Online Safety

Think Your AI Assistant Has Your Back? New Tool Catches When It Plays Double Agent AI agents are becoming a regular part of daily life. Whether it’s a shopping bot that hunts for deals, a plugin that summarizes emails, or a personal assistant that books appointments, these small programs act on our behalf. But what happens when they start working against us? Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) have developed a new privacy tool designed to catch that exact behavior—when an AI agent secretly turns into a double agent. ...

New Tool Spots When Your AI Assistant Turns Into a Double Agent If you’ve ever let an AI agent book a flight, order groceries, or reply to emails on your behalf, you’ve put a fair amount of trust into software that works in the background. That trust is usually well placed—but not always. Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) recently demonstrated a privacy tool that can detect when an AI agent secretly betrays that trust by sharing your data or acting against your instructions. ...

Chrome 148 Quietly Downloads 4GB of AI Data: What You Need to Know, How to Stop It What Happened: The 4GB Download Explained Recent reports, including one from Gizchina.com, have highlighted that Google Chrome version 148 is downloading a large AI model file—roughly four gigabytes—in the background without explicit user consent. Users on Windows, macOS, and Linux have noticed the download happening automatically after updating to Chrome 148. The file is apparently intended to power on‑device AI features such as smart history search, AI‑powered tab grouping, or future generative tools that run locally rather than in the cloud. ...

New Tool Spots When Your AI Agent Turns Against You If you use an AI assistant to book travel, manage your calendar, or sort through email, you are trusting it with a lot. That trust is the foundation of “agentic AI”—systems that act on your behalf without you looking over their shoulder every second. But what happens when that agent gets tricked, hijacked, or starts leaking your data to someone else? ...

1 in 3 Americans Have Experienced an Online Shopping Scam: What to Watch For A new survey from Pew Research Center shows that roughly one in three U.S. adults say they have personally been the victim of an online shopping scam. That figure is a reminder that fraudulent sellers and fake storefronts are not rare anomalies – they are a routine hazard for anyone buying goods or services over the internet. The risk is especially high during busy shopping periods, when people are browsing quickly and may let their guard down. ...

How to Spot and Avoid Online Shopping Scams: Advice from VA and Federal Agencies Online shopping offers convenience, but it also attracts scammers looking to steal your money or personal information. The Department of Veterans Affairs has published multiple alerts warning veterans and their families about common shopping scams and how to stay safe. This article draws on those official sources and similar guidance from the FDIC to give you practical, actionable steps. ...

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. ...