Checklist 218: Reading the Privacy Nutrition Labels

Privacy Labels have landed in the App Store for a number of apps. We’ll cover what those are, what they cover, why some apps don’t have them, and what you can do with the information on them.

Hacker breaches water treatment plant in Florida, tampers with chemical safety...

Last week, someone breached the computer system of a water treatment plant in Florida. According to public officials, the hacker tampered with critical safety settings, making changes that could have released toxic chemicals into the water supply.

The Oldsmar water treatment plant hack

The incident occured in the city of Oldsmar, Florida, a small municipality (pop. 14,000) just outside of Tampa. According to a press release issued by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, an unidentified hacker accessed the City of Oldsmar’s computer system twice on February 5.

The first intrusion was brief, and …

How to avoid Valentine’s Day romance scams

Valentine’s Day 2021 is right around the corner, and the FBI is telling people to be on the lookout for romance scams. In this article, we’ll tell you what romance scams are, how they work, and how you can avoid them.

What are romance scams?

Romance scams are a kind of social engineering. In a romance scam, the scammer pretends to be romantically interested in their victim in order to gain their affection and trust. They then use the relationship to ask for money or personal information. In some romance scams, an …

Checklist 217: The State of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency

We’ll look at Apple’s App Tracking Transparency push, as well as its war of words with Facebook this week.

How to set up a new iPhone in 2021 running iOS 14

A new iPhone is a ton of fun — but once you have your shiny new device up and running, you should also take a few minutes to configure it for security, privacy, and performance.

Apple releases macOS Big Sur 11.2

Apple has just released macOS Big Sur 11.2 along with the related Security Update 2021-001 Catalina and Security Update 2021-001 Mojave.

Checklist 216: Zooming into 2021

This week on the Checklist, iMore’s Stephen Warwick joins us to discuss all things Zoom.

Critical security updates for iOS, iPadOS, and more

Apple has just released an important round of updates. The TL;DR is that the iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS updates address vulnerabilities that are under active exploitation (according to reports). If you have a device running any of these operating systems, you should update immediately.

In the following article, we’ll give you some additional information about the security content of these updates:

iOS and iPadOS

Apple has just released iOS 14.4 and iPadOS 14.4. The updates address two separate security issues. 

First, the updates contain a fix for a kernel vulnerability. The “kernel” is …

How to set up a new Mac in 2021 running Big Sur

Macs work great right out of the box, but unfortunately, that leads some users to skip over important setup steps — steps that can make them safer.

Checklist 215: Seriously Locking Down Your iPhone

We’ll look at various states of data, what we have to worry about, and what we can do to mitigate that worry. Plus – A followup to Apple flouting the firewall.

What’s up with WhatsApp?

WhatsApp has been in the news a lot over the past week, with critics alleging that the popular Facebook-owned messaging app has become a threat to user privacy.

7 COVID-19 vaccine scams to watch out for

The COVID-19 vaccines are here, but there have been serious issues with availability and distribution. Sadly, the bad guys are taking advantage of the situation — and of people’s anxieties — with new COVID-19 vaccine scams. 

Here’s what to watch out for, and how to stay safe:

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Checklist 214: Five Big Mac Malware Stories from 2020

With a new year just underway, we thought we’d look back at five big Mac malware stories for 2020. We’ll talk about FinSpy, GravityRAT, XCSSET, ThiefQuest, and Shlayer.

How to uninstall Adobe Flash on your Mac

Adobe Flash reached its end-of-life (EOL) on December 31, 2020, and as of January 12, 2021, any remaining Flash Player installations will be blocked from playing content.

Checklist 213: New Year Security Resolutions

It’s the perfect time to make positive changes, so this week we’re bringing you two cybersecurity-themed New Year’s resolutions that will help keep you safe through 2021 and beyond.

Mac Malware in 2020

We’ll look back at 5 of the most significant Mac malware finds of 2020.

The 10 biggest Apple news stories of 2020

In something of a reversal of the general trend for last year, a lot of that Apple news was actually good news as well!

Checklist 212: The Hacky Holidays Special

Voices of Checklists passed tell us about their favorite hacker movies, including Hackers, WarGames, Sneakers, and Superman III. What did they get right? What did they get wrong? And what can we learn from them? Snuggle up for The Hacky Holidays Special.

Zero-click iMessage exploit used to hack journalists

Security researchers have uncovered a surveillance campaign aimed at journalists in the Middle East, claiming that a zero-click iMessage exploit was used to hack their iPhones.stock

SolarWinds hack impacts U.S. government and military, exposes most of Fortune...

In mid-December, security analysts announced a serious data breach at two U.S. government departments. The SolarWinds hack has turned out to be one of the most far-reaching and sophisticated cyberattacks ever carried out against the U.S. government — the full impact of which now appears to go well beyond what was initially suspected.

In the past few days, we’ve learned more about the incident, including the scope, the attack vector, and the likely culprits. In what follows, we’ll try to answer some of the most common questions that people have been …