Latest news with #TeresaMurray
Time of India
31-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Urgent alert for Americans as 184 million passwords leak in major data breach - what you must do now
A big password leak exposed 184 million records from major sites like Google and Apple. Experts say this is very risky and can lead to hacking or fraud. Users are urged to change passwords, use two-factor login, and freeze their credit for safety. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads FAQs A cybersecurity expert named Jeremiah Fowler found a huge online database that was not protected. This database had over 184 million records, including emails, passwords, and login links, all in plain text. The leaked info is linked to big companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and even banks and government services, according to the report by said this leak is more dangerous than usual because it gives direct access to people's accounts. He called it a "cybercriminal's dream working list". This leak can cause identity theft, fraud, and hacking if people don't act, according to 2023, data breaches increased by 72%, even though about 353 million were affected. But in 2024, even though the number of breaches stayed high, the number of people affected jumped by 312%. This was because of mega-breaches like this companies are now using cloud services like AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure to save money, but this also increases the risk of hacking. An IBM report said 82% of breaches last year involved cloud-stored data, as per Wall Street Journal support agents at the crypto exchange app Coinbase were allegedly bribed by hackers on May 11 for getting access to the app's customer database. Coinbase didn't pay ransom, but the damage could still cost them up to $400 your passwords immediately. Each account should have a unique password and should consist of as many keypad characters as possible to maintain its strength. Don't reuse the same or similar passwords on multiple websites. Use multi-factor authentication wherever possible. This adds an extra safety layer. Freeze your credit with the 3 major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. It won't hurt your score but stops new accounts being opened in your name, as per the report by tools like Google's Password Checkup to see if your login info has already been leaked. If it has, change those passwords now. Set up transaction alerts on your credit cards to catch any weird activity early. Make sure your email and phone number linked to your bank and shopping accounts are up to date, so you get alerts quickly. Teresa Murray summed it up best, 'This is a wake-up call for people who haven't been careful online', as per passwords, and login links from many big platforms were your passwords, turn on two-factor login, and freeze your credit if needed.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Yahoo
These airlines had the most and least passenger complaints in 2024
Flying can be a hassle even under the best of circumstances. When trips are marred by delays, cancellations and mishandled luggage, air travel can become a nightmare. In 2024, customers lodged a record 66,675 complaints against U.S. airlines, according to a new report from the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, a consumer advocacy group, based on data from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Passenger complaints have surged since the pandemic, rising every year since 2021, according to PIRG. "When you file a complaint, the DOT asks if you talked to airline, so it's not like the DOT complaint line is your first stop," U.S. PIRG consumer watchdog director Teresa Murray told CBS MoneyWatch. "When people try to get their money back and the airline hasn't done it, that's when people file complaints." For example, some customers sought refunds they were due related to flight cancellations or delays, while others sought reimbursement they were owed for lost or damaged piece of luggage. Airlines now face added pressure under new rules adopted in 2024 that require them to provide automatic refunds to customers when their flights are canceled or significantly delayed. Pandemic impact Prior to 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in the U.S., annual complaints against all airlines hovered below 20,000. That year, they jumped to more than 102,000 during what was a catastrophic period for air carriers, given travel restrictions and plummeting demand for flying. Airlines struggled to ramp capacity back up in 2021 and 2022, resulting in plenty of cancellations and delays. At the top 10 U.S. airlines, cancellations rose from 1.28% of flights in 2023 to 1.36% last year, resulting in a total of 102,908 canceled flights in 2024, according to the report. Delays also worsened, with 78.1% of flights arriving on time last year, down from 78.3% in 2023. In total, roughly 1.7 million flights were either delayed or canceled in 2024. Nationwide air traffic controller shortages could lead to more snarls in schedules for the remainder of 2025, PIRG said. One relative bright spot in the report: Airlines mishandled fewer bags and wheelchairs in 2024 compared to the previous year. While that showed some modest improvement, 2.7 million bags were still lost or damaged, as were 11,357 wheelchairs and scooters. The carrier with the highest rate of complaints per 100,000 passengers: Frontier Airlines, which had the worst cancellation record, worst record for on-time arrivals and worst record for involuntary bumping, PIRG found. It ranked second-worst for the share of wheelchairs that it mishandled. "That's a lot of worsts," Murray said. These were the best- and worst-performing airlines last year in terms of passenger complaints, flight cancellations and delays, and other metrics, according to PIRG. Overall complaints Best airlines Southwest (1.5 complaint per 100,000 passengers) Alaska (2.6 per 100,000 passengers) Hawaiian (3.8 per 100,000 passengers) Worst airlines Frontier (23.3 complaints per 100,000 passengers)Spirit (12.8 per 100,000 passengers) JetBlue (10.4 per 100,000 passengers) Flight cancellations Best airlines Southwest (0.83% of flights canceled)Hawaiian (1.05% canceled)Delta (1.09% canceled) Worst airlines Frontier (2.32% of flights canceled)Spirit (1.91% canceled)United (1.74% canceled) Delays Best airlines Hawaiian (16.42% of flights delayed)Delta (17.98% delayed)United (20.86% delayed) Worst airlines Frontier (30.5% of flights delayed)JetBlue (26.94% delayed)Spirit (25.52% delayed) Mishandled bags Best airlines Allegiant (0.2%)JetBlue (0.35%)Frontier (0.4%) Worst airlines American (0.79%)United (0.66%)Alaska (0.58%) Mishandled wheelchairs Best airlines Delta (0.63%) Allegiant (0.75%)United (0.97%) Worst airlines Spirit (2.07%)Frontier (1.76%)American (1.63%) Involuntary bumping Best airlines Allegiant (0 per 10,000 passengers)Delta (0 per 10,000 passengers)United (0.03 per 10,000 passengers) Worst airlines Frontier (2.25 per 10,000 passengers)American (0.67 per 10,000 passengers)Spirit (0.48 per 10,000 passengers) Sneak peek: Fatal First Date Trump teases "good news" on Russia-Ukraine war Arrests by masked federal agents are "slippery slope," former DHS attorney warns
CBS News
15-05-2025
- CBS News
These airlines had the most and least passenger complaints in 2024
Flying can be a hassle even under the best of circumstances. When trips are marred by delays, cancellations and mishandled luggage, air travel can become a nightmare. In 2024, customers lodged a record 66,675 complaints against U.S. airlines, according to a new report from the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, a consumer advocacy group, based on data from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Passenger complaints have surged since the pandemic, rising every year since 2021, according to PIRG. "When you file a complaint, the DOT asks if you talked to airline, so it's not like the DOT complaint line is your first stop," U.S. PIRG consumer watchdog director Teresa Murray told CBS MoneyWatch. "When people try to get their money back and the airline hasn't done it, that's when people file complaints." For example, some customers sought refunds they were due related to flight cancellations or delays, while others sought reimbursement they were owed for lost or damaged piece of luggage. Airlines now face added pressure under new rules adopted in 2024 that require them to provide automatic refunds to customers when their flights are canceled or significantly delayed. Pandemic impacft Prior to 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in the U.S., annual complaints against all airlines hovered below 20,000. That year, they jumped to more than 102,000 during what was a catastrophic period for air carriers, given travel restrictions and plummeting demand for flying. Airlines struggled to ramp capacity back up in 2021 and 2022, resulting in plenty of cancellations and delays. At the top 10 U.S. airlines, cancellations rose from 1.28% of flights in 2023 to 1.36% last year, resulting in a total of 102,908 canceled flights in 2024, according to the report. Delays also worsened, with 78.1% of flights arriving on time last year, down from 78.3% in 2023. In total, roughly 1.7 million flights were either delayed or canceled in 2024. Nationwide air traffic controller shortages could lead to more snarls in schedules for the remainder of 2025, PIRG said. One relative bright spot in the report: Airlines mishandled fewer bags and wheelchairs in 2024 compared to the previous year. While that showed some modest improvement, 2.7 million bags were still lost or damaged, as were 11,357 wheelchairs and scooters. The carrier with the highest rate of complaints per 100,000 passengers: Frontier Airlines, which had the worst cancellation record, worst record for on-time arrivals and worst record for involuntary bumping, PIRG found. It ranked second-worst for the share of wheelchairs that it mishandled. "That's a lot of worsts," Murray said. These were the best- and worst-performing airlines last year in terms of passenger complaints, flight cancellations and delays, and other metrics, according to PIRG. Overall complaints Best airlines Southwest (1.5 complaint per 100,000 passengers) Alaska (2.6 per 100,000 passengers) Hawaiian (3.8 per 100,000 passengers) Worst airlines Frontier (23.3 complaints per 100,000 passengers) Spirit (12.8 per 100,000 passengers) JetBlue (10.4 per 100,000 passengers) Flight cancellations Best airlines Southwest (0.83% of flights canceled) Hawaiian (1.05% canceled) Delta (1.09% canceled) Worst airlines Frontier (2.32% of flights canceled) Spirit (1.91% canceled) United (1.74% canceled) Delays Best airlines Hawaiian (16.42% of flights delayed) Delta (17.98% delayed) United (20.86% delayed) Worst airlines Frontier (30.5% of flights delayed) JetBlue (26.94% delayed) Spirit (25.52% delayed) Mishandled bags Best airlines Allegiant (0.2%) JetBlue (0.35%) Frontier (0.4%) Worst airlines American (0.79%) United (0.66%) Alaska (0.58%) Mishandled wheelchairs Best airlines Delta (0.63%) Allegiant (0.75%) United (0.97%) Worst airlines Spirit (2.07%) Frontier (1.76%) American (1.63%) Involuntary bumping Best airlines Allegiant (0 per 10,000 passengers) Delta (0 per 10,000 passengers) United (0.03 per 10,000 passengers) Worst airlines Frontier (2.25 per 10,000 passengers) American (0.67 per 10,000 passengers) Spirit (0.48 per 10,000 passengers)
Fox News
24-02-2025
- Health
- Fox News
Fewer food recalls yet more Americans sickened in 2024 than previous year, says new report
More Americans were sickened by contaminated food in 2024 than the previous year and the number of people who were hospitalized or died more than doubled, a new study has revealed. The analysis, published this month by the Colorado-based U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund, shows that hospitalizations and deaths from contaminated food increased last year compared to 2023. In all, the United States had 296 food recall announcements in 2024, which is a 5% decrease from 2023, the U.S. PIRG Education Fund's analysis shows. Despite an overall decrease in recalls, though, more people were sickened by food-borne outbreaks in 2024, the data indicates. "It's an indication that a lot of food was a lot more contaminated with higher concentrations of bacteria," Teresa Murray, director of the U.S. PIRG's consumer watchdog office, told Fox News Digital. The biggest threats stemmed from E. coli, listeria and salmonella. Overall, contaminated food was linked to 1,392 total illnesses in 2024 – that's 274 more than the 1,118 sickened in 2023, according to the report. Hospitalizations more than doubled from 230 in 2023 to 487 in 2024, as did reported deaths — from eight in 2023 to 19 in 2024, the analysis stated. Deaths in 2024 were associated with deli meat, cucumbers, onions, carrots, soft cheese, chocolate snacks with mushrooms, and ready-to-eat meat and poultry, according to the data. There were notably more high-profile recalls in 2024. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which regulates meat, poultry and some fish and egg products, tallied 55 recalls in 2024 – a decline of 38% from 2023, the analysis stated. Another 241 food and beverage recalls and alerts were issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2024 – an increase of 8% from the year before, the data shows. Notably, there were more high-profile recalls in 2024, including McDonald's and Boar's Head. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in November that slivered onions served on McDonald's Quarter Pounder hamburgers were the probable source of an E. coli outbreak that prompted the fast-food restaurant chain to temporarily stop selling the menu item. That was the same month that SunFed Produce recalled all sizes of its whole fresh American cucumbers and Costco recalled more than 10,000 cartons of Kirkland Signature eggs amid salmonella concerns. Two months earlier, a listeria outbreak among certain Boar's Head deli meats led to the discontinuation of liverwurst from its lineup of cold cuts. The outbreak was later linked to a Boar's Head facility in Virginia. All but one of the 13 outbreaks in 2024 involved E. coli, listeria or salmonella, the U.S. PIRG Education Fund's data revealed. One factor that Murray believes contributed to the increased hospitalizations and deaths were the "time lags that we saw last year, in many cases, between when the first illnesses occurred and then when the recalls were announced." Murray said she's hopeful the FDA and USDA can "create a format where somebody could get customized alerts" to their cellphones or emails. Currently, anyone can sign up for every recall that is announced, but Murray said it creates "recall fatigue." A customized recall notification system specific to a person's individual region or concerns, Murray said, might help others "actually take control of the information that they're getting and pay more attention to it."
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Food recalls in the US were more widespread – and deadly
Contaminated food is causing a growing number of illnesses in the United States, and severe cases that lead to hospitalization or death are becoming more common. There were about 300 food recalls in 2024, associated with nearly 1,400 illnesses, according to a report published last week by the Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit focused on consumer protection. There were 487 people who were sick enough to be hospitalized and 19 who died from an illness related to contaminated food, double the number of hospitalizations and deaths in 2023. Overall, the total number of recalls under the US Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture in 2024 ticked down compared with 2023. There was an 8% increase in recalls under the FDA, which regulates more than three-quarters of the nation's food supply, but there was a 38% drop in the number of recalls under the USDA, which regulates meat, poultry and some fish and egg products. But the number of food recalls isn't the best gauge of the safety of the US food supply, said Teresa Murray, director of the consumer watchdog program with the Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG. More recalls could indicate more proactive testing by state and federal regulators, for example, and many recalls are caught before anyone gets sick, she said. 'Most years, the number of recalls doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the safety of food,' Murray said. 'But it's absolutely significant that the number of hospitalizations and deaths doubled from the previous year,' she said. 'That seems to indicate that the food that was out there was perhaps more contaminated, sometimes with higher concentrations of bacteria to drive people to the hospital.' In fact, nearly all illnesses last year were associated with just 13 outbreaks, according to the recent report. Many involved familiar brands, such as the E. coli contamination of onions used in McDonald's Quarter Pounder sandwiches, which led to 104 illnesses, 34 hospitalizations and one death. The Listeria contamination of Boar's Head deli meats led to 61 illnesses, 60 hospitalizations and 10 deaths. Contaminated meat and eggs caused more than a quarter of all hospitalizations associated with food recalls in 2024, the analysis found, but produce was the top culprit. Cucumbers alone led to more than a third of all hospitalizations, most tied to a Salmonella outbreak in June, followed by onions and carrots. 'It's the things that we don't cook that tend to be the biggest problems,' Murray said. Cooking can often kill bacteria that causes illness, but it sits on raw food and can multiply if not managed properly, she said. In 2024, recalls from Salmonella, Listeria and E. coli jumped more than 40%, according to the report. These three bacteria combined caused more than a third of all food recalls in the US in 2024. But another third of recalls were related to undeclared allergens, such as peanuts or tree nuts found in products without being included on the label. Undeclared allergens were still the top reason for recalls last year, but there was a notable improvement since 2023, when they accounted for nearly half of all recalls. Some of that improvement may be attributed to greater awareness among food producers that sesame is an allergen that requires disclosure, PIRG researchers said. The Food Safety Modernization Act, signed by President Barack Obama in 2011, led to an overall safer food supply by creating more than a dozen new rules governing areas such as good manufacturing practices, agricultural water, sanitary transportation, hazard analysis and mitigation strategies to protect our food. But these rules have taken a while to get fully fleshed out, finalized and implemented. For example, the Produce Safety rule, which was designed to prevent situations like the slivered onions problem, was put in place in 2016. Another factor helping to identify recalls — and possibly the perception of less-safe food — has been progress in the technology used to reveal an outbreak and link information about its potential source, food safety expert Dr. Donald Schaffner recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his podcast 'Chasing Life.' 'The CDC is getting better and better at finding outbreaks thanks to advances in whole genome sequencing,' Schaffner said. 'It may have been in the past we had outbreaks like this, but we could never link them together, because we didn't know that all of these different people in all of these different states all got sick around the same time from eating the same food.' Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will oversee the FDA as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, has indicated that reforming the US food system is one of his key priorities. 'They are calling for fixing the food system, doing something to coordinate and address diet-related chronic diseases, stopping corporate power, eliminating conflicts of interest between industry and government, getting toxic chemicals out of the food supply, and doing everything possible to refocus the food environment and dietary advice on health,' food policy researcher Marion Nestle wrote on her Food Politics blog in October. And last week, an executive order from President Donald Trump announced the establishment of the Make America Healthy Again Commission, which would focus on the food system along with other efforts to reduce chronic disease and improve life expectancy in the US. A key policy focus for the commission will be to 'work with farmers to ensure that United States food is the healthiest, most abundant, and most affordable in the world.' But Kennedy's potential agenda and widespread upheaval at federal health agencies have many public health experts worried. Still, the responsibility for keeping the US food supply safe is shared by many across the system, Murray said. 'We wouldn't need recalls if food was safe from the jump,' she said, referencing the role of food manufacturers, processors and packagers. 'There is nothing wrong with companies doing a better job testing food, and some of [the responsibility] obviously does sit with regulators – state and federal – who do inspections and testing of their own.' For consumers who want to be as safe as possible with the food they eat, Murray says there are three important things: not leaving food out, regularly washing hands and utensils when working with food, and figuring out a way to stay informed about recalls that may affect you, such as signing up for alerts from favorite grocery stores or downloading an app that provides real-time notifications on recalls. CNN's Andrea Kane, Meg Tirrell and Brenda Goodman contributed to this report.
