Pete Hegseth’s Signal Scandal Spirals Out of Control

With the increasing policy of the aggressive immigration raised by the Trump administration, people began to think seriously about their privacy and security when crossing into the United States. This is especially true when it comes to inspecting passengers and other devices, which customs agents enjoy and protect the American border to search. Fortunately, there are some steps that you can take, such as deleting some applications from your personal phone or using an alternative phone that is only prepared to travel internationally.

Activists in the government efficiency management in Elon Musk spent the first months of the Trump administration on their way to US government regulations. It has now begun to become clear exactly what these systems are and the type of data they hold. This week, WIRED detailed that DOGE 19 Systems can only reach the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services.

Pope Francis died on Monday at the age of 88. The death of the higher ink has started to move, which is the secret process used to choose the new Pope. To protect the safety of Conclave and try to prevent leaks, a wide range of security measures will be placed in place, from the privacy film on the windows in the Vatican to indicate the confusion and the hidden microphones.

Google has recently announced the introduction of the initial email of the encrypted email for Google’s work space accounts, which is good news for the privacy of users at the institution level. When the work space user sends an email to a non -Workspace account, the recipient gets an invitation to create a guest account so that they can read the email. Unfortunately, security experts say, this will likely create new opportunities for hunting attacks, as fraudsters try to stab people with fake calls.

But this is not all. Every week, we link the security and privacy news that we did not cover deeply. Click the titles to read full stories. And staying safe there.

Signalgate is the scandal that you will not die – at least not if you are the US Defense Secretary Pete HegSeth. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Higseth installed a signal on a “second computer in his office” so that he could “use the signal in a secret space, as his mobile phone and other personal electronics are not allowed, and communicating with anyone.”

On Thursday, Associated Press added a copy of the use of the reported signal in Higseth, and revealed that Higseth obtained a second internet line that was installed directly to the public internet and not through the guaranteed Pentagon connection, according to the sources that spoke with AP. He claims that Higseth did so so that he can use this second computer with a signal installation. Then on Friday, the New York Times found that the phone number associated with the Higseth signal – the letter that it used in that long -standing collective chat – can be easily discovered via the Internet, which may open it to electronic attacks targeted by hostile countries.

Despite the continuous flow of arrests and fragments of fraudsters online, Internet criminals work at unprecedented levels and earn more money than ever. Two reports released this week reveal the blatant online crime range. Last year in the United States, companies and individuals lost $ 16.6 billion for online crimes, according to the online crime complaints center at the FBI – this is the highest number ever, a 33 percent jump compared to 2023. In 2024, there were 859,000 complaints about potential online crimes, with FBI saying and clarifying them from complaints. Investment fraud, which often includes cryptocurrencies, constitutes more than $ 6 billion of total losses, with e -mail frauds that lead to losses of $ 2.7 billion.

Almost at the same time, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime highlighted that giant fraud in Southeast Asia – where human trafficking victims are forced to work people who deceive people – make profits worth $ 40 billion annually and continue to grow. Industrial scale fraud, which is often associated with Chinese criminals, uses significant investment fraud (sometimes called pigs) because people leave their lives and expand outside the region. “It spreads like cancer,” Benedict Hoffman of UNDC said in a statement.

In 2020, Google announced that its Chrome browser stopped using a third -party cookie, which follows people around the web, and will move to a less creeping method to operate its advertising work. Web browsers such as Safari, Firefox and Cookies bravely eliminated years before Google Declaration. But this week, after countless rotation, the efforts made to develop alternatives and criticism that are useful for replacing cookies from Google, the company announced that it will actually keep the Chrome followers.

“We have made a decision to maintain our current approach to providing users with a third -party cooking file in Chrome,” Anthony Chavez, Google VP, responsible for the Privacy Fund’s efforts, wrote in a blog post. “Since we participated in the ecosystem, including publishers, developers, organizers, and advertising industry, it remains clear that there are different views on making changes that can affect the availability of third -party cookies,” Chavez wrote. While the United States government suggests that Google Chrome sell as part of the anti -monopoly issue against the company, it is still possible to stop cookies from the third party or use a privacy browser instead.