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It’s not unusual for the data brokers behind people-search websites to use pseudonyms in their day-to-day lives (you would, too). Some of these personal data purveyors even try to reinvent their online identities in a bid to hide their conflicts of interest. But it’s not every day you run across a US-focused people-search network based in China whose principal owners all appear to be completely fabricated identities.
Responding to a reader inquiry concerning the trustworthiness of a site called TruePeopleSearch[.]net, KrebsOnSecurity began poking around. The site offers to sell reports containing photos, police records, background checks, civil judgments, contact information “and much more!” According to LinkedIn and numerous profiles on websites that accept paid article submissions, the founder of TruePeopleSearch is Marilyn Gaskell from Phoenix, Ariz.
The saucy yet studious LinkedIn profile for Marilyn Gaskell.
Ms. Gaskell has been quoted in multiple “articles” about random subjects, such as this article at HRDailyAdvisor about the pros and cons of joining a company-led fantasy football team.
“Marilyn Gaskell, founder of TruePeopleSearch, agrees that not everyone in the office is likely to be a football fan and might feel intimidated by joining a company league or left out if they don’t join; however, her company looked for ways to make the activity more inclusive,” this paid story notes.
Also quoted in this article is Sally Stevens, who is cited as HR Manager at FastPeopleSearch[.]io.
Sally Stevens, the phantom HR Manager for FastPeopleSearch.
“Fantasy football provides one way for employees to set aside work matters for some time and have fun,” Stevens contributed. “Employees can set a special league for themselves and regularly check and compare their scores against one another.”
Imagine that: Two different people-search companies mentioned in the same story about fantasy football. What are the odds?
Both TruePeopleSearch and FastPeopleSearch allow users to search for reports by first and last name, but proceeding to order a report prompts the visitor to purchase the file from one of several established people-finder services, including BeenVerified, Intelius, and Spokeo.
DomainTools.com shows that both TruePeopleSearch and FastPeopleSearch appeared around 2020 and were registered through Alibaba Cloud, in Beijing, China. No other information is available about these domains in their registration records, although both domains appear to use email servers based in China.
Sally Stevens’ LinkedIn profile photo is identical to a stock image titled “beautiful girl” from Adobe.com. Ms. Stevens is also quoted in a paid blog post at ecogreenequipment.com, as is Alina Clark, co-founder and marketing director of CocoDoc, an online service for editing and managing PDF documents.
The profile photo for Alina Clark is a stock photo appearing on more than 100 websites.
Scouring multiple image search sites reveals Ms. Clark’s profile photo on LinkedIn is another stock image that is currently on more than 100 different websites, including Adobe.com. Cocodoc[.]com was registered in June 2020 via Alibaba Cloud Beijing in China.
The same Alina Clark and photo materialized in a paid article at the website Ceoblognation, which in 2021 included her at #11 in a piece called “30 Entrepreneurs Describe The Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) for Their Business.” It’s also worth noting that Ms. Clark is currently listed as a “former Forbes Council member” at the media outlet Forbes.com.
Entrepreneur #6 is Stephen Curry, who is quoted as CEO of CocoSign[.]com, a website that claims to offer an “easier, quicker, safer eSignature solution for small and medium-sized businesses.” Incidentally, the same photo for Stephen Curry #6 is also used in this “article” for #22 Jake Smith, who is named as the owner of a different company.
Stephen Curry, aka Jake Smith, aka no such person.
Mr. Curry’s LinkedIn profile shows a young man seated at a table in front of a laptop, but an online image search shows this is another stock photo. Cocosign[.]com was registered in June 2020 via Alibaba Cloud Beijing. No ownership details are available in the domain registration records.
Listed at #13 in that 30 Entrepreneurs article is Eden Cheng, who is cited as co-founder of PeopleFinderFree[.]com. KrebsOnSecurity could not find a LinkedIn profile for Ms. Cheng, but a search on her profile image from that Entrepreneurs article shows the same photo for sale at Shutterstock and other stock photo sites.
DomainTools says PeopleFinderFree was registered through Alibaba Cloud, Beijing. Attempts to purchase reports through PeopleFinderFree produce a notice saying the full report is only available via Spokeo.com.
Lynda Fairly is Entrepreneur #24, and she is quoted as co-founder of Numlooker[.]com, a domain registered in April 2021 through Alibaba in China. Searches for people on Numlooker forward visitors to Spokeo.
The photo next to Ms. Fairly’s quote in Entrepreneurs matches that of a LinkedIn profile for Lynda Fairly. But a search on that photo shows this same portrait has been used by many other identities and names, including a woman from the United Kingdom who’s a cancer survivor and mother of five; a licensed marriage and family therapist in Canada; a software security engineer at Quora; a journalist on Twitter/X; and a marketing expert in Canada.
Cocofinder[.]com is a people-search service that launched in Sept. 2019, through Alibaba in China. Cocofinder lists its market officer as Harriet Chan, but Ms. Chan’s LinkedIn profile is just as sparse on work history as the other people-search owners mentioned already. An image search online shows that outside of LinkedIn, the profile photo for Ms. Chan has only ever appeared in articles at pay-to-play media sites, like this one from outbackteambuilding.com.
Perhaps because Cocodoc and Cocosign both sell software services, they are actually tied to a physical presence in the real world — in Singapore (15 Scotts Rd. #03-12 15, Singapore). But it’s difficult to discern much from this address alone.
Who’s behind all this people-search chicanery? A January 2024 review of various people-search services at the website techjury.com states that Cocofinder is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a Chinese company called Shenzhen Duiyun Technology Co.
“Though it only finds results from the United States, users can choose between four main search methods,” Techjury explains. Those include people search, phone, address and email lookup. This claim is supported by a Reddit post from three years ago, wherein the Reddit user “ProtectionAdvanced” named the same Chinese company.
Is Shenzhen Duiyun Technology Co. responsible for all these phony profiles? How many more fake companies and profiles are connected to this scheme? KrebsOnSecurity found other examples that didn’t appear directly tied to other fake executives listed here, but which nevertheless are registered through Alibaba and seek to drive traffic to Spokeo and other data brokers. For example, there’s the winsome Daniela Sawyer, founder of FindPeopleFast[.]net, whose profile is flogged in paid stories at entrepreneur.org.
Google currently turns up nothing else for in a search for Shenzhen Duiyun Technology Co. Please feel free to sound off in the comments if you have any more information about this entity, such as how to contact it. Or reach out directly at krebsonsecurity @ gmail.com.
A mind map highlighting the key points of research in this story. Click to enlarge. Image: KrebsOnSecurity.com
It appears the purpose of this network is to conceal the location of people in China who are seeking to generate affiliate commissions when someone visits one of their sites and purchases a people-search report at Spokeo, for example. And it is clear that Spokeo and others have created incentives wherein anyone can effectively white-label their reports, and thereby make money brokering access to peoples’ personal information.
Spokeo’s Wikipedia page says the company was founded in 2006 by four graduates from Stanford University. Spokeo co-founder and current CEO Harrison Tang has not yet responded to requests for comment.
Intelius is owned by San Diego based PeopleConnect Inc., which also owns Classmates.com, USSearch, TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate. PeopleConnect Inc. in turn is owned by H.I.G. Capital, a $60 billion private equity firm. Requests for comment were sent to H.I.G. Capital. This story will be updated if they respond.
BeenVerified is owned by a New York City based holding company called The Lifetime Value Co., a marketing and advertising firm whose brands include PeopleLooker, NeighborWho, Ownerly, PeopleSmart, NumberGuru, and Bumper, a car history site.
Ross Cohen, chief operating officer at The Lifetime Value Co., said it’s likely the network of suspicious people-finder sites was set up by an affiliate. Cohen said Lifetime Value would investigate to determine if this particular affiliate was driving them any sign-ups.
All of the above people-search services operate similarly. When you find the person you’re looking for, you are put through a lengthy (often 10-20 minute) series of splash screens that require you to agree that these reports won’t be used for employment screening or in evaluating new tenant applications. Still more prompts ask if you are okay with seeing “potentially shocking” details about the subject of the report, including arrest histories and photos.
Only at the end of this process does the site disclose that viewing the report in question requires signing up for a monthly subscription, which is typically priced around $35. Exactly how and from where these major people-search websites are getting their consumer data — and customers — will be the subject of further reporting here.
The main reason these various people-search sites require you to affirm that you won’t use their reports for hiring or vetting potential tenants is that selling reports for those purposes would classify these firms as consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) and expose them to regulations under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
These data brokers do not want to be treated as CRAs, and for this reason their people search reports typically don’t include detailed credit histories, financial information, or full Social Security Numbers (Radaris reports include the first six digits of one’s SSN).
But in September 2023, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission found that TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate were trying to have it both ways. The FTC levied a $5.8 million penalty against the companies for allegedly acting as CRAs because they assembled and compiled information on consumers into background reports that were marketed and sold for employment and tenant screening purposes.
The FTC also found TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate deceived users about background report accuracy. The FTC alleges these companies made millions from their monthly subscriptions using push notifications and marketing emails that claimed that the subject of a background report had a criminal or arrest record, when the record was merely a traffic ticket.
The FTC said both companies deceived customers by providing “Remove” and “Flag as Inaccurate” buttons that did not work as advertised. Rather, the “Remove” button removed the disputed information only from the report as displayed to that customer; however, the same item of information remained visible to other customers who searched for the same person.
The FTC also said that when a customer flagged an item in the background report as inaccurate, the companies never took any steps to investigate those claims, to modify the reports, or to flag to other customers that the information had been disputed.
There are a growing number of online reputation management companies that offer to help customers remove their personal information from people-search sites and data broker databases. There are, no doubt, plenty of honest and well-meaning companies operating in this space, but it has been my experience that a great many people involved in that industry have a background in marketing or advertising — not privacy.
Also, some so-called data privacy companies may be wolves in sheep’s clothing. On March 14, KrebsOnSecurity published an abundance of evidence indicating that the CEO and founder of the data privacy company OneRep.com was responsible for launching dozens of people-search services over the years.
Finally, some of the more popular people-search websites are notorious for ignoring requests from consumers seeking to remove their information, regardless of which reputation or removal service you use. Some force you to create an account and provide more information before you can remove your data. Even then, the information you worked hard to remove may simply reappear a few months later.
This aptly describes countless complaints lodged against the data broker and people search giant Radaris. On March 8, KrebsOnSecurity profiled the co-founders of Radaris, two Russian brothers in Massachusetts who also operate multiple Russian-language dating services and affiliate programs.
The truth is that these people-search companies will continue to thrive unless and until Congress begins to realize it’s time for some consumer privacy and data protection laws that are relevant to life in the 21st century. Duke University adjunct professor Justin Sherman says virtually all state privacy laws exempt records that might be considered “public” or “government” documents, including voting registries, property filings, marriage certificates, motor vehicle records, criminal records, court documents, death records, professional licenses, bankruptcy filings, and more.
“Consumer privacy laws in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia all contain highly similar or completely identical carve-outs for ‘publicly available information’ or government records,” Sherman said.
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On Dec. 18, 2013, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that U.S. retail giant Target was battling a wide-ranging computer intrusion that compromised more than 40 million customer payment cards over the previous month. The malware used in the Target breach included the text string “Rescator,” which also was the handle chosen by the cybercriminal who was selling all of the cards stolen from Target customers. Ten years later, KrebsOnSecurity has uncovered new clues about the real-life identity of Rescator.
Rescator, advertising a new batch of cards stolen in a 2014 breach at P.F. Chang’s.
Shortly after breaking the Target story, KrebsOnSecurity reported that Rescator appeared to be a hacker from Ukraine. Efforts to confirm my reporting with that individual ended when they declined to answer questions, and after I declined to accept a bribe of $10,000 not to run my story.
That reporting was based on clues from an early Russian cybercrime forum in which a hacker named Rescator — using the same profile image that Rescator was known to use on other forums — claimed to have originally been known as “Helkern,” the nickname chosen by the administrator of a cybercrime forum called Darklife.
KrebsOnSecurity began revisiting the research into Rescator’s real-life identity in 2018, after the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment that named a different Ukrainian man as Helkern.
It may be helpful to first recap why Rescator is thought to be so closely tied to the Target breach. For starters, the text string “Rescator” was found in some of the malware used in the Target breach. Investigators would later determine that a variant of the malware used in the Target breach was used in 2014 to steal 56 million payment cards from Home Depot customers. And once again, cards stolen in the Home Depot breach were sold exclusively at Rescator’s shops.
On Nov. 25, 2013, two days before Target said the breach officially began, Rescator could be seen in instant messages hiring another forum member to verify 400,000 payment cards that Rescator claimed were freshly stolen.
By the first week of December 2013, Rescator’s online store — rescator[.]la — was selling more than six million payment card records stolen from Target customers. Prior to the Target breach, Rescator had mostly sold much smaller batches of stolen card and identity data, and the website allowed cybercriminals to automate the sending of fraudulent wire transfers to money mules based in Lviv, Ukraine.
Finally, there is some honor among thieves, and in the marketplace for stolen payment card data it is considered poor form to advertise a batch of cards as “yours” if you are merely reselling cards sold to you by a third-party card vendor or thief. When serious stolen payment card shop vendors wish to communicate that a batch of cards is uniquely their handiwork or that of their immediate crew, they refer to it as “our base.” And Rescator was quite clear in his advertisements that these millions of cards were obtained firsthand.
The new clues about Rescator’s identity came into focus when I revisited the reporting around an April 2013 story here that identified the author of the OSX Flashback Trojan, an early Mac malware strain that quickly spread to more than 650,000 Mac computers worldwide in 2012.
That story about the Flashback author was possible because a source had obtained a Web browser authentication cookie for a founding member of a Russian cybercrime forum called BlackSEO. Anyone in possession of that cookie could then browse the invite-only BlackSEO forum and read the user’s private messages without having to log in.
BlackSEO.com VIP member “Mavook” tells forum admin Ika in a private message that he is the Flashback author.
The legitimate owner of that BlackSEO user cookie went by the nickname Ika, and Ika’s private messages on the forum showed he was close friends with the Flashback author. At the time, Ika also was the administrator of Pustota[.]pw — a closely-guarded Russian forum that counted among its members some of the world’s most successful and established spammers and malware writers.
For many years, Ika held a key position at one of Russia’s largest Internet service providers, and his (mostly glowing) reputation as a reliable provider of web hosting to the Russian cybercrime community gave him an encyclopedic knowledge about nearly every major player in that scene at the time.
The story on the Flashback author featured redacted screenshots that were taken from Ika’s BlackSEO account (see image above). The day after that story ran, Ika posted a farewell address to his mates, expressing shock and bewilderment over the apparent compromise of his BlackSEO account.
In a lengthy post on April 4, 2013 titled “I DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING,” Ika told Pustota forum members he was so spooked by recent events that he was closing the forum and quitting the cybercrime business entirely. Ika recounted how the Flashback story had come the same week that rival cybercriminals tried to “dox” him (their dox named the wrong individual, but included some of Ika’s more guarded identities).
“It’s no secret that karma farted in my direction,” Ika said at the beginning of his post. Unbeknownst to Ika at the time, his Pustota forum also had been completely hacked that week, and a copy of its database shared with this author.
A Google translated version of the farewell post from Ika, the administrator of Pustota, a Russian language cybercrime forum focused on botnets and spam. Click to enlarge.
Ika said the two individuals who tried to dox him did so on an even more guarded Russian language forum — DirectConnection[.]ws, perhaps the most exclusive Russian cybercrime community ever created. New applicants of this forum had to pay a non-refundable deposit, and receive vouches by three established cybercriminals already on the forum. Even if one managed to steal (or guess) a user’s DirectConnection password, the login page could not be reached unless the visitor also possessed a special browser certificate that the forum administrator gave only to approved members.
In no uncertain terms, Ika declared that Rescator went by the nickname MikeMike on DirectConnection:
“I did not want to bring any of this to real life. Especially since I knew the patron of the clowns – specifically Pavel Vrublevsky. Yes, I do state with confidence that the man with the nickname Rescator a.k.a. MikeMike with his partner Pipol have been Pavel Vrublevsky’s puppets for a long time.”
Pavel Vrublevsky is a convicted cybercriminal who became famous as the CEO of the Russian e-payments company ChronoPay, which specialized in facilitating online payments for a variety of “high-risk” businesses, including gambling, pirated Mp3 files, rogue antivirus software and “male enhancement” pills.
As detailed in my 2014 book Spam Nation, Vrublevsky not-so-secretly ran a pharmacy affiliate spam program called Rx-Promotion, which paid spammers and virus writers to blast out tens of billions of junk emails advertising generic Viagra and controlled pharmaceuticals like pain relief medications. Much of my reporting on Vrublevsky’s cybercrime empire came from several years worth of internal ChronoPay emails and documents that were leaked online in 2010 and 2011.
Pavel Vrublevsky’s former Facebook profile photo.
In 2014, KrebsOnSecurity learned from a trusted source close to the Target breach investigation that the user MikeMike on DirectConnection — the same account that Ika said belonged to Rescator — used the email address “zaxvatmira@gmail.com.”
At the time, KrebsOnSecurity could not connect that email address to anything or anyone. However, a recent search on zaxvatmira@gmail.com at the breach tracking service Constella Intelligence returns just one result: An account created in November 2010 at the site searchengines[.]ru under the handle “r-fac1.”
A search on “r-fac1” at cyber intelligence firm Intel 471 revealed that this user’s introductory post on searchengines[.]ru advertised musictransferonline[.]com, an affiliate program that paid people to drive traffic to sites that sold pirated music files for pennies apiece.
According to leaked ChronoPay emails from 2010, this domain was registered and paid for by ChronoPay. Those missives also show that in August 2010 Vrublevsky authorized a payment of ~$1,200 for a multi-user license of an Intranet service called MegaPlan.
ChronoPay used the MegaPlan service to help manage the sprawling projects that Vrublevsky referred to internally as their “black” payment processing operations, including pirated pills, porn, Mp3s, and fake antivirus products. ChronoPay employees used their MegaPlan accounts to track payment disputes, order volumes, and advertising partnerships for these high-risk programs.
Borrowing a page from the Quentin Tarantino movie Reservoir Dogs, the employees adopted nicknames like “Mr. Kink,” “Mr. Heppner,” and “Ms. Nati.” However, in a classic failure of operational security, many of these employees had their MegaPlan account messages automatically forwarded to their real ChronoPay email accounts.
A screen shot of the org chart from ChronoPay’s MegaPlan Intranet system.
When ChronoPay’s internal emails were leaked in 2010, the username and password for its MegaPlan subscription were still working and valid. An internal user directory for that subscription included the personal (non-ChronoPay) email address tied to each employee Megaplan nickname. That directory listing said the email address zaxvatmira@gmail.com was assigned to the head of the Media/Mp3 division for ChronoPay, pictured at the top left of the organizational chart above as “Babushka Vani and Koli.”
[Author’s note: I initially overlooked the presence of the email address zaxvatmira@gmail.com in my notes because it did not show up in text searches of my saved emails, files or messages. I rediscovered it recently when a text search for zaxvatmira@gmail.com on my Mac found the address in a screenshot of the ChronoPay MegaPlan interface.]
The nickname two rungs down from “Babushka” in the ChronoPay org chart is “Lev Tolstoy,” which the MegaPlan service showed was picked by someone who used the email address v.zhabukin@freefrog-co-ru.
ChronoPay’s emails show that this Freefrog email address belongs to a Vasily Borisovich Zhabykin from Moscow. The Russian business tracking website rusprofile[.]ru reports that Zhabykin is or was the supervisor or owner of three Russian organizations, including one called JSC Hot Spot.
[Author’s note: The word “babushka” means “grandma” in Russian, and it could be that this nickname is a nod to the ChronoPay CEO’s wife, Vera. The leaked ChronoPay emails show that Vera Vrublevsky managed a group of hackers working with their media division, and was at least nominally in charge of MP3 projects for ChronoPay. Indeed, in messages exposed by the leaked ChronoPay email cache, Zhabykin stated that he was “directly subordinate” to Mrs. Vrublevsky].
JSC Hot Spot is interesting because its co-founder is another ChronoPay employee: 37-year-old Mikhail “Mike” Shefel. A Facebook profile for Mr. Shefel says he is or was vice president of payment systems at ChronoPay. However, the last update on that profile is from 2018, when Shefel appears to have legally changed his last name.
Archive.org shows that Hot Spot’s website — myhotspot[.]ru — sold a variety of consulting services, including IT security assessments, code and system audits, and email marketing. The earliest recorded archive of the Hot Spot website listed three clients on its homepage, including ChronoPay and Freefrog.
ChronoPay internal emails show that Freefrog was one of its investment projects that facilitated the sale of pirated Mp3 files. Rusprofile[.]ru reports that Freefrog’s official company name — JSC Freefrog — is incorporated by a thinly-documented entity based in the Seychelles called Impex Consulting Ltd., and it is unclear who its true owners are.
However, a search at DomainTools.com on the phone number listed on the homepage of myhotspot[.]ru (74957809554) reveals that number is associated with eight domain names.
Six of those domains are some variation of FreeFrog. Another domain registered to that phone number is bothunter[.]me, which included a copyright credit to “Hot Spot 2011.” At the annual Russian Internet Week IT convention in Moscow in 2012, Mr. Shefel gave a short presentation about bothunter, which he described as a service he designed to identify inauthentic (bot) accounts on Russian social media networks.
Interestingly, one of r-fac1’s first posts to Searchengines[.]ru a year earlier saw this user requesting help from other members who had access to large numbers of hacked social media accounts. R-fac1 told forum members that he was only looking to use those accounts to post harmless links and comments to the followers of the hacked profiles, and his post suggested he was testing something.
“Good afternoon,” r-fac1 wrote on Dec. 20, 2010. “I’m looking for people with their own not-recently-registered accounts on forums, (except for search) Social networks, Twitter, blogs, their websites. Tasks, depending on your accounts, post text and a link, sometimes just a link. Most often the topic is chatter, relaxation, discussion. Posting my links in your profiles, on your walls. A separate offer for people with a large set of contacts in instant messengers to try to use viral marketing.”
Neither Mr. Shefel nor Mr. Zhabykin responded to requests for comment.
Mr. Zhabykin soon moved on to bigger ventures, co-founding a cryptocurrency exchange based in Moscow’s financial center called Suex. In September 2021, Suex earned the distinction of becoming the first crypto firm to be sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which effectively blocked Suex from the global financial system. The Treasury alleged Suex helped to process millions in criminal transactions, including the proceeds of numerous ransomware attacks.
“I don’t understand how I got mixed up in this,” Zhabykin told The New York Times in 2021. Zhabykin said Suex, which is registered in the Czech Republic, was mostly a failure and had conducted only a half dozen or so transactions since 2019.
The Russian business tracking service Rusprofile says Zhabykin also is the owner of a company based in the United Kingdom called RideWithLocal; the company’s website says it specializes in arranging excursions for extreme sports, including snowboarding, skiing, surfing and parasailing. Images from the RideWithLocal Facebook page show helicopters dropping snowboarders and skiers atop some fairly steep mountains.
A screenshot from the Facebook page of RideWithLocal.
Constella Intelligence found a cached copy of a now-deleted LinkedIn profile for Mr. Zhabykin, who described himself as a “sporttech/fintech specialist and mentor.”
“I create products and services worldwide, focusing on innovation and global challenges,” his LinkedIn profile said. “I’ve started my career in 2002 and since then I worked in Moscow, different regions of Russia, including Siberia and in Finland, Brazil, United Kingdom, Sri Lanka. Over the last 15 years I contributed to many amazing products in the following industries: sports, ecology, sport tech, fin tech, electronic payments, big data, telecommunications, pulp and paper industry, wood processing and travel. My specialities are Product development, Mentorship, Strategy and Business development.”
Rusprofile reports that Mikhail Borisovich Shefel is associated with at least eight current or now-defunct companies in Russia, including Dengi IM (Money IM), Internet Capital, Internet Lawyer, Internet 2, Zao Hot Spot, and (my personal favorite) an entity incorporated in 2021 called “All the Money in the World.”
Constella Intelligence found several official documents for Mr. Shefel that came from hacked Russian phone, automobile and residence records. They indicate Mr. Shefel is the registrant of a black Porsche Cayenne (Plate:X537SR197) and a Mercedes (Plate:P003PX90). Those vehicle records show Mr. Shefel was born on May 28, 1986.
Rusprofile reveals that at some point near the end of 2018, Shefel changed his last name to Lenin. DomainTools reports that in 2018, Mr. Shefel’s company Internet 2 LLC registered the domain name Lenin[.]me. This now-defunct service sold physical USSR-era Ruble notes that bear the image of Vladimir Lenin, the founding father of the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Pavel Vrublevsky remains imprisoned in Russia, awaiting trial on fraud charges levied against the payment company CEO in March 2022. Authorities allege Vrublevsky operated several fraudulent SMS-based payment schemes. They also accused Vrublevsky of facilitating money laundering for Hydra, the largest Russian darknet market. Hydra trafficked in illegal drugs and financial services, including cryptocurrency tumbling for money laundering, exchange services between cryptocurrency and Russian rubles, and the sale of falsified documents and hacking services.
In 2013, Vrublevsky was sentenced to 2.5 years in a Russian penal colony for convincing one of his top spammers and botmasters to launch a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against a ChronoPay competitor that shut down the ticketing system for the state-owned Aeroflot airline.
Following his release, Vrublevsky began working on a new digital payments platform based in Hong Kong called HPay Ltd (a.k.a. Hong Kong Processing Corporation). HPay appears to have had a great number of clients that were running schemes which bamboozled people with fake lotteries and prize contests.
KrebsOnSecurity sought comment on this research from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Secret Service, both of which have been involved in the Target breach investigation over the years. The FBI declined to comment. The Secret Service declined to confirm or dispute any of the findings, but said it is still interested in hearing from anyone who might have more information.
“The U.S. Secret Service does not comment on any open investigation and won’t confirm or deny the accuracy in any reporting related to a criminal manner,” the agency said in a written statement. “However, If you have any information relating to the subjects referenced in this article, please contact the U.S. Secret Service at mostwanted@usss.dhs.gov. The Secret Service pays a reward for information leading to the arrest of cybercriminals.”
The number of phishing websites tied to domain name registrar Freenom dropped precipitously in the months surrounding a recent lawsuit from social networking giant Meta, which alleged the free domain name provider has a long history of ignoring abuse complaints about phishing websites while monetizing traffic to those abusive domains.
The volume of phishing websites registered through Freenom dropped considerably since the registrar was sued by Meta. Image: Interisle Consulting.
Freenom is the domain name registry service provider for five so-called “country code top level domains” (ccTLDs), including .cf for the Central African Republic; .ga for Gabon; .gq for Equatorial Guinea; .ml for Mali; and .tk for Tokelau.
Freenom has always waived the registration fees for domains in these country-code domains, but the registrar also reserves the right to take back free domains at any time, and to divert traffic to other sites — including adult websites. And there are countless reports from Freenom users who’ve seen free domains removed from their control and forwarded to other websites.
By the time Meta initially filed its lawsuit in December 2022, Freenom was the source of well more than half of all new phishing domains coming from country-code top-level domains. Meta initially asked a court to seal its case against Freenom, but that request was denied. Meta withdrew its December 2022 lawsuit and re-filed it in March 2023.
“The five ccTLDs to which Freenom provides its services are the TLDs of choice for cybercriminals because Freenom provides free domain name registration services and shields its customers’ identity, even after being presented with evidence that the domain names are being used for illegal purposes,” Meta’s complaint charged. “Even after receiving notices of infringement or phishing by its customers, Freenom continues to license new infringing domain names to those same customers.”
Meta pointed to research from Interisle Consulting Group, which discovered in 2021 and again last year that the five ccTLDs operated by Freenom made up half of the Top Ten TLDs most abused by phishers.
Interisle partner Dave Piscitello said something remarkable has happened in the months since the Meta lawsuit.
“We’ve observed a significant decline in phishing domains reported in the Freenom commercialized ccTLDs in months surrounding the lawsuit,” Piscitello wrote on Mastodon. “Responsible for over 60% of phishing domains reported in November 2022, Freenom’s percentage has dropped to under 15%.”
Interisle collects data from 12 major blocklists for spam, malware, and phishing, and it receives phishing-specific data from Spamhaus, Phishtank, OpenPhish and the APWG Ecrime Exchange. The company publishes historical data sets quarterly, both on malware and phishing.
Piscitello said it’s too soon to tell the full impact of the Freenom lawsuit, noting that Interisle’s sources of spam and phishing data all have different policies about when domains are removed from their block lists.
“One of the things we don’t have visibility into is how each of the blocklists determine to remove a URL from their lists,” he said. “Some of them time out [listed domains] after 14 days, some do it after 30, and some keep them forever.”
Freenom did not respond to requests for comment.
This is the second time in as many years that a lawsuit by Meta against a domain registrar has disrupted the phishing industry. In March 2020, Meta sued domain registrar giant Namecheap, alleging cybersquatting and trademark infringement.
The two parties settled the matter in April 2022. While the terms of that settlement have not been disclosed, new phishing domains registered through Namecheap declined more than 50 percent the following quarter, Interisle found.
Phishing attacks using websites registered through Namecheap, before and after the registrar settled a lawsuit with Meta. Image: Interisle Consulting.
Unfortunately, the lawsuits have had little effect on the overall number of phishing attacks and phishing-related domains, which have steadily increased in volume over the years. Piscitello said the phishers tend to gravitate toward registrars that offer the least resistance and lowest price per domain. And with new top-level domains constantly being introduced, there is rarely a shortage of super low-priced domains.
“The abuse of a new top-level domain is largely the result of one registrar’s portfolio,” Piscitello told KrebsOnSecurity. “Alibaba or Namecheap or another registrar will run a promotion for a cheap domain, and then we’ll see flocking and migration of the phishers to that TLD. It’s like strip mining, where they’ll buy hundreds or thousands of domains, use those in a campaign, exhaust that TLD and then move on to another provider.”
Piscitello said despite the steep drop in phishing domains coming out of Freenom, the alternatives available to phishers are many. After all, there are more than 2,000 accredited domain registrars, not to mention dozens of services that let anyone set up a website for free without even owning a domain.
“There is no evidence that the trend line is even going to level off,” he said. “I think what the Meta lawsuit tells us is that litigation is like giving someone a standing eight count. It temporarily disrupts a process. And in that sense, litigation appears to be working.”
The domain name registrar Freenom, whose free domain names have long been a draw for spammers and phishers, has stopped allowing new domain name registrations. The move comes after the Dutch registrar was sued by Meta, which alleges the company ignores abuse complaints about phishing websites while monetizing traffic to those abusive domains.
Freenom’s website features a message saying it is not currently allowing new registrations.
Freenom is the domain name registry service provider for five so-called “country code top level domains” (ccTLDs), including .cf for the Central African Republic; .ga for Gabon; .gq for Equatorial Guinea; .ml for Mali; and .tk for Tokelau.
Freenom has always waived the registration fees for domains in these country-code domains, presumably as a way to encourage users to pay for related services, such as registering a .com or .net domain, for which Freenom does charge a fee.
On March 3, 2023, social media giant Meta sued Freenom in a Northern California court, alleging cybersquatting violations and trademark infringement. The lawsuit also seeks information about the identities of 20 different “John Does” — Freenom customers that Meta says have been particularly active in phishing attacks against Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users.
The lawsuit points to a 2021 study (PDF) on the abuse of domains conducted by Interisle Consulting Group, which discovered that those ccTLDs operated by Freenom made up five of the Top Ten TLDs most abused by phishers.
“The five ccTLDs to which Freenom provides its services are the TLDs of choice for cybercriminals because Freenom provides free domain name registration services and shields its customers’ identity, even after being presented with evidence that the domain names are being used for illegal purposes,” the complaint charges. “Even after receiving notices of infringement or phishing by its customers, Freenom continues to license new infringing domain names to those same customers.”
Meta further alleges that “Freenom has repeatedly failed to take appropriate steps to investigate and respond appropriately to reports of abuse,” and that it monetizes the traffic from infringing domains by reselling them and by adding “parking pages” that redirect visitors to other commercial websites, websites with pornographic content, and websites used for malicious activity like phishing.
Freenom has not yet responded to requests for comment. But attempts to register a domain through the company’s website as of publication time generated an error message that reads:
“Because of technical issues the Freenom application for new registrations is temporarily out-of-order. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience. We are working on a solution and hope to resume operations shortly. Thank you for your understanding.”
Image: Interisle Consulting Group, Phishing Landscape 2021, Sept. 2021.
Although Freenom is based in The Netherlands, some of its other sister companies named as defendants in the lawsuit are incorporated in the United States.
Meta initially filed this lawsuit in December 2022, but it asked the court to seal the case, which would have restricted public access to court documents in the dispute. That request was denied, and Meta amended and re-filed the lawsuit last week.
According to Meta, this isn’t just a case of another domain name registrar ignoring abuse complaints because it’s bad for business. The lawsuit alleges that the owners of Freenom “are part of a web of companies created to facilitate cybersquatting, all for the benefit of Freenom.”
“On information and belief, one or more of the ccTLD Service Providers, ID Shield, Yoursafe, Freedom Registry, Fintag, Cervesia, VTL, Joost Zuurbier Management Services B.V., and Doe Defendants were created to hide assets, ensure unlawful activity including cybersquatting and phishing goes undetected, and to further the goals of Freenom,” Meta charged.
It remains unclear why Freenom has stopped allowing domain registration. In June 2015, ICANN suspended Freenom’s ability to create new domain names or initiate inbound transfers of domain names for 90 days. According to Meta, the suspension was premised on ICANN’s determination that Freenom “has engaged in a pattern and practice of trafficking in or use of domain names identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark of a third party in which the Registered Name Holder has no rights or legitimate interest.”
A spokesperson for ICANN said the organization has no insight as to why Freenom might have stopped registering domain names. But it said Freenom (d/b/a OpenTLD B.V.) also received formal enforcement notices from ICANN in 2017 and 2020 for violating different obligations.
A copy of the amended complaint against Freenom, et. al, is available here (PDF).
March 8, 6:11 p.m. ET: Updated story with response from ICANN. Corrected attribution of the domain abuse report.
Are you hoping to buy a house or apply for a car, personal, or business loan at some point? A great credit score helps to achieve all those things. You never know the twists and turns life might take you, so even if these financial milestones aren’t on your radar now, it’s nice to know that a great credit score will open many doors for you when you’re ready. The better your credit score, the more likely you are to get the loan you want at the best interest rate. People spend years (even decades!) working to improve their credit scores to unlock numerous opportunities. In the blink of an eye though, a credit fraudster can erase all that hard work and inflict long-term credit damage. It can cost huge sums to repair and take years to correct.
Many people feel lost on how to prevent these problems or what to do if they suspect identity theft. Luckily, new McAfee services called credit lock and security freeze, which includes credit freeze, are great tools to add to your credit protection toolbelt. They’ll help protect your most personal information from thieves, and both services will help give you the peace of mind you need to confidently go about your day.
Keep reading to learn more about McAfee’s credit lock and security freeze and find out how you can use them to help you from the negative consequences of identity theft.
Credit fraud is a type of identity theft where a criminal uses your information to borrow money, open a new credit or debit card, or uses your card to make purchases that they never intend to pay off. Then, when the loan defaults and the bills stack up, the victim is often left with their credit score in shambles.
According to the FTC, credit fraud is the most common type of identity theft in 2020 and 2021, receiving nearly 18,000 reports from people saying that someone used their information to gain illegal access to their credit card accounts.1
To make sure we’re all on the same page, here are quick definitions of McAfee’s credit lock and security freeze services.
A credit lock and a credit freeze both stop companies from accessing your credit information without your consent when an application for a loan or credit card is submitted. The main difference lies in their speed and credit bureau coverage. By toggling a switch in the McAfee Protection Center, turning on a credit lock is almost instantaneous. A credit freeze can take up to a day to enable or remove; however, it may offer stronger financial loss protection in most U.S. states if an unauthorized line of credit goes through while all three credit bureaus are frozen. Also, McAfee’s credit lock stops one credit bureau from accessing your account, while a credit freeze enables you to halt all three.
Just make sure that you unlock and unfreeze your credit before you do the following:
These are all situations where a bank or creditor will need to access your credit files. Luckily, with significant purchases and financing opportunities like these, you usually plan ahead, so you should have plenty to time to enable access to your credit. To unlock your credit, just click the credit lock toggle. To unlock a freeze, use the same provided links, sign into your account, and follow the instructions from there.
To further help you decide which service may be best for your needs, here are the situations where credit lock and credit freeze would be most helpful.
McAfee credit lock lets you simply toggle on and off one credit bureau’s ability to access your credit report. Usually, filing a lock on your credit with a bureau requires filling out forms and remembering a PIN to apply or remove a lock. Not with McAfee’s credit lock! You can turn a lock on and off at will through the McAfee Protection Center.
Convenience and blazing speed are ideal in situations where you’re worried that a criminal has your personal information and may use it to open accounts in your name that could then damage your well-earned great credit. Some people may choose to always have the credit lock enabled and only unlock it when they’re applying for a credit card or loan. That way, they can feel better about the safety of their credit score.
Credit freeze provides protection and peace of mind just like credit lock; however it enables you to freeze your account at all three major credit bureaus. When creditors check your credit score, they could do so with any credit bureau. If you only freeze one bureau’s access to your information, that still leaves the other two to make inquiries, so it’s important to set up a freeze for each one to cover all your bases.
As mentioned, a credit freeze is just one type of security freeze offered by McAfee. If you’re worried about an identity thief opening not just credit cards, but also utility and/or bank accounts in your name, McAfee’s utility freeze and bank freeze may be additional services for you. Security freeze helps stop unauthorized fraud attempts by giving you quick links and phone numbers. Having all these contact details in one place really speeds up the process and takes the guesswork out of if you’re contacting the correct offices.
Dealing with identity theft or credit fraud is a scary and stressful situation. That’s why McAfee is here with tools that help you protect you. Credit lock and credit freeze may help you feel calmer in a situation of suspected or real identity theft and gives you peace of mind to help prevent credit fraud from happening in the first place. Speed is of the utmost importance when foiling a criminal, so both solutions are easy to use with intuitive design so you’re not wasting time trying to figure out how they work. Plus, neither will affect your credit score. They just stop creditors from looking at your credit files, while you continue to boost your credit with your smart habits.
With both credit lock or credit freeze in your back pocket, you can feel more secure knowing you’re better protected from credit fraud.
1Fortunly, “20 Worrying Identity Theft Statistics for 2022”
The post Credit Lock and Credit Freeze: Which Service Is Best for You? Both! appeared first on McAfee Blog.
All the kids are doing it, and so can you.
If you haven’t hopped onto a video chat with the family yet, the holidays are a great time to give it a whirl. While there are plenty of apps and services out there for video chatting, I put together a quick list of the more no-nonsense options.
Broadly speaking, I selected video chatting apps that are free, relatively straightforward, and possibly something you already have on your smartphone, tablet, or computer. From there, I also offer up some advice that can keep you and your family safe while you chat. Let’s take a look …
One of the easiest ways to hop onto a video chat is with your smartphone or tablet. They can save you a bit of configuring and fiddling around with settings because these devices have cameras, microphones, and video chat apps already built in. In that way, they’re optimized for video chat, so using one of them is practically “point and shoot.”
Depending on what smartphone or tablet you have, you have a couple of leading options:
Pre-installed on iPhones and iPads, FaceTime can connect up to 32 people on iOS and Mac OS devices at one time. That way, if you want to chat with a few family members at once, you can have plenty of people join in. Note that only iOS and Mac OS devices can use FaceTime, so the person you want to chat with will need FaceTime on a iOS or Mac OS device as well. Connections are quite simple. In fact, as simple as making a phone call. You can start a FaceTime call with a tap of family members in your contact list. Your device does the rest.
Google Duo is a voice chat app much akin to FaceTime that’s found on plenty of Android phones and tablets. However, it differs from FaceTime because it’s available for multiple platforms. For example, there’s a Google Duo app for iPhones, so if your grandkids have iPhones, they can install the Google Duo on their iPhones and have a chat with you on your Android phone.
Also, you can use Google Duo on a web browser without an app by clicking here. That’s a great option if you have a camera-ready laptop or computer—which we’ll talk about more next.) Google Duo also features “Family Mode” where you can put on masks and make doodles on the screen if you’re signed in with a Google account.
If you don’t have a smartphone or tablet, there are still plenty of options that are free and relatively easy as well.
For starters, you’ll need a laptop or computer with a microphone and camera, which is more or less standard in laptops today. If your laptop or computer doesn’t have that combo already, not to worry. There are plenty of moderately priced web cameras that include a microphone. I suggest getting one with a physical lens cap. That way it always protects your privacy. Likewise, you can always disconnect yours when it’s not in use.
With that, here are a few options for video chatting on your computer:
Originally aimed at a business audience, families and schools quickly latched on to Zoom for its ease of use at the start of the pandemic. Zoom offers unlimited time and unlimited calls for one-to-one meetings yet has a 40-minute limit once there are more than two devices connected. While there’s an app available, I recommend that you set up a free account and run it through a browser window. That way, you don’t have to deal with an install and you’ll always have the latest security protocols in play.
Skype from Microsoft has been around for a long time, getting its start back in the early 2000’s as a voice and text chatting app. Today, it comes standard on Windows PCs and supports apps for all kinds of tablets and smartphones too. Up to 50 people can join, which is of course plenty. If you want to create a video chat without an account, you can simply visit this page and start an instant video chat with a click. That’ll give you a link that you can copy and share with your family. And when they click on that link, you’ll all be connected.
Free to anyone with a free Google Gmail account, you can use Google Meet just by clicking its icon from your Google apps menu or by visiting https://meet.google.com/. Originally designed for businesses, governments, and schools, this premium product is now available to all. Some nice features include the ability to schedule a meeting with your family using Google Calendar and additional security features that help make sure your call is private. Like Zoom and Skype, it can run in the window of your browser, so there’s no app to download and install.
As I mentioned above, there’s practically setup when it comes to running a video call on your smartphone or tablet, as they’re already configured for video. Computers, however, may take a little more effort.
The first thing is to make sure that your microphone, speakers, and camera are all set up and ready to go. If you have a Windows computer, you can check out this quick article to get your audio set up and this article for setting up your camera. For Macs, check out this article for audio and this article for video.
From there, you can log into your video chat app or service of choice and give your audio and video a test just to make sure everything is a go. You can do this before you make a call by starting the app as you normally would and then clicking on the menu item for “Settings.” Each app handles it a little differently, yet the interface should show you if it detects your camera, microphone, and speakers. Once you’re set up, you likely won’t have to go back in and do it again.
Now, it’s time to think like a movie director. As you might think, the camera angle and lighting in your room make all the difference on a video chat.
In a way, the camera is the way you’ll make eye contact with your family. Set the camera or hold your device so that it’s at eye level with you. That way, it’ll appear like you’re making eye contact with them. Few things feel stranger on a video chat than a camera angle that appears to have you looking down at them (and with them looking up your nose in return).
As for lighting, avoid sitting with a light source behind you. The camera will adjust itself to the light source instead of you, putting your face in the dark. Instead, look to have a light source that’s in front and a bit off to the side from you. That’ll light your face without washing out your face in harsh light. Likewise, if you’re sitting in front of a computer monitor while you’re chatting, see if you can lower the brightness on the monitor. That’ll keep your video looking great as well.
Once you’re all set up, here are a few things that will help keep your calls private and secure.
If you’re initiating the chat, be sure to create a password that that uninvited parties can’t join the call. Also, don’t be shy about asking your family members to use a password on the calls they initiate. It’s pretty much a standard practice nowadays.
Many services, like Zoom, allow people to join a video chat by clicking a link. As with any link that’s sent to you, be sure that it’s legitimate. Confirm the link with the family member who sent it, particularly if you weren’t expecting one.
Likewise, make sure that you’re using comprehensive security software that protects you from scam emails and links, plus block links that could send you to sketchy websites. That way, if you do get sent a bogus invite link from a scammer, you’ll be protected.
When you click a link to join a video call from your computer, it will open a new browser tab that will prompt you to join the call. Often, there will be an option to “join using the app,” which your browser will automatically download if you click that option. However, the easiest way to join is by clicking the option to “join using my browser.” In addition to being a no-fuss option, it also means one less app on your device to keep current.
Aside from giving you the latest features and functionality, updates also often include essential security improvements. Set your computer to update itself automatically and consider using security software that will scan for vulnerabilities and install updates automatically as needed.
With the holidays upon us and the and New Year on the horizon, now’s a great time to give video chatting a try. As with any new app you try, do a little research of your own before you download it. Check out the news reviews to see if it’s right for you or if there have been any security concerns.
I hope this overview gives you a great start and that it becomes just one more of the many ways you keep in touch, whether during the holidays or year ’round.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and for more resources on staying secure from home, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post Zooming with the Grandkids: Five Easy Video Chat Apps for the Holidays appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Free VPNs May Still Come with a Price
If we’re being honest, many of us are consuming a lot of online content these days, whether it be for work, education, or sheer entertainment. I know my family is trying to balance what we need to do online, like meetings and classes, with fun activities like streaming movies, given that we are all spending more time safely at home.
But as a security professional what I’m really concerned about is how we are connecting to all this digital content. There has been a surge in VPN (virtual private network) downloads so far this year, showing that users are concerned about their online privacy, which is a good thing.
As you may know, a personal VPN is simply a piece of software that can establish a secure tunnel over the internet, offering you both privacy and freedom from IP-based tracking. It protects your identity and financial information by encrypting, or scrambling, the data that flows through the tunnel, and can mask your true location, making it appear as though you are connecting from somewhere else.
However, the myriad of VPN options—from free, to paid, to “freemium” (limited products offered on a trial basis for free, hoping customers will invest in more comprehensive, paid versions)—can be confusing and cause some customers to walk away unprotected. This is unfortunate, because here at McAfee we’ve recorded a growing number of network attacks, including targeted attacks against a variety of business and educational enterprises.
These threats mean that we need to do our best to ensure that our sensitive information stays safe, which is why I’d like to take a look at the difference between free VPNs and premium VPNs.
Sometimes a VPN is included in more robust security software, as it is in McAfee® Total Protection, but often it is a standalone tool, that is offered either at a monthly subscription rate, or for free. While it may be tempting to go for a free option, there are some serious considerations that you should take to heart.
Since free VPNs are not making money directly from their users, many make revenue indirectly, through advertising. This means that not only are users bombarded with ads, they are also exposed to tracking, and potentially malware. In fact, one study of 283 free VPN providers found that 72% included trackers. This is not that surprising, given that advertisers depend on gathering your personal data to better target their ads.
But beyond the frustration of ads, slowness, and upgrade prompts is the fact that some free VPN tools include malware that can put your sensitive information at risk. The same study found that 38% of the free VPN applications in the Google Play Store were found to have malware, such as keyloggers, and some even stole the data off of users’ devices.
Also concerning is how these free providers handle your data. In one worrying incident, a VPN provider exposed thousands of user logs and API access records openly on the web, including passwords and identity information.
VPNs are critical tools for enhancing our privacy and shouldn’t be an avenue for potentially opening the door to new risks. That’s why I always advise users to look for a paid VPN with the following features:
Unlimited Bandwidth —You want your network connection to stay secured no matter how much time you spend online.
Speedy Performance—We all know how frustrating a sluggish internet connection can be when you are trying to get things done. Whether connecting for productivity, education, or entertainment, we are all dependent on bandwidth. That’s why it’s important to choose a high-speed VPN that enhances your privacy, without sacrificing the quality of your connection.
Multiple Device Protection—These days many of us toggle between mobile devices, laptops, and computers, so they should all be able to connect securely.
Less Battery Drain—Some free mobile VPNs zap your battery life, making users less likely to stay protected. You shouldn’t have to choose between your battery life and safeguarding your privacy.
Ease of Use— As I’ve written recently, for technology to really work it has to be convenient. After all, these technologies should power your connected life, not serve as a hindrance.
Fortunately, we don’t have to sacrifice convenience, or pay high prices, for a VPN that can offer a high level of privacy and protection. A comprehensive security suite like McAfee Total Protection includes our McAfee® Safe Connect standalone VPN with auto-renewal and takes the worry out of connecting, so you can focus on what’s important to you and your family, and enjoy quality time together.
Stay Updated
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post Free VPNs May Still Come with a Price appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
In Part 1 of this blog, we introduced Trend Micro Cleaner One Pro, a one-stop shop to help you speed up your Mac, highlighting the Quick Optimizer, the Main Console, and the Cleaning Tools. In Part 2, we resume the discussion of how to make your Mac run faster with the remaining Cleaner One Pro features: System and Application Management, Privacy Protection, and Other Options.
Your Mac may get sluggish after a year or two of usage and you may find that booting up takes a lot longer. Doing a Startup Manager scan can help you reduce slowdown due to unwanted startup programs and services, to help your Mac boot faster.
Upon completing the scan, Startup Manager will identify apps under two categories: Login Items and Launch Agents.
Login Items are apps that run automatically upon login. You can manage these apps by enabling them to run automatically or disabling them to make your Mac more efficient. If you don’t need autorun, you can remove the apps from the list.
Launch Agents are background services that run automatically on System startup for the extension features of apps. You can manage these services by letting them run automatically or by disabling them to make your Mac boot faster. Similarly, you can remove these agents if you don’t need them or they’re broken.
When a user installs an app that doesn’t meet their expectations, they’ll never use it again. In many cases, they remove the app by simply dragging it into the trash, assuming the action completely removes the app, but this is not always true. When you uninstall an app, there are often associated files left on your Mac, even after you have emptied the Trash. They’re known as leftovers.
Leftovers are an app’s associated files and folders that can include different languages, log files, agents, or processes that might try to start an application. App Manager aims to resolve this and helps you clean up your Mac by completely removing app leftovers. App Manager detects all app leftovers automatically so you can remove them with just one click.
Data security and privacy are especially important and managing these applies to anyone collecting and keeping data. Data that has reached its retention limit needs to be permanently removed from your file system and to be sure it can’t be recovered you need to overwrite the file with random series of binary data multiple times. This process is often referred to as shredding. With File Shredder, you can remove sensitive files from your hard disk without worrying that they can be recovered.
Preferences allows you to manage how the Cleaner One Pro app performs. In Preferences, you’ll see General, Notifications, Memory, Duplicates, Whitelists and Auto Select.
On the General tab, you can choose Auto start at login and other options according to how you would like Cleaner One Pro to behave during startup.
On the Notifications tab, you can disable the notification about smart memory optimization.
Cleaner One Pro is also equipped with a Smart Memory Optimization feature on the Memory tab. This feature uses artificial intelligence. You can set auto clean when your available memory is low or when an app is closed.
The Duplicates, Whitelists and Auto Select tabs work when you use the Duplicate Files feature on the main console. When there are too many duplicate files on your Mac, you can set the rules on the minimum file size, as well as which files to exempt or prioritize during deletion.
If you need technical assistance about Cleaner One Pro, click the robot icon either in the Apple Menu window or on the Main Console.
A chat support person will attend to your concerns or suggestions when using Cleaner One Pro. In case there is no available support engineer, you can send an email by clicking Send Email. Make sure to provide the correct email address.
Aside from Cleaner One Pro for Mac, we offer Antivirus One for Mac—as well as Cleaner One for iPhone, which you can download by scanning the QR Code. You can also submit your ideas for Other Tools by clicking the panel.
As you use your Mac over time, you need to maintain it to keep it running smoothly. Trend Micro Cleaner One Pro can clean up your disk space, help boost performance, and solve other Mac issues you might encounter during your daily work. As you consider it for your Mac, you may have remaining questions:
What’s the difference between the Free version and the Paid version? The Free version of Cleaner One Pro includes the Memory Optimizer, basic CPU and Network Monitoring, a Junk Files Cleaner, a Big Files Scanner, a Disk Map, and the Startup Manager. The Paid upgrade of Cleaner One Pro unlocks more features, including more Advanced CPU/Network Monitoring, a Duplicate Finder, a Similar Photos Scanner, an App Manager, and a File Shredder.
Is it safe to use Cleaner One Pro? Cleaner One Pro is notarized by Apple, which assures its users both security and privacy.
How can I download Cleaner One Pro? Cleaner One Pro is distributed via the official Trend Micro website and other authorized channels. Note that Cleaner One Pro is also available for Windows. To make it easy for the readers of this blog series, we’ve provided the download links here: Download Mac Version – Download Windows Version
Go to Cleaner One Windows or to Cleaner One Mac for more information or to purchase the apps.
The post Cleaner One Pro Speeds Up Your Mac: Part 2 appeared first on .
The Mac has always been pretty easy to use, but even the most ardent Mac supporters know there comes a time when their Mac is no longer new and they notice slowdowns in its performance, particularly after intensive use. They’d like a handy one-stop tool to help them optimize memory and CPU performance, free up disk space, and generally speed up their Mac, since they don’t want to dig around in the MacOS for buried utilities they don’t know how to use. Fortunately, Trend Micro has a solution for that.
Trend Micro Cleaner One Pro is an easy-to-use, all-in-one disk cleaning and optimization utility that can help you boost your Mac’s performance. Cleaner One Pro includes a number of Mac housecleaning tools such as a Memory Optimizer, a Junk Files cleaner, a Big Files scanner, a Duplicate Files finder, an App Manager, a File Shredder, and a Disk Map. These functions are all rolled into an easy-to-use interface that helps you visualize your Mac’s usage, while freeing up memory and storage on your Mac.
In this two-part blog, we will show you how you can use Cleaner One Pro to make your Mac run faster, walking you through its features. In Part 1, we focus on Quick Optimizer, the Main Console, and the Cleaning Tools. In Part 2, we’ll focus on System and Application Management, Privacy Protection, and some Other Options.
Once you’ve installed Cleaner One Pro, its Quick Optimizer appears in the Apple Menu, with handy tools to speed up your Mac. Click the icon and it displays a Console that monitors your Memory, Junk Files, CPU, and Network Usage, while letting you Optimize your Memory Usage and Clean your Junk Files with just one click. System Optimizer opens a Window onto the contents of your Mac for more detailed management.
Memory Optimizer
There are applications running in the background of your Mac that take up physical memory and affect its performance. The Memory Optimizer gives you control over how your computer consumes its memory resources—and you can free up your Mac’s memory in seconds with just one click on the Optimize button. If you want to see which apps are taking up significant memory, you can click the three-dot icon next to Memory Usage. It will show your Mac’s memory usage by app, in descending order. Click the Information (i) icon in the Memory Usage window for a breakdown of the types of memory being used.
Junk files, temporary files, system files and other non-essential items will accumulate on your Mac over time. These files take up a lot of space on your hard drive and may degrade the performance of your Mac as you reach higher disk usage. Click the Clean button and the Junk Files cleaner quickly removes application cache, system log files, update files, temporary files and hidden leftover files. You can also see the details of the identified Junk Files by clicking the three-dot icon next to Junk Files.
When your computer starts to run slowly it’s helpful to have a snapshot of its CPU usage. With this feature, you can see which apps are using significant CPU resources and how much percentage they’re using. It also let you know how long your computer has been up and running, since system reliability can degrade if it’s been awhile since you restarted your Mac.
If you want to keep an eye on your bandwidth consumption and avoid exceeding data caps, it’s useful to know the real-time download and upload speeds on your Mac. The Network Usage Monitor also provides a view of other network related information such as your Wi-Fi signal quality.
The Main Console is the core workplace in Trend Micro Cleaner One Pro and provides the following features, which are presented here grouped by purpose:
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To access the Main Console, click System Optimizer in the Cleaner One Pro Apple Menu. The first time you do, you’ll need to authorize full access to your disk, so Cleaner One Pro can access more junk files. Simply click Grant Access in the System Optimizer window and watch the video or follow the written instructions. Complete the steps by closing Cleaner One Pro, then reload it. You’re now ready to begin optimizing.
The hard drive on your Mac holds the entire Mac operating system and important files including your data. As you use your Mac, over time its hard drive will accumulate junk files. These junk files are generated by the system and other programs. Cleaner One Pro is equipped with advanced and efficient algorithms that scan and remove junk files within seconds. Click Scan to scan for Junk Files and when the scan is done, either check a whole category or individual items in the category, then click Remove.
You may have a lot of clutter on your Mac in the form of big or old files that you probably no longer need and may have just forgotten about. Removing big unused files can recover a lot of disk space, but it could be time-consuming to delete them if done manually. Also, it is hard to select files for deletion if you don’t know the proper context— where the files are stored or how important they may be.
Big Files scanner provides a big file collector where you can easily spot and remove these files if you don’t need them anymore. Additionally, if you hover your mouse on a file, you’ll see a magnifier and a lock icon. Once you click the magnifier icon, you’ll locate the actual file. If you click the lock icon, the file will be added to the Ignore List, which will be locked.
Disk Map is a significant tool that helps you analyze the usage of your storage in a visual and interactive map. It quickly scans your drive and builds a visualization of files on the target folder of your Mac, allowing you to easily navigate the system. With Disk Map, you can find out the date when the file/folder was created, modified, and last opened. Furthermore, hovering your mouse on a folder then clicking the magnifier icon will direct you to the file’s location.
Another practice that you are probably comfortable doing is backing-up important files, photos, program installation files and apps on your hard drive. While this is a good practice, it creates duplicate files on your Mac that eventually add clutter and consume disk space. It’s also hard to find files in name searches when you have too many of them.
The Duplicate Files function lets you select a source folder where it will inspect and identify duplicate files on your Mac. In the scan results, an option called “Auto Select” helps you automatically select duplicate files. The information provided by “Auto Select” is listed below:
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You can choose Remove to Trash or Delete Permanently on the confirmation page.
Often, you organize pictures of travels and life events, and also keep a copy to ensure you don’t lose those captured moments. But as digital photos pile up, often similar to others on your drive, they take up a lot of space. To assist you cleaning these up, use Similar Photos, and then choose your photo library to scan the photos on your Mac.
The result will display similar photos and you can choose the ones you don’t need, and the files will be added in the selected list. Click the Remove button to completely delete them from your hard drive.
That’s it for now! The second part of this blog will take up the remaining toolsets of Trend Micro Cleaner One Pro.
Go to Cleaner One Mac for more information or to purchase the app.
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