Four major wireless carriers have been fined by the FCC for sharing access to customers’ location data without consent.

After four years of investigation, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has concluded that four of the major wireless carriers in the US violated the law in sharing access to customers’ location data.

The FCC fined AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon a total of almost $200 million for “illegally sharing access to customers’ location information without consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized disclosure.”

The fines are divided up into $12 million for Sprint, $80 million for T-Mobile (which has now merged with Sprint), more than $57 million for AT&T, and an almost $47 million for Verizon.

From the press release it becomes apparent that the FCC considers real-time location data some of the most sensitive data in a carrier’s possession. Each of the four major carriers was found to be selling its customers’ location information to “aggregators,” who then resold access to such information to third-party location-based service providers.

The investigation by the FCC was set in motion by public reports like the ones in the New York Times, Vice.com, and a letter from Sen. Ron Wyden to the FCC. All pointed out that anyone could get location information about almost any US phone if they were willing to pay an unauthorized source.

The FCC press release specifically mentions a location-finding service operated by Securus, a provider of communications services to correctional facilities, as a source that provided the possibility to track people’s location.

The US law, including section 222 of the Communications Act, requires carriers to take reasonable measures to protect certain customer information, including location information.

The wireless carriers attempted to offload their obligation to obtain customer consent onto the downstream recipients of the location information. The end result was a failure in which no valid customer consent was obtained. And even though the carriers were aware of this, they continued to sell access to location information without taking reasonable measures to protect it from unauthorized access.

As reported by Krebs on Security, one of the data aggregation firms, LocationSmart, had a free, unsecured demo of its service online that anyone could abuse to find the near-exact location of virtually any mobile phone in North America.

Spokespersons of Verizon and AT&T both indicated to BleepingComputer that they felt as if they were taking the blame for another company’s failure to obtain consent.

T-Mobile said in a statement to CNN that it discontinued the location data-sharing program over five years ago. The company wanted to make sure first that critical services like roadside assistance, fraud protection, and emergency response would not suffer any negative consequences if it did.

All three companies indicated they will appeal the order. We’ll keep you posted on any new developments.

**We don’t just report on phone security—we provide it**

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your mobile devices by downloading Malwarebytes for iOS, and Malwarebytes for Android today.

 Wireless carriers fined $200 million after illegally sharing customer location data 

Malwarebytes Premium earned "Product of the Year" from AVLab for repeatedly blocking 100% of malware samples used in third-party testing.

After blocking 100% of “in-the-wild” malware samples that were deployed in multiple, consecutive third-party tests conducted by the AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation, Malwarebytes Premium Security has earned “Product of the Year.”

The recognition cements Malwarebytes Premium Security’s perfect record of repeatable, trusted, and proven protection for users. It also comes alongside an additional AVLab certification for “Top Remediation Time.”

The latest results are part of AVLab’s regular “Advanced In-The-Wild Malware Test.”

For the March 2024 evaluation, AVLab tested 459 unique malware samples against 13 cybersecurity products. Malwarebytes Premium Security detected 459/459 malware samples, with a remediation time of 20 seconds—a full 13 seconds faster than the industry average.

ThreatDown, powered by Malwarebytes, also participated in AVLab’s March evaluation, where it similarly blocked 100% of malware samples with a remediation time of 17 seconds.

Three cybersecurity vendors failed to block 100% of the malware samples deployed: Bitdefender, ESET, and Panda.

AVLab’s evaluations, which are performed every other month by a team of cybersecurity and information security experts, are constructed to test and compare cybersecurity vendors against the latest malware that is currently being used by adversaries and threat actors. To ensure that the organization’s evaluations reflect current cyberthreats, each round of testing follows three steps:

1.  **Collecting and verifying in-the-wild malware**: AVLab regularly collects malware samples from malicious and active URLs, testing the malware samples to understand their impact to networks and endpoints.
2.  **Simulating a real-world scenario in testing**: To recreate how a real-life cyberattack would occur, AVLab uses the Firefox web browser to engage with the known, malicious URLs collected in the step prior. In the most recent test, AVLab emphasized the potential for these URLs to be sent over instant messaging platforms, including Discord and Telegram.
3.  **Incident recovery time assessment**: With the various cybersecurity products installed, AVLab measures whether the evaluated product detects a malware sample, when it detects a sample, and how long it took to detect that sample. The last metric is referred to as “Remediation Time.”

Malwarebytes is proud to receive “Product of the Year” and “Top Remediation Time” from AVLab, and is thankful to the third-party tester for its important work in the industry.

 Malwarebytes Premium Security earns &#8220;Product of the Year&#8221; from AVLab 

The FBI sent out a warning about fraudsters that trick victims into signing up for an expensive verification process on dating sites

The FBI has warned of fraudsters targeting users of dating websites and apps with “free” online verification service schemes that turn out to be very costly.

Instead of being free, as advertised, the verification schemes involve steep monthly subscription fees, and will steal personal information on the side.

The scammers collect the information entered by victims at registrations and use it to commit further fraudulent activity such as identity theft or selling the information on the dark web. The stolen information may include email addresses, phone numbers, and even credit card information.

The scam works like this: The scammer initiates contact on a dating website or app, but then quickly asks the victim to move the conversation to a more private, encrypted platform.

Once there, the scammer will recommend a verification link that supposedly provides protection against predators like sex offenders and serial killers. This verification website asks the victim to provide their name, phone number, email address, and credit card number to complete the process.

After completing the registration, the victim is redirected to a shady dating site that charges hefty monthly fees to the victim’s credit card. These charges show up on the credit card statement as a company the victim has never heard of.

The personal information the victim gives the scammers is useful because it allows them to defraud the victims even more. Whether the scammers are the same ones, or others who have bought the information on the dark web makes no difference to the victims.

**Avoid falling victim**

There are some pointers that may help you to fall victim to scammers such as these:

*   Stay on the platform of your choice. If someone contacts you and wants to continue the conversation elsewhere, that should be a red flag. We saw the same when we discussed scams on Airbnb: It is in the scammers’ interest that the fraud takes place on a platform under their control, where they can’t be as easily tracked.
*   Don’t click on links, downloads or attachments sent to you by strangers. Even if you have been in contact with someone for some time on the internet, they are still strangers. Sometimes they will get to the point fast, but in pig butchering scams for example, the contact can be ongoing for quite a while.
*   If you are contacted by someone and they come across as untrustworthy or suspicious, report them to the platform’s administrators. You may prevent others from falling victim to the scammers.
*   Don’t provide someone you have just met with personal details and information.
*   Monitor your credit card statements and bank accounts for irregularities and contact your bank if you see payments you don’t recognise.
*   Avoid websites that use scare tactics to trick you into registering for a service. At least do a background check to find out if they are legitimate and live up to their promises.
*   Consider identity monitoring. This alerts you if your personal information is found being traded illegally online, and helps you recover after.

**We don’t just report on threats – we help safeguard your entire digital identit**y

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Protect your—and your family’s—personal information by using identity protection

 FBI warns online daters to avoid &#8220;free&#8221; online verification schemes that prove costly 

Health insurance giant Kaiser has announced it will notify millions of patients that it shared their data with advertisers.

Health insurance giant Kaiser has announced it will notify millions of patients about a data breach after sharing patients’ data with advertisers.

Kaiser said that an investigation led to the discovery that “certain online technologies, previously installed on its websites and mobile applications, may have transmitted personal information to third-party vendors.”

In the required notice with the US government, Kaiser lists 13.4 million affected individuals. Among these third-party ad vendors are Google, Microsoft, and X. Kaiser said it subsequently removed the tracking code from its websites and mobile apps.

A tracking pixel is a piece of code that website owners can place on their website. The pixel collects data that helps businesses track people and target adverts at them. That’s nice for the advertisers, but the information gathered by these pixels tells them a lot about your browsing behavior, and a lot about you.

This kind of data leak normally happens when a website includes sensitive information in its URLs (web addresses). The URLs you visit are shared with the company that provides the tracking pixel, so if the URL contains sensitive information it will end up in the hands of the tracking company. The good news is that while it’s easy for websites to leak information like this, there is no suggestion that tracking pixel operators are aware of it, or acting on it, and it would probably be hugely impractical for them to do so.

The leaked data includes member names and IP addresses, as well as information that could indicate if members were signed into a Kaiser Permanente account or service, how they interacted with it, how they navigated through the website and mobile applications, and what search terms they used in the health encyclopedia.

A spokesperson said that Kaiser intends to begin notifying the affected current and former members and patients who accessed its websites and mobile apps in May.

Not so long ago, we reported how mental health company Cerebral failed to protect sensitive personal data, and ended up having to pay $7 million. Also due to tracking pixels, so this is a recurring problem we are likely to see lots more of. Research done by TheMarkup in June of 2022 showed that Meta’s pixel could be found on the websites of 33 of the top 100 hospitals in America.

Malwarebytes has a new free tool for you to check how much of your personal data has been exposed online. Submit your email address (it’s best to give the one you most frequently use) to our free Digital Footprint scan and we’ll give you a report and recommendations.

 Kaiser health insurance leaked patient data to advertisers 

A list of topics we covered in the week of April 22 to April 28 of 2024

April 29, 2024 - Health insurance giant Kaiser has announced it will notify millions of patients that it shared their data with advertisers.

April 24, 2024 - The US Senate has approved a bill that will ban TikTok, unless it finds a new owner, bringing it one step closer to being signed into law.

April 23, 2024 - UnitedHealth has made an announcement about the stolen data in the ransomware attack on subsidiary Change Healthcare.

April 22, 2024 - This week on the Lock and Code podcast, we speak with Justin Brookman about past consumer wins in the tech world, and how to avoid despair.

April 22, 2024 - An internet scraping platform is offering access to a database filled with over four billion Discord messages and combined user profiles.

 A week in security (April 22 &#8211; April 28) 

The FTC is paying Ring customers in the US a totoal of $5.6 million over charges that the company allowed employees to access private videos.

Amazon’s Ring has settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over charges that the company allowed employees and contractors to access customers’ private videos, and failed to implement security protections which enabled hackers to take control of customers’ accounts, cameras, and videos.

The FTC is now sending refunds totaling more than $5.6 million to US consumers as a result of the settlement.

Ring LLC, which was purchased by Amazon in February 2018, sells internet-connected, home security cameras and video doorbells.

However, in a shocking lapse of security protection, it turned out that every single person working for Amazon Ring, whether they were an employee or a contractor, was able to access every single customer video, even when it wasn’t necessary for their jobs.

But that wasn’t the only issue. In May 2023, the FTC stated that:

> “Ring deceived its customers by failing to restrict employees’ and contractors’ access to its customers’ videos, using its customer videos to train algorithms without consent, and failing to implement security safeguards. These practices led to egregious violations of users’ privacy.”

The FTC gave the example of one employee who, over several months, viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users of Ring cameras that were pointed at intimate spaces in their homes such as their bathrooms or bedrooms. This didn’t stop until another employee discovered the misconduct.

The FTC is now sending 117,044 PayPal payments to US customers who had certain types of Ring devices, such as indoor cameras, during periods when the FTC alleges unauthorized users may have had access to customer videos. Customers should redeem their PayPal payment within 30 days.

“The FTC identified eligible Ring customers based on data provided by the company,” the agency told BleepingComputer, clarifying that Ring users “were eligible for a payment if their account was vulnerable because of privacy and security problems alleged in the complaint.”

Consumers who have questions about their payment should contact the refund administrator, Rust Consulting, Inc., at 1-833-637-4884, or visit the FTC website to view frequently asked questions about the refund process.

**Beware of scammers**

As always, you can expect scammers to take advantage of this news. So, it’s important to know that the FTC never asks people to pay money or provide account information to get a refund.

A payment or claim form sent as part of an FTC settlement will include an explanation of, and details about, the case. The case will be listed at ftc.gov/refunds, along with the name of the company issuing payments and a phone number for questions.

The FTC only works with four private companies to handle the refund process:

*   Analytics Consulting, LLC
*   Epiq Systems
*   JND Legal Administration
*   Rust Consulting, Inc.

Before sending any PayPal payment, the FTC will send an email from the subscribe@subscribe.ftc.gov address to issue a payment recipient. Once payments have been issued, PayPal will send an email telling recipients about their refund.

**We don’t just report on threats – we help safeguard your entire digital identit**y

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Protect your—and your family’s—personal information by using identity protection

 Ring agrees to pay $5.6 million after cameras were used to spy on customers 

The US Senate has approved a bill that will ban TikTok, unless it finds a new owner, bringing it one step closer to being signed into law.

The US Senate has approved a bill that would effectively ban TikTok from the US unless Chinese owner ByteDance gives up its share of the immensely popular app.

Social video platform TikTok has experienced explosive growth since it first appeared in 2017, and is now said to have well over 1.5 billion users, with an estimated 170 million of them in the US.

Essentially, the bill says that TikTok has to find a new owner that is not based in a foreign adversarial country within the next 180 days or face a ban until it does comply. President Biden has committed to sign it into law as soon as it reaches his desk.

Since 2020, several governments and organizations have banned, or considered banning, TikTok from their staff’s devices, but a complete ban of an internet app would be a first in the US.

For a long time now, TikTok has been battling to convince politicians that it operates independently of ByteDance, which allegedly has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For example, TikTok has repeatedly claimed the Chinese government has never demanded access to US data and that TikTok would not comply if it did.

While ByteDance denies any direct links to the Chinese Communist Party, a former executive at TikTok’s parent company claimed in court documents that the CCP had access to TikTok data, despite US storage of the data. The allegations came up in a wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed in May of 2023 in the San Francisco Superior Court.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an international non-profit digital rights group based in the US, says it opposes this bill, mainly because it is afraid that TikTok will not be the last app to face this type of ban.

TikTok also encouraged its users and creators to express their opposition to the bill. Last week, the social media company said the bill would:

> “Trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate seven million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the US economy, annually.”

Chinese officials reportedly said the government would “firmly oppose” any forced sale of TikTok because it would “seriously undermine the confidence of investors from various countries, including China, to invest in the United States.”

Malwarebytes has a new free tool for you to check how much of your personal data has been exposed online. Submit your email address (it’s best to give the one you most frequently use) to our free Digital Footprint scan and we’ll give you a report and recommendations.

 TikTok comes one step closer to a US ban 

Beware of this malicious ad campaign currently making the rounds. Read our blog for more details and how to protect yourself.

Today, we are looking at a malicious ad campaign targeting Facebook users via Google search. It is well-known that tech support scammers attract new victims by buying ads for certain keywords related to their audience.

What is perhaps less known is how it is even possible to impersonate top brands and get away with it. We will try to respond to the ‘how they do it’ and the ‘why is Google allowing this’ questions.

Such malvertising attacks are not new and the damage they cause to consumers is growing every day. There is no one way to stop all of them, but public reporting will hopefully drive the point home that this needs to be addressed just like other types of fraud or malware.

We have reported the malicious advertiser to Google, but at the time of publishing this campaign was still on.

Justin Poliachik did what many people would do, he opened up a Google search, typed facebook and clicked on the top result. In the video below, he summarizes what happened next:

Thanks to Justin for the shoutout to our blog and explaining what went down! Not sure if Justin was joking, but we don’t believe AI is going to fix malvertising, at least not for the next little while. Instead, we are going to look into more details about one particular technique. In our view, this is actually where the abuse happens the most, and where things could be improved.

**Two paths make cloaking**

As we said, Google seems to have a problem with brand impersonation that may not be easy to solve. We have reported such cases several times before with pretty much the same techniques.

How can Google differentiate a legitimate affiliate from a malicious actor? There are a number of data points about the advertiser via their account: user profile, payment method, budget, etc. We are not privy to those details, but they can certainly help when it comes to fraud.

More importantly, there is the ad itself: vanity URL, display text, tracking template, final URL. What happens when you click on the ad? Are you actually redirected to the URL claimed in the ad? This is a feature that appears to be so easy to abuse, and yet remains unfixed.

In the video below, we walk you through the classic tale of cloaking:

Cloaking is an old technique and in many ways can be used for legitimate purposes. After all, one needs to be able to detect real humans and not bots or crawlers for their hard-earned ad dollars budget.

Threat actors have long identified such services as very helpful tools for their malicious campaigns. True, they, like others don’t want robots, but they also don’t want Google’s scanners or security researchers to expose their malicious schemes.

**Under the hood**

This part is a little more technical, but integral in understanding how malvertising works. As mentioned in the video above, cloaking allows to deliver two different experiences. Genuine humans can be detected from a number of factors: IP address, browser fingerprinting, etc.

A click tracking service can be used to analyze traffic, collect data, etc. All in all, such services are useful in and of themselves, but they can also easily be abused by bad actors. Within the Google ad ecosystem, advertisers will place their URL as a tracking template, and the rest will be handled outside of Google.

One thing that’s interesting is how scammers will abuse the click tracking service as well! All they have to do is redirect to another “legitimate” domain they control and from there decide on the final destination URL.

We can see in the image below that final redirect, which is either the scam page or the actual Facebook site:

**Safeguarding your online experience**

We have seen these malicious ads for years and years. It would be unfair to say that no action has ever been taken, but there is room for improvement. Individual reports from victims are not always actioned based on our experience and that of others. This is frustrating because it appears as if those individual experiences do not matter in the grander scheme of things.

Security vendors also struggle with these scams. Chasing infrastructure from one host to the next or having trouble blocking URLs that abuse legitimate providers is a real thing.

As a user you can protect yourself in various ways:

*   Beware of sponsored results
*   Block ads altogether
*   Recognize scam pages as fake

If you want the piece of mind and have all this covered for you, download our Malwarebytes Browser Guard extension available for different browsers.

 Google ad for Facebook redirects to scam 

UnitedHealth has made an announcement about the stolen data in the ransomware attack on subsidiary Change Healthcare.

UnitedHealth Group has given an update on the February cyberattack on Change Healthcare, one of its subsidiaries. In the update, the company revealed the scale of the breach, saying:

> “Based on initial targeted data sampling to date, the company has found files containing protected health information (PHI) or personally identifiable information (PII), which could cover a substantial proportion of people in America.”

UnitedHealth also announced support for affected people.

On Wednesday February 21, 2024, Change Healthcare experienced serious system outages due to the cyberattack. The incident led to widespread billing outages, as well as disruptions at pharmacies across the United States.

The attack on Change Healthcare, which processes about 50% of US medical claims, was one of the worst ransomware attacks against American healthcare and caused widespread disruption in payments to doctors and health facilities.

Despite the ongoing investigation, which expectedly will take several more months of detailed analysis, UnitedHealth said it had decided to immediately provide support. The company says it continues to monitor the regular web and the dark web for any published data.

The chief executive of UnitedHealth Group, Andrew Witty, is expected to testify in Congress in May about the matter. Meanwhile the company says it has made strong progress restoring services impacted by the event and is prioritizing the restoration of services that impact patient access to care or medication.

Affected people can visit a dedicated website at changecybersupport.com to get more information, or call 1-866-262-5342 to set up free credit monitoring and identity theft protection.

**Protecting yourself from a data breach**

There are some actions you can take if you are, or suspect you may have been, the victim of a data breach.

*   **Check the vendor’s advice.** Every breach is different, so check with the vendor to find out what’s happened, and follow any specific advice they offer.
*   **Change your password.** You can make a stolen password useless to thieves by changing it. Choose a strong password that you don’t use for anything else. Better yet, let a password manager choose one for you.
*   **Enable two-factor authentication (2FA).** If you can, use a FIDO2-compliant hardware key, laptop or phone as your second factor. Some forms of two-factor authentication (2FA) can be phished just as easily as a password. 2FA that relies on a FIDO2 device can’t be phished.
*   **Watch out for fake vendors.** The thieves may contact you posing as the vendor. Check the vendor website to see if they are contacting victims, and verify any contacts using a different communication channel.
*   **Take your time.** Phishing attacks often impersonate people or brands you know, and use themes that require urgent attention, such as missed deliveries, account suspensions, and security alerts.
*   **Set up identity monitoring.** Identity monitoring alerts you if your personal information is found being traded illegally online, and helps you recover after.

Malwarebytes has a new free tool for you to check how much of your personal data has been exposed online. Submit your email address (it’s best to give the one you most frequently use) to our free Digital Footprint scan and we’ll give you a report and recommendations.

**We don’t just report on threats – we help safeguard your entire digital identit**y

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Protect your—and your family’s—personal information by using identity protection

 &#8220;Substantial proportion&#8221; of Americans may have had health and personal data stolen in Change Healthcare breach 

This week on the Lock and Code podcast, we speak with Justin Brookman about past consumer wins in the tech world, and how to avoid despair.

_This week on the Lock and Code podcast…_

Our Lock and Code host, David Ruiz, has a bit of an apology to make:

> “Sorry for all the depressing episodes.”

When the Lock and Code podcast explored online harassment and abuse this year, our guest provided several guidelines and tips for individuals to lock down their accounts and remove their sensitive information from the internet, but larger problems remained. Content moderation is failing nearly everywhere, and data protection laws are unequal across the world.

When we told the true tale of a virtual kidnapping scam in Utah, though the teenaged victim at the center of the scam was eventually found, his family still lost nearly $80,000.

And when we asked Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included team about what types of information modern cars can collect about their owners, we were entirely blindsided by the policies from Nissan and Kia, which claimed the companies can collect data about their customers’ “sexual activity” and “sex life.”

(Let’s also not forget about that Roomba that took a photo of someone on a toilet and how that photo ended up on Facebook.)

In looking at these stories collectively, it can feel like the everyday consumer is hopelessly outmatched against modern companies. What good does it do to utilize personal cybersecurity best practices, when the companies we rely on can still leak our most sensitive information and suffer few consequences? What’s the point of using a privacy-forward browser to better obscure my online behavior from advertisers when the machinery that powers the internet finds new ways to surveil our every move?

These are entirely relatable, if fatalistic, feelings. But we are here to tell you that nihilism is not the answer.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast, we speak with Justin Brookman, director of technology policy at Consumer Reports, about some of the most recent, major consumer wins in the tech world, what it took to achieve those wins, and what levers consumers can pull on today to have their voices heard.

Brookman also speaks candidly about the shifting priorities in today’s legislative landscape.

> “One thing we did make the decision about is to focus less on Congress because, man, I’ll meet with those folks so we can work on bills, \[and\] there’ll be a big hearing, but they’ve just failed to do so much.”

Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.

_Show notes and credits:_

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License  
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/  
Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

**Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn’t just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.**

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

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