Romance fraud. Report it confidentially and save your embarrassment - 16 Apr, 2013

By Tim Mitchell

The heart (and bank) breaking scandal of romance fraud continues to increase, despite warnings on dating sites, information and advice on websites like Get Safe Online and the raft of real life stories in the media. 

I say "heartbreaking" in two contexts .... not only is it gutting to suffer financial losses of the scale that reports suggest,...

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Register now for the Child Internet Safety Conference - 15 Apr, 2013

By Tim Mitchell

Our friends over at Child Internet Safety are organising a summit to be held on 11 July at the QE11 Conference Centre, Westminster. Event details - including how to register and costs - can be found here.

They're keen to ensure effective involvement from delegates with the aim of introducing relevant organisations and departments to senior...

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Why is reuse so difficult? - 13 Apr, 2013

By Bo Harald, Chairman of the Board of Zef Solutions.

Most countries have established e-society strategies aiming at ao providing public sector services via the Internet. Progress has generally been fast with general information sharing  - but when it comes to private information (health, tax, social benefits, school records etc) - not to talk about signing documents - progress is generally stopped...

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Beware of ‘HMRC VAT’ emails bearing attachments or containing links - 11 Apr, 2013

By Tim Mitchell

Always being on the lookout for potential incoming scams and the like, I came across this one yesterday, an email purporting to be from HMRC to an adhesives company I work for one day a week.

The email invites recipients to open an attached 'report' to view the latest information on their VAT return. My colleague Lisa kindly did a screen dump...

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Join Get Safe Online and Norton for a Twitter Chat about keeping kids safe online - 10 Apr, 2013

By Tim Mitchell

Thursday 18th April from 7.30 to 8.30pm

Exciting news! We’re teaming up with Norton next week to host a live Twitter chat for parents around how to keep kids safe online.

Marian Merritt, Norton’s Online Family Safety Advocate and our very own Tony Neate will be on hand to answer your questions on anything from how to prevent cyber...

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Social networks: take care and enjoy the rollercoaster. - 21 Mar, 2013

By Tim Mitchell

You could say that today, two significant landmarks were passed in the world of social networking. And both are fantastic achievements in anyone’s book. 

Yes, on this day Twitter turns 7 and YouTube reaches a billion monthly users (yep, that's nine zeros).

Twitter celebrates its seventh birthday with 200 million users worldwide, who send an...

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Enter the Nominet Internet Awards. Only 10 days to go! - 18 Mar, 2013

By Tim Mitchell

At Get Safe Online we applaud any initiative to promote internet safety, and this one's no exception. 

Nominet - a valued Get Safe Online Associate Partner - is organising its annual competition to celebrate the achievements and innovation of UK internet initiatives, for the seventh time.

The objective? To showcase projects which help to...

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She’s a potential romance fraud victim, get her out of there - 24 Feb, 2013

By Tim Mitchell

My wife and I had good friends round for a meal last night. We all try to avoid talking about work. Politics ... fine. Religion ... no problem. Work, however, is taboo, that's just the way it is.

But sometimes, you can't help it, and that's the way it was last night.

Amy's sister Rebecca (both made up names) is forty-something, lovely, and...

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Careful or paranoid? - 18 Feb, 2013

By Tim Mitchell

You know how you work in a particular field or industry, and your knowledge of what goes on in your work doesn't stop at 5.30 on a Friday? If you were in printing, for example, and your beloved excitedly brought home the latest holiday brochure, the first thing you excitedly looked at wouldn't be the infinity pool or the ski chalet, but the...

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How I got clickjacked - 15 Feb, 2013

By Shannon McCarty-Caplan, Worldwide Consumer Product Marketing at Trend Micro, Chicago

I’m an idiot.

Recently, I received a direct Twitter message from my one of my closest friends late one night. It said, “did you see this picture of you lol” and included a shortened web link. Considering that my friend is a photographer who I know has photos of me, it wasn’t strange to receive this message from her. So  I clicked on it. Why...

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