Latest news with #digitalfootprint
CBS News
a day ago
- Business
- CBS News
Golf pro Scottie Scheffler deleted his Venmo account over unwanted activity. Should you?
How to clean up your digital footprint and protect against online scams Much like a golf course, Venmo can bring some unexpected twists and turns. The popular payment app enables anyone on the platform to send requests and payments to Venmo accounts listed as public — a default setting that opened up a can of worms for the world's top golfer, Scottie Scheffler. Scheffler, 28, who is competing in the U.S. Open this week, said Tuesday that he deleted the app after receiving a string of unwanted financial requests and payments from strangers betting on his performance. "That's why I had to get rid of my Venmo because I was either getting paid by people or people requesting me a bunch of money when I didn't win. It wasn't a good feeling," the 16-time PGA Tour winner recently told reporters, according to CBS Sports. While he occasionally received small payments after winning a game, Scheffler said he more often than not got requests from bettors looking to cash in if he had lost. "I don't remember the most that somebody would send me," he said. "Maybe a couple bucks here or there. That didn't happen nearly as much as the requests did." While ordinary Venmo users may not attract the same attention on the app as Scheffler, they can still benefit from knowing how to protect their privacy on the payment platform. Read on for tips on how to navigate Venmo safely. What should I do if I get an unexpected payment or request on Venmo? With the proliferation on online scams, Venmo encourages its users to play it safe. If you get a payment from a stranger, Venmo says you should not accept the transfer, but instead contact the app's support team. Likewise, payment requests from suspicious accounts, or people you don't know, should also be declined, the company says. "In some cases, you may receive a payment request from someone who appears to be a friend or relative," Venmo warns on its website. "This can be a common scam tactic, so we recommend contacting your friend or family member outside of Venmo to confirm the legitimacy of the request before taking any action." For those looking for more ways to safeguard their money, a list of common scams and the best way to avoid them can be found on Venmo's website. Can everyone see my Venmo payment history? Paying your roommate for the electricity bill? Others might be able to see that transaction on Venmo, depending on your account settings. If your profile is public, which is the default setting on the app, then each of your payment transactions will appear on Venmo's main feed, making them visible to anyone online. That includes information on who you're paying, when you paid them and what you're paying them for — cue the pizza emoji. To limit the number of people who can see your transactions, you can switch your privacy settings to "Friends only" or "Private." The "Friends only" setting makes your payment transactions visible to Venmo friends only. The "Private" setting, the most restrictive of the three options, limits payment visibility to the two parties engaged in the transaction. If you're paying or requesting money from someone who has different privacy setting than you, Venmo will default to whoever's setting is more restrictive. For example, if your account is private and you're making a payment to someone with a public account, the payment will automatically be private, and only visible to you and the recipient.
Daily Mail
11-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Criminologist reveals sick reason why killers may leave trail of digital evidence behind - even if they know it could put them behind bars
A criminologist has revealed why killers leave a digital trail of evidence behind - even if they know police can use it to put them behind bars. Many have been caught due evidence left in emails, texts, social media, search histories, or GPS/location data. And Professor David Wilson, who lectures at Birmingham City University and often appears on ITV 's This Morning, revealed why murderers can get careless when it comes to their digital footprint; explaining this can stem from a 'need' to be seen by an 'audience' The expert also shared that while more prevalent in the era of gadgets and computers, the urge to leave a trail behind is decades-old. Speaking to LADbible, the pro suggested that it's a way the killer can 'self-express' - by documenting their crime. 'We live in a snapshot culture, where documenting your life online becomes this endless way of expressing who you are,' he explained. 'Even if who you are involves you being a murderer, you still have this need to say who you are and you want that audience to acknowledge you.' David said added that this phenomenon is not new - murderers fed police information about crimes long before technology had evolved to what it is now. Jack the Ripper, who terrorised London in 1888, famously wrote letters to taunt police and the media. Elsewhere, the BTK Killer Dennis Rader, who claimed at least 10 lives between 1974 and 1991, sent a floppy disk to police, thinking it couldn't be traced but it led to his capture, ending a 30-year manhunt. Meanwhile in 2022, despite being a criminology student and knowing police would go through his digital archive, Bryan Kohberger left behind phone data, internet searches, and Reddit posts that related to his criminal behavior. His phone's GPS data put him near the crime scene of four murdered students, while digital forensics and surveillance video helped build the case against him. Chris Watts, who murdered his pregnant wife Shanann by strangulation, and their two children Bella and Celeste by suffocation, also made the same error. Police found phone and GPS data which showed his movements and lies and surveillance footage which contradicted his story. David also explained that it's not always deliberate; killers might not consider the consequences of their actions, and could just be careless with their digital footprint. He claimed in some murders, offenders in the heat of the moment can become sloppy and often Google information like 'how to get rid of a body'. He added: 'They're doing online searching because they want some specific information that's both going to help him in the commission of the offence and also once they have committed the offence.' In 2005, 'Google killer' Anurag Johri was given a life sentence for the murder of his estranged wife Deepti after police found he had made an internet search for how to murder someone without getting caught. David claimed most killers are not rationally thinking through what they've done and tend to have a 'living in the moment' aspect to their personalities. It comes after David revealed the main reason people kill in the UK - and which groups are most likely to be targeted by serial killers. Speaking on LADbible's Honesty Box YouTube series, David said: 'Seven out of 10 murder victims in the United Kingdom are men. Nine out of 10 perpetrators of murder are men. The criminologist explained that the most common way murder occurs in Britain is as a result of young men fighting. According to the Office for National Statistics there were 414 male murder victims in 2024, while there were 156 female victims. The criminologist explained: 'The most common murder that will take place in Britain is a young man falling out with a young man on a Friday or Saturday night when that young man feels he isn't being given the respect he deserves. 'When he feels that and he's in the company of his friends, or indeed the friends of the person he feels has disrespected him, and he's been drinking too much or using other kinds of substances, he wants to lash out. 'He wants to regain a sense of who he is in that five minutes of madness, he might not set out to kill but he certainly is setting out to physically harm the person he believes has disrespected him. That is a typical murder in this country.' The professor went on to say that it is 'appalling' that two women every week are murdered in this country by partner and/or ex-partners - and said 'misogyny' was to blame for the statistic. He said: 'This is a male phenomenon and this is about men owning that phenomenon, and it's about men in my generation talking to younger men about how to perform masculinity.' Wilson went on to argue that the lack of conversation around the issue of misogyny is opening up space for people like Andrew and Tristan Tate (who are currently under investigation for rape and trafficking allegations in Romania) to hold influence over young men. 'All that does is store up further problems for us in the future,' Wilson said. According to ONS there were 108 domestic homicides in the UK in 2024, and of these, 83 were women and 25 were men, 66 of these victims were killed by a partner or ex-partner. Elsewhere David explained that serial killers usually target specific groups of people, women, girls, sex workers and gay men. He claimed if police would focus on protecting those groups then a lot more lives could be saved. He explained: 'Serial killers in our culture have only targeted five groups of people. Four of those groups serial killers will target in the UK are dominated by women and girls. 'There's one group of men that by and large gets targeted by serial killers, that's gay men. 'The two groups of women and girls that are most regularly targeted by serial killers are women over the age of 60 and sex workers. 'If you really wanted to reduce the incidence of serial murder in our culture you would challenge homophobia. 'Have a grown up debate about how you police those young women and some young men who sell sexual service, and above all we would start trying to give a voice to older people in our culture as opposed to seeing them as a burden on the state.' David also explained that women are more interested in true crime because of 'evolutionary psychology.' 'I would have four out of five of my students would be women as opposed to men, it seems to me through evolutionary psychology that of course women are gonna be more interested in true crime because so often, it's women that have to manage the violence of men,' he added.
The National
07-05-2025
- The National
Former British sniper-turned-cyber expert on how to shoot down online scams
A British military sniper turned cybersecurity expert said it was crucial people became their own 'digital spy' to fight back against scammers. Ben Owen said it was important not to be paranoid about digital footprints but you should be aware of what's on the web about you – including social media accounts – because 'that's what a hacker would do' and they are good at joining the dots. At the Gisec Global conference in Dubai on Tuesday, Mr Owen also said it was crucial not to forget that hacking was often a person-to-person practice and people needed to take a 'tactical pause' before responding to suspicious messages. 'If you find … a MySpace account that you haven't used for 15 years, get rid of it,' Mr Owen told The National. 'Deactivate it because hackers still want to get into that,' he said. 'If you need it, lock it down. If you don't need it, get rid of it.' Mr Owen is known for his role on the UK TV show Hunted, where citizen fugitives trying to evade their investigators and reach a safe extraction point. He served in the military during the 2003 Gulf War, before joining military intelligence Since then he has become a renowned cybersecurity expert and cofounded The Osint Group, a company that provides training in that sphere. 'The elements of a hack have to have three key ingredients,' Mr Owen said. 'Believability, leveraging emotion and the right time.' He pointed to the surge in scammers who check photographs that holiday-makers post to social media who even hashtag the nightclubs. The scammers then try to locate parents back at home to target them, looking for money or something else. 'They send the WhatsApp [message] at 2am. They'll leverage emotion because mum's now scared and it's believable because her daughter is on holiday,' he said, stating about one in 10 will fall for such a ploy. 'And mums almost anticipate when the kid goes on holiday … something is going to happen. So, in the back of their minds, oh God, it's now happened.' He said there was a lot of jargon surrounding the area but it is ultimately a person hacking a person and can be confronted. 'We don't want to live in fear and be paranoid for the rest of our lives because that's not healthy for anyone,' he said. 'But what we always recommend – just a simple thing – is just taking a tactical pause before you interact with anything digital.' This could be a voice note from a daughter, an email from your husband who is on a business trip or a direct message from a fellow worker. 'Does this person normally ask it? Is this out of character? If there's a slight doubt in your gut, just validate – ring the person.' 'Don't be inherently paranoid. Take a tactical pause – assess it [and take a] deep breath.' Mr Owen also outlined the huge digital footprint left by people every day, from using open Wi-Fi to leaving online restaurant reviews. He explained how hackers can build a huge picture of likely victims within minutes from this data before even trying to scam them through what they perceive to be the line of least resistance. And he cautioned that people could be leaving themselves exposed by leaving such online reviews. 'You have to be selfish sometimes to enhance your security. Is that going to benefit you? It's not. Therefore, I wouldn't do it.' It has been quite a journey for Mr Owen, from assessing threats on the battlefield to the online world. What about large-scale cyber attacks? Blackouts affected the Iberian Peninsula last week. The cause is still under investigation but Mr Owen, speaking generally, said he expected cyberattacks on power grids and important infrastructure to take place more frequently in the future because of the financial impact on governments. But a point he returns to repeatedly is that hacking is frequently person-to-person attacks rather than complex scenarios with employees targeted directly, because this is a vulnerable link in the armour. 'Energy companies … have a lot of assistance,' he said. 'They can have the best tools and software and firewalls and filters.' But he said there was a lack of awareness that hackers will try to contact employees to access their personal world, get their passwords and then enter the corporate system. 'That is the route in for hackers and that will continue to be the route. I don't think it's looked at enough.' He gave the example of a UAE bank with more than 10,000 employees – many with online profiles – that could be targeted. 'You can guarantee 20 per cent of them would be hackable, easily hackable,' he said. 'People always forget to talk about the people that work there because it's a grey area, and people don't want to address it. One of the main reasons for that, I think, as a business doesn't want to come across as oppressive.' But he said it was important that companies made people aware by using personal examples and making it relatable to their families. Gisec runs until Thursday and artificial intelligence was one of the dominant themes across the floors of the World Trade Centre. Mr Owen said it was making hacking potentially more accessible in terms of coding. And it could be used to develop photos, aliases and make it easier to mimic someone. But humans still had a crucial role. 'It doesn't matter how good your AI is. You still need a human to scour over that data because one piece of AI software won't fit every single business.'
