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Hello, all…. think twice about how much personal information we
Wow! April is starting off with unseasonably warm share publicly or through commercial or business
and sunny weather! Quite a few golf courses that channels – which could be exposed through a suc-
might otherwise have opened in mid-April or later – cessful attack on them.
depending on the April rains – opened the last week How many websites have information about each of
of March. May this sunny and warm weather contin- us – name, address, phone number(s), email ad-
ue for the rest of the month! dress(es), date of birth, Social Security number,
April typically brings us three major events, Easter, Medicare number, credit card numbers, bank ac-
Passover, and Income Tax deadlines, but as with count numbers, usernames, passwords, and on and
many other things this past year that’s not quite true on? Social media offers yet another opportunity for
this time around. Normally, Easter week and Passo- bad guys to collect potentially harmful information.
ver are in April, but began in March this year. And Meanwhile, many businesses collect personal infor-
the federal (and Illinois) 2020 income tax filing dead- mation - legally - which they then sell to businesses
th
lines have been postponed until May 17 . Happy and/or individual consumers. On the Dark Web, bad
Easter and Happy Passover, and here’s to no taxes guys use information from data breaches, public rec-
this month! ords, etc. to create document files (“Fulz”) for individ-
uals, which they then sell or rent to scammers and
I hope you all have been successful in getting at others for use in cyber-attacks, phone calls and other
least one COVID-19 vaccination, with a second shot attempts to victimize their targets. There is not much
(if needed) already scheduled. Supplies seem to be we can do about our personal information that is al-
growing and new mass inoculation sites continue to ready “out there”. But we can develop our own set of
pop up. (If anyone is having problems finding an countermeasures – changing usernames and pass-
appointment, please feel free to post a request for words from time to time, closing unused accounts,
help on our LCACE Google Groups email, along with taking advantage of anti-malware tools already built
the best way to contact you. I encourage successful into our operating systems and perhaps adding addi-
members to reach out to any who ask for help to tional layers of anti-malware/privacy hardware or
share your experience and suggestions.) software. Practicing “safe computing” – following
In the technology world, we continue to see massive recommended privacy and security behaviors while
data breaches and cyber-attacks on major targets, using our devices. Keeping all software up-to-date
both governmental and corporate. In case after by promptly installing new updates. And, creating
case, it seems that the targets have not prioritized and storing current backups of all personal data –
cyber-security (lack of investment in software, hard- whether on computers, tablets, or phones.
ware, and training, and limited management atten- I encourage all of us to be attentive to new data
tion and direction). SolarWinds and the Microsoft breaches and cyber-attacks, to see if there is any
Exchange attacks are just two examples; meanwhile relevance to our own computing activities and as a
large corporations and governmental agencies con- reminder to double-check our own security behav-
tinue to be ransomware targets. iors.
While there is little that we can do on a personal lev- Stay safe – from COVID-19 and from those
el to prevent events like these, they should be a
“wake-up call” for all of us. Some of the tools used who would victimize us through our use of
in these attacks – such as “spear-phishing” can and technology!
have been utilized successfully against individual Phil
users. But these attacks also point out the need to
April 2021 3
