Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

While their downstate rivals the Los Angeles Rams were busy winning Super Bowl LVI, the San Francisco 49ers were being clipped in a ransomware attack News of the attack was reported by the Associated Press after cybercriminals posted documents to the dark web that they claimed were stolen from the NFL franchise....

Remote workers have higher anxiety levels about security and privacy than other types of employees, according to an international study released Tuesday by a cybersecurity software maker In a survey by F-Secure of 7,200 people from nine countries, more than two-thirds (67 percent) of remote workers acknowledged they worried about security and pri...

Google has launched a new Chromebook repair program designed to help students and school systems get their broken laptops up and running again On the website supporting the program, schools can find which Chromebooks have commonly repaired components, like the keyboard, display and palm rest....

During the holiday season, an estimated US$120 billion in merchandise is expected to be returned to retailers, a jump of seven percent over 2020, driven by supply chain concerns, inflation, and robust online sales Returns during a typical holiday season are around 13.3 percent of total sales, with returns from online sales some three to five times ...

Nearly half a million Covid-related domains have been created over the last two years, many of them being used by online fraudsters and hucksters The pandemic has created an environment in which bad actors make use of a range of Covid-related "hooks" to commit cybercrime and fraud, impacting consumers and brands, explained CSC, a domain registrar ...

The average salary for a tech worker reached US$104,566 in 2021, yet nearly half still feel they're underpaid Forced to digitize operations and move to virtual work because of a worldwide pandemic, as well as address increased security concerns raised by those developments, organizations were hungry for tech talent in 2021 and willing to pay for it...

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian raised some eyebrows in the gaming world recently when he predicted on the "Where It Happens" podcast that play-to-earn gaming would take over 90 percent of the gaming market in five years "Ninety percent of people will not play a game unless they are being properly valued for that time," Ohanian declared in the pod...

Data breaches in 2021 set a new record with 5.9 billion accounts affected by digital thieves, according to a new report by a VPN provider The biggest breach of the period was actually a combination of several cyber smash-and-grab operations during a five-year span that contained 3.2 billion unique email and password combinations from Netflix, Linke...

Bias in AI systems can result in significant losses to companies, according to a new survey by an enterprise AI company More than one in three companies (36 percent) revealed they had suffered losses due to AI bias in one or several algorithms, noted the DataRobot survey of over 350 U.S. and U.K. technologists, including CIOs, IT directors, IT ma...

Although Apple is expected to launch a mixed reality product sometime this year, don't expect it to lead its users into the metaverse, according to a prominent watcher of the company The watcher, Mark Gurman, who writes the Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, wrote in the latest edition of the publication that the metaverse will be "off-limits" for ...

Shopping on social media platforms is growing at a torrid pace -- three times faster than traditional e-commerce platforms -- and is on a pace to reach US$1.2 trillion globally by 2025, according to a study released Tuesday by an international professional services firm Most of that growth -- 62 percent -- will be driven by Gen Z and millennial sho...

The holiday shopping season was very good for Apple's wearables business, according to a leading analyst of the company's operations Ming-Chi Kuo of TFI Asset Management reported over the weekend that Apple sold 90 million AirPods during the final quarter of 2021, including 27 million of the latest version of the earbuds released in September....

As 2021 winds down, it's time for cybersecurity experts to toss their runes and forecast what's in store for consumers and practitioners in the coming year Cybercriminals will move from identity theft to identity fraud, predicted the Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego....

With remote work here to stay, a conundrum for many firms is where to tap into the stay-at-home workforce. Karat, a maker of a talent platform for developers, has an answer to that riddle The company has identified what it considers the 10 best cities -- outside major tech hubs like the San Francisco Bay area, Seattle, and New York -- for hiring r...

Growing use of unified communication and collaboration tools in organizations could hurt productivity in the short term, according to a study released last week by a service assurance and cybersecurity company In a survey commissioned by Netscout, of Westford, Mass., more than nine in 10 of the 300 IT leaders participating in the study (93 percent...

Four out of five cybersecurity pros are fretting over the potential for a sneak attack by an adversary with a quantum computer that will render the encryption of their data ineffective That was one of the findings in a global survey released Tuesday of more than 600 cybersecurity professionals conducted by Dimensional Research for Cambridge Quantum...

Bot activity at websites is skewing marketing analytics and costing businesses millions annually, according to a report released Tuesday by a bot detection and mitigation firm Netacea maintained in its report that the skewed analytics problem is as costly to businesses as click fraud....

Concerns over supply chain snags, delivery delays, and a yearning for a return to normal are influencing consumer shopping habits this holiday season "The biggest change this year is that shopping has started earlier than in the past," observed Dave Sekera, chief U.S. market strategist with Morningstar, an investment research company in Chicago....

Many Americans lack the digital skills needed to be productive members of the workforce in the 21st century, according to a report released Monday by a Washington, D.C., think tank One-third of U.S. workers lack digital skills, with 13 percent having no digital skills and 18 percent having, at best, limited digital skills, noted the report by the I...

'Tis the season to go phishing. Nothing brings out digital bandits like the holidays, and this year is no exception Proofpoint, an enterprise digital security company, reported Tuesday its researchers are seeing a massive global increase in holiday-themed mobile phishing attacks, a.k.a. smishing....