Will Simonds

Tax-Day 2020 Reality-Check: Will filing your taxes online share your personal info with data brokers?

Will Simonds

Are you planning on filing your taxes online? Complaints about the tax-prep industry have existed for decades. For years they’ve lobbied successfully against development of direct electronic tax-return filing, or ‘return-free filing’-processes, either of which could potentially decimate their industry.  The average person’s IRS returns are simply not that complicated, yet millions of people still […]

SCOTUS Robocall Ruling: Challenge to 1991 TCPA Averted

Will Simonds

On Monday, July 6th, 2020, the Supreme Court upheld and strengthened a pre-existing 1991 Robocall Ruling, banning Robocalls on cell phones. The challenge to the law was made by political-consultant organizations who noted that the law contained an unconstitutional exception for government debt collection, while continuing to ban other forms of speech (e.g. like polling, […]

An Updated Look at Robocall Statistics

Will Simonds

There has been a lot in the news lately about the rapid growth and changing nature of malicious phone-scams, including both automated Robocallers as well as live phone-scammers. If you have to personally block every unwanted call, you’ve already lost, right? Between 2017 and 2019, growth in unwanted harassing calls effectively doubled, and consumer complaints […]

How to Deal with Online Shaming and Harassment

Will Simonds

Have you spent any time at all on social media sites, in chat rooms, comment threads, discussion sites, or anywhere else that people congregate online? If so, there’s a good chance you’ve been subjected to some degree of online harassment, shaming, or cyberbullying. In this post, we’ll share some tips about how to deal with […]

The Most Useful Web Services to Optimize Your Privacy Online

Will Simonds

There’s something to be said for fighting fire with fire, especially when you don’t have any other choice. In this case, the fire being fought is the compromising of your personal information on the internet. Of course, there’s a (sort of) surefire way to ensure that your private information isn’t tracked, collected, bought, sold, and […]

Cyberstalking: How to Avoid Being Stalked Online

Will Simonds

Stalking is one of the most distressing, frustrating, frightening, insidious, and potentially dangerous crimes there is. Unfortunately, one of the downsides of the Age of Information is that the internet has made stalking far easier and often less risky for the stalker. People now have access to far more personal information, and far more convenient […]

What Is Doxing and How to Avoid It

Will Simonds

It’s hard to describe to members of the pre-internet generation how different life was before the World Wide Web changed everything. The ease of use and ubiquity of search engines alone represents an indescribable paradigm shift from a time when information on virtually anything you wanted to know about was at your fingertips.  Unfortunately, as […]

Common Types of Cyberattacks and How to Avoid Them

Will Simonds

There are a few common types of cyberattacks. Cybercrime is proving an increasingly costly drain on the global economy. Research indicates that cyberattacks could cost companies globally about $5.2 trillion over the next five years—that’s more than a trillion dollars a year. Unfortunately, when there’s that much money at stake, there’s going to be a […]

How To Keep Your Personal Information Private When Using Social Media

Will Simonds

There are likely millions of people who practice safe, common sense, shrewd personal security: We never use “password” for our password, we only use secure websites for purchases, and we don’t click on strange links. Perhaps we even take advantage of data broker opt-outs and remove personal information from Google. Subsequently, we then log into […]

How to Protect Yourself From Identity Theft

Will Simonds

It’s undoubtedly no surprise to anyone reading this, but identity theft is still a huge problem. It victimizes millions of people a year and takes a good amount of time and money to clear up. Collectively, identity theft costs both consumers and businesses billions. That means it’s in everyone’s best interest to learn how to […]