We do a show on Facebook every week in our Naked Security Live video series, where we discuss one of the big security concerns of the week.
We’d love you to join in if you can – just keep an eye on the @NakedSecurity Twitter feed or check our Facebook page on Fridays to find out the time. (Note that you don’t need a Facebook account to watch our live streams, although you will need to login if you want to ask questions or post comments.)
It’s usually somewhere between 18:00 and 19:00 UK time, which is early afternoon/late morning on the East/West coast of North America.
For those of you who [a] don’t use Facebook, [b] had buffering problems while we were live, [c] would like subtitles, or [d] simply want to catch up later, we also upload the recorded videos to our YouTube channel.
Here’s last week’s video, where we dissect what we’ve dubbed “clickless phishing”, where the crooks bring a phoney webpage along with them in their phishing emails instead of giving you a link to click.
That means there’s no unusual or obviously bogus domain name to click through to, and no weirdly-issued web security certificate to stand out, and therefore fewer clues to give the crooks away.
Learn more:
(Watch directly on YouTube if the video won’t play here.)
Thanks for watching… hope to see you online later this week!
Gavin Neville
Great webcast! Love Paul’s enthusiasm and the way that he explains technical stuff into language that everyone can understand. Why doesn’t the UK have their own CyberSecurity Month? Surely this is a trick that the NCSC is missing out on? The US content is great but it invariably references US law enforcement agencies and organisations on their awareness material that doesn’t mean much to a UK audience. Oh, and don’t get me started on their spelling and ubiquity of the phrase ‘often-times’!
Paul Ducklin
Thanks for your kind words.
The UK often does promote CSAM, using the very words “Cybersecurity Awareness Month”. There doesn’t seem to be any explicit promotion of it by any part of the public service this year – and I can see why, given all the other issues and messages that Her Majesty’s Government is trying to wrangle right now. (That’s all I’m saying :-)
As for the US messaging – I think it’s fair to say that if you ignore the specifics that obviously don’t apply, e.g. websites for US-only reporting to law enforcement, then an awful lot of the scams and criminality we’re seeing is similar across the world, albeit with tweaks in content for local language and branding.
And as for “oftentimes”… I think you have admit that is is a splendid sounding word and that it is utterly obvious what it means. I suspect – any linguists around? – that the word oftentimes was once common in British English but has died out here, so you could choose to praise American English here for retaining a bit of tradition. (Like the word “fall”, which is an obvious metaphor for autumn – indeed, the UK National Rail Network officially recognises “leaf fall season” and authorises timetable changes to take it into account – yet has all but vanished now in British and Commonwealth usage.)
Steve
Hmm. I am an American in the upper half of my seventh decade, have traveled a fair bit in my time, and have always been a rather voracious reader. Yet if I were asked, I would be more inclined to say that “oftentimes” (with or without the hyphen) might be a British thing more than American. I just don’t see it or hear it used much at all in my homeland.
Paul Ducklin
Oftentimes does sound a bit archaic, but it’s almost impossible to misunderstand it :-)
The only American/Commonwealth word mixups that I have ever struggled with or been confused by are restroom (I saw a sign for one after my first very long-distance trip to LAX, where I had to layover for a few hours and thought, “Ooh, I could do with a quick nap”, got a surprise when I went in) versus toilet, and sidewalk versus pavement. The UK Highway Code explicitly reminds road users that “cars may not drive across the pavement except where there is a drop kerb for a driveway”, because our pavement is your sidewalk and your pavement is our road. I figured this out when I saw a sign in Maine saying VEHICLES MUST ONLY BE DRIVEN ON THE PAVEMENT, which had been put up to discourage people from taking shortcuts on the sidewalk. (Technically, I think our sidewalk is supposed to be called “the footway”, and our pavement is “the highway”, and that is how legal notices and signs often refer to them, but everyone calls them pavements and roads.)
Oh, and you guys have a fuel that has the nickname gas even though it is shipped, stored and burned as a liquid. What do you call the household fuel that is burned as a gas? (We call them petrol and gas repsectively, where gas is not short for gasoline but simply means, “it’s a gas”, probably came from the North Sea, and is mostly methane AFAIK.)
Steven
Great webcast love Paul’s enthusiasm and that he explains technical things into language that I can understand. Watchout for the scam on Facebook where someone is giving money away or click on an ads upper right side a.picture of someone and a virus scanner popup appears