Online Safety

Online Shopping Scams Are Getting Smarter – Here’s How to Stay Safe If you’ve shopped online in the past year, you’ve probably noticed deals that seem too good to be true. Some of them are. According to recent warnings from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Federal Trade Commission, online shopping scams are becoming more sophisticated and harder to spot. Veterans and military families are especially targeted, but anyone with a credit card can be caught off guard. ...

Stop Telling AI Your Secrets: What You Need to Know About Privacy Risks It’s easy to treat a chatbot like a therapist, a voice assistant like a personal secretary, or an AI writing tool like a trusted collaborator. You type a question, get an answer, and the interaction feels private—just you and the machine. But that feeling is misleading. The truth is that many AI services treat your conversations more like data to be collected, stored, reviewed, and sometimes reused than like confidential exchanges. ...

The Truth About AI and Privacy: 5 Things You Should Never Share With a Chatbot AI chatbots and assistants have become everyday tools for drafting emails, brainstorming ideas, and even getting personal advice. Their convenience is undeniable. But the trade-off is less obvious: every conversation you have with an AI is data that the company behind it stores, analyzes, and sometimes uses to train future models. Understanding where that data goes—and what you should avoid typing—is essential for protecting your privacy. ...

Why You Shouldn’t Trust AI With Your Secrets (And What to Do Instead) There’s a quiet assumption many of us make when we type a question into ChatGPT or ask Microsoft Copilot to draft an email: that our words vanish into a black box and stay there. The reality is more complicated — and sometimes unsettling. AI chatbots are immensely useful, but they are not private by default. What you share with them can be stored, reviewed, and used to train future models. If that gives you pause, you’re not alone. ...

Why You Shouldn’t Trust AI With Your Secrets: A Privacy Reality Check AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have become part of daily life for millions. They help draft emails, answer questions, and even offer emotional support. But the more we use them, the more personal information we feed into systems we barely understand. The assumption that what you type stays between you and the AI is a myth—and a dangerous one. ...

Why You Should Think Twice Before Trusting AI With Your Personal Secrets Most of us treat AI assistants like a smart friend who never judges. We ask them to draft emails, summarize meeting notes, and sometimes even walk us through personal dilemmas. But that friend is not a person. It’s a software service that runs on someone else’s servers, and everything you type may be stored, analysed, or shared in ways you don’t expect. ...

Is That Chrome Extension Safe? How ‘Productivity’ Tools Can Turn Into Malware You probably have a handful of Chrome extensions installed—one for password management, another for grammar checking, maybe a coupon finder or a note-taking side panel. They’re convenient, lightweight, and often free. But over the past few years, attackers have quietly turned this convenience into a serious liability. A growing number of extensions that appear to be harmless productivity aids are being used as backdoors to steal data, inject ads, or install further malware on both personal and corporate devices. ...

4 Red Flags Your Chrome Extension Might Be a Backdoor A recent report from March 2026 highlighted a troubling trend in the Chrome extension ecosystem: attackers are buying up legitimate productivity extensions and pushing updates that turn them into backdoors. The article, published by Security Boulevard, documented how extensions with millions of users can be compromised after a change in ownership. For anyone who relies on browser-based tools for work or personal use, this is worth understanding — not to panic, but to know what to look for. ...

Are Your Chrome Extensions Safe? A Practical Guide to Avoiding Malicious Add-Ons Introduction Browser extensions are small but powerful. They can block ads, manage passwords, take notes, or streamline your workflow. But that same power is also what makes them attractive to attackers. Malicious Chrome extensions—often disguised as productivity tools—have become a reliable way to spy on browsing activity, steal login credentials, and even slip past corporate firewalls. Recent investigations show that these add-ons are now being used in sophisticated attacks that start inside the browser. ...

Chrome Extensions Turned Attack Vectors: What to Do Right Now Even useful browser extensions can become a hidden threat. Recent reports from Security Boulevard and other security outlets describe a campaign in which seemingly legitimate productivity extensions for Chrome were used as backdoors to infiltrate enterprise systems. The attack relied on a supply-chain compromise—attackers injected malicious code into extensions that appeared normal, then distributed them through official channels. If you use Chrome at work or even at home, understanding how this happened and what you can do about it is worth a few minutes of your time. ...