpensive and place it over the bar code of something pricey. Just make sure both items are about the same weight, to avoid triggering that pesky “unexpected item” alert in the bagging area. Rene Chun, “The Banana Read More ›