Kasey On Tech

I was going to post this over in reddit's /r/cybersecurity_help, but I decided it sounds too much like a lecture.  ----- We understand that when you have "pressing" concerns, you often can't even formulate a question coherently, but please take a few moments to organize what information you have, and what questions do you have, so we can answer your questions immediately, rather than trying to draw additional details out of you which wastes both your time and ours.  Rule 0: Please read the posting guide: https://www.reddit.com//r/cybersecurity_help/wiki/guide  Rule 0.5: Please read the "10 rules" (check right hand bar at following link). Failure to follow them may result in removal of your question.  https://sh.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity_help/ Rule 0.9: Please ensure your question actually is relevant to cybersecurity. A LOT of people seem to confuse privacy with cybersecurity.  "I lost control of my Instagram account! What do I do?" -- Cybersecuri...

Short answer: No.  Long answer: GSM phones let you put in these dialer codes to change some settings. The codes, collectively, are known as USSD (unstructured supplementary service data) codes, sometimes called "quick codes". These settings are NOT in your phone, but on your mobile carrier's computer as a part of your account.  Generally speaking, USSD codes are used to add or remove service, or change some settings for the service. Some carriers use it for payment notification and payment status. Actual active codes are dependent on the carrier. As this is often used to just show the status of something it's also called interrogation codes, or feature access codes.  So what does *#21# actually do (note: it's actually asterisk - hash - two - one - hash)? It shows the status of call forwarding set to the five types of calls you get: voice, SMS, fax, data, and system. (NOTE: some phone vendors only show voice, SMS and data, not fax or system) And in all cases, it ...

When the FBI warns people about the scam , this is serious, but this is actually just a variation of the scam that perpetrated upon the Asian community for a while.  To make a long story short...  Stage 0  Beware when you are contacted via some method, text message, pop-up on your computer, a direct phone call, supposedly from a company that you had patronized before (a national brand, like Amazon, Best Buy, Uber, and so on). Those companies usually do NOT contact you directly, but these imposters will. Anyway, the message claims you need to call them right away to mitigate any damage.  Stage 1 When you call, the imposter will ask you to download some program so they can control your computer from afar, in order to show you some supposed "evidence" that either have been hacked or will soon be hacked, ask about your bank, and claim your bank's fraud department will be contacting you shortly. This is of course, another imposter.  Stage 2 "Your bank's fraud departm...

 After I got my cybersecurity certificates and certifications, I decided to hang out in subreddit /r/cybersecurity_help for a while, as that's where people go for help. I've noticed the questions tend to come in 3 major categories: a) I noticed something odd. Could I have been hacked?  b) I REALLY have been hacked, what do I do now?  c) I did something stupid! Could I have been hacked?  I have found that some people are just super-nervous when it comes to technology, as if they can be hacked everywhere doing nothing, while others are almost completely oblivious to the risks.  Let's discuss each in turn.  a) I noticed something odd. Could I have been hacked? OP started noticing some oddities with his or her phone, and wonders if it's connected to some previous event.  EX1: Op got a call from the doctor's office. X minutes later a call with caller ID "Health Center" arrived. Op asked for more details, and was hung up on. Op wants to know if the spammer h...

I decided to look into another introductory cybersecurity certification after finishing the Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate back in June in 5 days. Took me a while due to other obligations, but I finally decided on "Certified in Cybersecurity" by ISC2, and I started last Thursday.  I finished all coursework by Saturday, and I was waiting for the peer-graded assignments to be graded. That was when I realized this is only half the battle (yes, I am quite bad at research sometimes). This is a prep course for the actual ISC2 CC certification exam, and that cost $199.  So I went on Google to look for a discount code, as there often are for these.  That is when I found that ISC2 is doing a "One Million CC" initiative... It will give away 1 million CC prep course and exams absolutely free to people around the world. It's even available in languages such a Spanish, German, Chinese, and Japanese, in addition to English! That's right... the self-paced C...