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How to get back a disabled or hacked Instagram account
Losing your account to hackers and IG's strict community sucks. But it's not a hopeless situation
Losing an Instagram account hurts, especially if you've had it for years. When hackers gain control of it, they can kick you out if they change your login details. You can no longer access your posts, followers, and other content until you try a recovery attempt and verify your identity. Violating Instagram's community guidelines is another way to lose your account. You don't get a strike or warning before it happens.
Twitch.tv just got leaked in its entirety, here’s what you should do
Source code, payouts, upcoming features, and potentially even passwords can be found in the 125GB dump
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It looks like popular gaming-focused streaming platform Twitch.tv has some troubling days, months, or maybe even years ahead of it. According to Video Games Chronicle, the entirety of the website’s code and internal documents have been leaked online on 4chan as part of a 125GB torrent dump on Wednesday. It’s still unclear if user data is also affected, but given the extent of the leak, we wouldn’t be surprised.
T-Mobile attempts to assuage subscriber fears in wake of historic data breach
Do you still feel comfortable as a T-Mobile subscriber?
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It seems like we can't go a week without hearing about another massive security breach at a mega-corporation. This week's shocker comes courtesy of T-Mobile, at least according to one self-reported hacker claiming to sell the company's customer data. T-Mobile says it's "investigating" the possible theft of data from over 100 million people. If true, it would be the fourth notable data breach from T-Mobile in the last four years.
AT&T says that alleged massive customer data hack didn't happen on its watch
"The information ... does not appear to have come from our systems."
Last week T-Mobile elicited groans after it confirmed a massive hack of customer data — its fourth such hack in four years. For a short time it appeared that something similar had happened to its in-country carrier rival, AT&T: a post on an illicit hacker forum claimed to have customer data from 70 million people, selling for $200,000. But in contrast with T-Mobile's response, AT&T says its investigation of the sample data indicates that it didn't come from the company's servers.
FBI catches alleged hackers behind the great Twitter hack of 2020
Could've gotten away with it if... wait, they ARE meddling kids
Three individuals have been charged with carrying out a debilitating security breach on Twitter 2 weeks ago that saw high-profile verified accounts hijacked for the purposes of a Bitcoin scam. In perpetrating the scheme, the team allegedly gained privileged tools by connecting with an employee who was selling access to them.
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Some verified Twitter accounts are not able to post tweets right now. The company says it is working to investigate and fix a major vulnerability that saw celebrities including Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Kanye West, and MrBeast of YouTube fame post bogus offers to give back double whatever Bitcoin deposit their followers put in.
Google confirms it disabled the Twitter carousel in Search following Bitcoin scam kerfuffle
It's a temporary change, and Google will bring it back later following a careful review
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Yesterday's Twitter snafu has had a significant impact outside the platform itself. In what Google has confirmed to us was an intentional response to the breach, the Twitter carousel has been disabled in Google Search results, and data gathered by Search Engine Roundtable confirms the change is universal.
Redditor discovers insanely simple URL trick to remove ads from any YouTube video
Minimize the period of time you spend watching ads
YouTube is one of the most popular destinations on the web, and like so many sites out there, funds itself by displaying ads to viewers. While you could easily banish them by paying for YouTube Premium (or going all rogue with an ad-blocker), no workaround is quite as weirdly simple as this method discovered by — who else but a Redditor.
This new app brings classic lockscreen widgets to modern Android devices
Update your lockscreen to Android 4.2
Ever wanted to make your 2020 lockscreen look like it stepped out of 2012? The good ol' days when you could view your upcoming calendar appointments, stock prices, and the weather without unlocking your phone? You're in luck, because a new app from developer Zachary Wander promises to put all the widgets you want on your lock screen where they belong.
LineageOS, the popular and nearly ubiquitous Android ROM, has suffered a security breach, with hackers gaining access to some of the project's infrastructure over the weekend on May 2nd. However, the ultimate impact on users will be low, as signing keys, builds, and source code were unaffected. In other words, the ROM already on your phone should be safe, as should the next update you download. Builds are suspended due to a pre-existing issue, according to the project's status dashboard, and individual services are coming back up one at a time.
Aptoide database breach exposes 20 million user accounts, possibly more to come
At least there aren't any payment details to worry about
Website hacks are nothing new, and it's all but certain that everybody has had at least at least a couple login credentials and other details exposed at some point. Unfortunately, another incident has occurred, this time with the Aptoide app store. Minimal personal information and zero payment details were exposed, but login credentials are exposed.
Slickwraps slapped with class action lawsuit after data breach
The suit alleges that Slickwraps "was well aware that it had lax data security measures"
Slickwraps, maker of customizable skins for phones, tablets, computers, and other devices, was breached last month by a security researcher. In the researcher's attempts to notify the company about its security issues, a database of Slickwraps customer information became public, and now Slickwraps is facing a class action lawsuit for security negligence.
Hackers are getting better at hijacking Google Assistant with inaudible ultrasonic commands
Sequels aren't always better, but this one is certainly more effective
Back in 2017, researchers in China reported on a clever way to access a digital assistant, like Google Assistant or Siri, by using inaudible ultrasonic sound waves. Now a new team at Washington University in St. Louis have been working on similar technology, and their version is even more capable (and scary) than the original.
Slickwraps has been hacked, customer data is compromised (Update: Email notifications)
Poor security has led to multiple breaches into Slickwraps databases
Slickwraps is one of the most well-known sellers of vinyl skins for computers, phones, tablets, game consoles, and other product categories. If you've ever bought something from Slickwraps (without PayPal or another similar service), now is the time to replace your credit card, because the company has suffered multiple data breaches impacting all customer data.
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Banks, credit card companies, and VPN providers are probably at the top of the list of organizations you really hope would have their security in order. NordVPN, the VPN company you've likely heard recommended by countless YouTubers, has confirmed one of its data centers was hacked over a year ago.
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Take this with the proverbial grain of salt, but Bloomberg has published a detailed investigative report today alleging that a list of U.S. Companies, including Amazon and Apple, suffered a security intrusion via hardware infiltration. This isn't a hack in the software sense, it's a result of literal physical modification to server motherboards at the time of manufacturing by subcontractors in China, allegedly coerced by operatives working for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army — making this a potentially state-backed attack.
Popular e-commerce website Newegg is the latest victim of cyber attacking by Magecart, according to Volexity, a cyberthreat monitoring firm. Newegg is one in a string of high profile cyber attacks making use of the card skimming code which recently compromised British Airways, Ticketmaster, and Feedify. Most critically, customer names and complete card details were stolen using exploited code between August 16th and September 18th.
Several VEVO YouTube music channels were hacked earlier today, with multiple videos having their titles and thumbnails modified. Among the affected music videos was Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee's Despacito, which currently holds the title for YouTube's most viewed video of all time, coming in at over five billion views. Additional channels include ShakiraVEVO, TaylorSwiftVEVO, SelenaGomezVEVO, and many others.
According to American sportswear giant Under Armour, user data from its health app MyFitnessPal has been compromised. Data including the usernames, email addresses, and scrambled passwords from approximately 150 million accounts was stolen last month in one of the biggest attacks of its kind.
The last generation of Nexuses (Nexus? Nexsi?) were unfortunately plagued with hardware problems. The Nexus 6P suffered from early shutdowns due to a faulty battery sensors, and the 5X had the famous bootloop bug (which my own 5X eventually fell victim to). The 6P suffered from bootloops as well, to an extent, but now there's a possible fix for the problem on both phones.