March 6, 2024

Last week, tens of thousands of AT&T customers lost cell phone service for about seven hours in a nationwide outage. While some feared that the company’s network went down because of a cyberattack, AT&T clarified that the outage was caused by “the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network.” Of course, the reason for the failure did not really matter to people who were unable to use their phones during an important time Continue reading

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July 24, 2018

Last week, we took a look at the “robocallers” who use fake caller ID information to trick Americans into picking up their phones. Although they are undoubtedly annoying, these automated messages are far less dangerous than the human scammers who directly target vulnerable consumers. For instance, an older person might receive a threatening call from someone claiming to be with the IRS. The scammer will then tell their victim to send an immediate payment or else risk Continue reading

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July 20, 2018

Back in the pre-Internet days, companies would pay a fortune to set up services that allowed them to limit the number of phone lines used in the office. This meant that a company with 100 employees could use a single number with extensions rather than set up 100 seperate lines. Once caller ID came on the scene, these systems would display the same name to the receiver whether the call was coming from the mailroom or the C-suite.

This pricey Continue reading

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