This year marks the 10th anniversary of Safer Internet Day. The theme for this year is ‘Connect with Respect’, and one of the big issues we wanted to focus on at Symantec Website Security Solutions is ‘cyberbullying’, which can happen across all devices and age groups, although it is particularly prevalent among younger people.

It’s important for adults to educate their children about how to minimize the chances of getting caught up in cyberbullying, so our colleagues at  Norton have put together the following top 10 tips for parents and care givers to ensure young people remain protected online:

1. Don’t give out your personal information – Don’t put personal details such as your home address, telephone numbers or parent’s work address online as cybercriminals can use this information to create a fake profile with your details

2. What...

In the article “Google Flags Ad Network Isocket for Alleged Malware; Chrome Blocks TechCrunch, Cult of Mac, others (Updated)”,[1] a large number of popular sites using a prominent advertising network was affected when  their sites were blocked by Google on suspicion of containing malware. Regardless whether the action was a result of false positive reading or not, the financial impact to advertising networks and their client sites is high when users are unable to access the websites and see a “Danger: Malware Ahead!” warning.  Business is disrupted and brand reputation compromised.

On the other hand...

We're looking at a bumper crop of online frauds, cons, ID thefts, and check stealing this year. Some of them can steal your returns, others cost you your life savings or money you have not even begun to earn. As your W-2s come in, here are some simple pointers to remember about filing and online opportunities as well as methods for avoiding theft of multiple kinds.

1. First and most important - the IRS will never email you. Ever. If you get an email from the IRS or EFTPS (Electronic Federal Tax Payment System), forward it to phishing@irs.gov and do not respond!

2. Beware fake Tax preparation companies.  Never enter information online unless you see HTTPS: or a green bar in the URL, and look for the Preparer Tax identification Number (PTIN) on your return. You should always receive a copy of your tax return, and a reputable tax service should never do your taxes for a percentage of the refund....

By now you’re probably aware of the Turkish Certificate Authority that had mistakenly issued two intermediate CA certificates to two organizations in Turkey. With these trusted intermediate certificates, the two organizations, a Turkish bank and a Turkish government transportation agency, had the ability to issue fraudulent or unauthorized certificates for domains that they do not control. In this instance, a rogue, wildcard certificate was issued for google.com without permission from Google.

 According to the certificate authority, TURKTRUST, this incident occurred during a software migration in August 2011. In a statement released by the CA, the certificate profiles of the intermediate certificates in question were moved to a production server. This led to intermediate CA certificates being issued without the CA realizing what had happened. Google identified the rogue certificate on their domain on December 24th. Since then the bad intermediate certificates...