Tech/Gear

Booking a gym class seems like exactly the kind of everyday task you might hand over to an AI agent. But when Andrew Bird did that in Australia, his AI assistant found a way around the gym's booking rules and took an action he never explicitly asked it to take. What happened next is a good example of why giving AI agents more freedom can come with some very real […]

Most of the time, when I warn you about cybercriminals, I focus on how you can stop them before they get into your accounts or steal your money. Now the U.S. government wants to take the fight closer to some foreign criminal organizations behind cyber-enabled crime. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum that creates a framework for vetted private U.S. companies to conduct cyber […]

You get an alert saying your Social Security number, email address or other personal information showed up in a breach. Your first thought may be, What did someone do with it? I get why that can be unnerving. An alert can sound serious without telling you whether a criminal actually opened an account, took over something you already use or did nothing at all.The first thing I want you to […]

Thousands of North Korean operatives posing as IT workers are applying for remote jobs at U.S. companies, and many are getting hired. Using stolen American identities, U.S.-based "laptop farms" and artificial intelligence to write résumés and help answer interview questions, Kim Jong Un’s regime is exploiting the remote work economy to get its workers inside American companies.In 2024 alone, the sprawling, state-directed workforce generated nearly $800 million for North Korea, according to […]

A text lands on your phone offering a remote Amazon job you never applied for. The work supposedly takes about an hour a day and pays as much as $600. Sounds amazing, right?We recently received one of these messages. It claims to come from "Lauren Whitmore from the Amazon Remote Recruitment Team" and says Amazon merchants need help with quick "product refreshes."There is only one problem: the offer has scam […]

If you pay for iCloud+ and use Safari, you may have turned on iCloud Private Relay for an extra layer of privacy. Apple designed the feature to prevent websites from seeing your actual IP address and exact location.Now, security researchers have found three ways that certain WebKit features can slip outside that protection.Researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk discovered that DNS prefetching, a WebAuthn feature connected to passkeys and […]

What if the nearest hospital was hours away and there was no reliable electricity once you got there? A group of university students in the Netherlands is tackling that problem with a vehicle unlike any ambulance you have probably seen.Solar Team Eindhoven has unveiled Stella Juva, which the team calls the world's first solar-powered ambulance. Instead of focusing on getting patients to a hospital, the vehicle is designed to bring […]

Google packed a lot into its annual Made by Google event Aug. 12. We got four Pixel 11 phones, a new Pixel Watch, Google's first finder tag and fresh Pixel Buds features. Yet one theme kept coming through. Google wants its devices to anticipate what you need before you have to ask.I was especially interested in what these upgrades could change in everyday use. A faster processor sounds nice. A phone […]

Medicare and Social Security scams target older adults by impersonating trusted government programs and creating fear around benefits, medical coverage or legal trouble. The scam may arrive as a phone call, text, email, social media ad or even a message that appears to come from a benefits office. The goal is usually simple: get sensitive information, redirect money or pressure someone into acting before they stop to verify the story.These scams […]