Some of your smart devices are not prepared to withstand hacker attacks, with many of these vulnerable to trespass in minutes. A tech expert shared with Cheddar how shoppers should gear up, ahead of this year's Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Craig Williams, senior technical leader and global outreach manager at Cisco, says connected Barbies, baby monitors, and smart TVs, just to name a few, are the latest items of choice on a hacker's list. Some estimates project that by 2020 the world will be home to 20.8 billion smart connected products, making poorly secured smart devices and toys a criminal's opportunity to "make bank."
Williams says that unfortunately there is no secure operating system out there. The bar is very low for security within IoT devices. The best thing you can do is to find a manufacturer that will continue to make patches to its system. He also urges consumers to push harder on these manufacturers in order to ensure safe products. The expert suggests researching on Google whether products are hacker proof before purchasing the item.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
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