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One in Three Americans Has Been Scammed While Shopping Online: How to Protect Yourself If you’ve ever bought something online that never arrived, or paid for a product that turned out to be counterfeit, you’re not alone. A new survey from the Pew Research Center found that about a third of U.S. adults say they’ve experienced an online shopping scam. That number is high enough to suggest that most of us either know someone who’s been burned or have been burned ourselves. ...

1 in 3 Americans Has Been Hit by an Online Shopping Scam: How to Stay Safe If you have bought anything online in the past few years—and most of us have—there’s a decent chance you’ve run into trouble. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, about a third of Americans say they’ve had an online shopping scam happen to them. That’s 33% of U.S. adults, and the number is higher among younger shoppers and people who buy frequently from unfamiliar sites. ...

Why the Source of AI Training Data Is the Next Big Privacy Risk If you use AI tools for work, writing, note-taking, or even health advice, you’re trusting them with your data. But there’s a less visible risk: the data those models were trained on may contain personal information scraped from the internet, not just synthetic or anonymized content. As regulators and courts begin focusing on where training data comes from, the privacy implications for everyday users are becoming harder to ignore. ...

How Your Data Gets Used to Train AI—and Why It’s Becoming a Legal Battleground For years, privacy compliance largely meant making sure companies told you what data they collected and gave you a way to opt out of selling it. That world is changing. A growing number of legal actions and new state laws are shifting the focus from simple notice-and-choice to something broader: how companies acquire and use data to train artificial intelligence models. If you’ve used a chatbot, voice assistant, or image generator, your data may be part of that training—often without your explicit permission. Here’s what’s happening and what you can do about it. ...

How to Protect Yourself from TamperedChef Malware That Uses Fake Signed Productivity Apps When you download a productivity app—a note-taking tool, a task manager, or a calendar—you expect it to be safe. A digital signature from a software publisher is one way to verify that the file hasn’t been tampered with. But a new malware campaign called TamperedChef exploits that trust by using stolen signing certificates to make malicious apps look legitimate. ...

Hackers Are Hiding Malware in Common Productivity Apps – Here’s How to Stay Safe If you routinely download free tools like Notepad++, 7-Zip, or PDF editors from third-party download sites, a recent malware campaign should give you pause. Security researchers have identified a fresh wave of attacks, dubbed “TamperedChef,” that uses signed installers of popular productivity software to slip information stealers and remote access trojans (RATs) onto victims’ computers. ...

New Malware TamperedChef Uses Trusted Productivity Apps to Steal Your Data You download a productivity app from a website. The file is digitally signed, your security software doesn’t flag it, and you run it. A few minutes later, your passwords, browser cookies, and cryptocurrency wallets are being exfiltrated to a remote server. This is not a hypothetical scenario. It is exactly what the TamperedChef malware campaign does. ...

1 in 3 Americans Has Been Scammed Shopping Online: What You Can Do If you’ve ever bought something online that never arrived, or paid for a product that turned out to be a counterfeit, you are far from alone. According to a new study from the Pew Research Center published in November 2025, about a third of Americans say they’ve had an online shopping scam happen to them. That figure cuts across age groups, though younger adults and people who use payment apps like Venmo or Cash App report even higher rates of victimization. ...

Beware: TamperedChef Malware Hides in Signed Productivity Apps – Here’s How to Stay Safe What happened In late May 2026, cybersecurity researchers reported a new malware strain called TamperedChef. According to CyberSecurityNews, the malware is being distributed through signed productivity applications. The twist: these apps carry valid digital signatures, which normally indicate that software comes from a verified publisher and hasn’t been tampered with. TamperedChef exploits that trust to deliver information stealers and remote access trojans (RATs) onto victims’ machines. ...

9 ways to spot and avoid online shopping scams this holiday season Introduction The holiday season means more shopping, more deals, and unfortunately, more scams. According to new data from the Federal Trade Commission, consumers reported losing $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024 — a significant jump from previous years. Scammers know this is the time of year when people are busy, distracted, and hunting for bargains. The good news: most scams follow predictable patterns, and once you know them, they’re easier to avoid. ...