Freezing Your Mobile Account

Freezing Your Mobile Account

Update: 2025-07-14
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Description

Your cell phone number uniquely identifies you. Many companies rely on this 1-to-1 relationship to authenticate you to their systems. So if someone were to somehow manage to steal your mobile phone number - a hack called SIM swapping - they could use that to impersonate you and compromise any of your accounts that are validated via SMS or phone call. There's a new tool to combat this scam that's better than the old-style account PIN codes. I'll explain how it works.



In the news: many Brother printers have serious cyber vulnerabilities; Belkin in abandoning Wemo smart devices next January; Xfinity's WiFi routers can detect motion in your entire home; Bluesky is rolling out age verification in the UK; California is using drones to catch the use of illegal fireworks; McDonald's AI hiring bot was hacked to expose millions of applicants' data; Mexican drug cartel hacked FBI phone to catch informants; US strikes blow against North Korean fake worker scams; Denmark is looking to ditch Microsoft products.



Article Links




New Vulnerabilities Expose Millions of Brother Printers to Hacking https://www.securityweek.com/new-vulnerabilities-expose-millions-of-brother-printers-to-hacking/ 



Belkin pulls the plug on Wemo smart home products which will stop working in 2026 https://9to5google.com/2025/07/10/belkin-wemo-smart-home-shutdown-list/ 



Using WiFi Motion in the Xfinity app https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/wifi-motion 



Bluesky is rolling out age verification in the UK https://www.theverge.com/news/704468/bluesky-age-verification-uk-online-safety-act 



Huge fines coming for Californians caught by drone with illegal fireworks https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/california-drones-illegal-fireworks-20629637.php 



McDonald’s AI Hiring Bot Exposed Millions of Applicants’ Data https://www.wired.com/story/mcdonalds-ai-hiring-chat-bot-paradoxai/ 



Drug cartel hacked FBI official’s phone to track and kill informants https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/mexican-drug-cartel-hacked-fbi-officials-phone-to-track-informant-report-says/ 



Identities of More Than 80 Americans Stolen for North Korean IT Worker Scams https://www.wired.com/story/identities-of-80-plus-americans-stolen-for-north-korean-it-worker-scams/ 



Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-denmark-is-dumping-microsoft-office-and-windows-for-libreoffice-and-linux/ 



Tip of the Week: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/freezing-your-mobile-account/ 




Further Info




Tom’s Hardware on WiFi Motion: https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/routers/new-xfinity-router-motion-detecting-feature-stokes-privacy-fears-feature-powered-by-wi-fi-signals 



RockYou password list: https://cybernews.com/security/rockyou2024-largest-password-compilation-leak/ 



LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/libreoffice/ 



Eurostack: https://eurostack.eu/ 



Running Linux in a VM on Windows: https://itsfoss.com/install-linux-mint-in-virtualbox/ 



Age verification: https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/05/06/age-verification-wants-your-face/ 



My book: https://fdsd.me/book 



My newsletter: https://fdsd.me/newsletter 



Support our mission! https://fdsd.me/support 



Give the gift of privacy and security: https://fdsd.me/coupons 



Get your Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons Merch! https://fdsd.me/merch 




Table of Contents




0:00:00 : Intro



0:00:17 : DEF CON coming up fast



0:03:34 : News preview



0:06:31 : New Vulnerabilities Expose Millions of Brother Printers to Hacking



0:11:51 : Belkin pulls the plug on Wemo smart home products



0:14:25 : Using WiFi Motion in the Xfinity app



0:21:19 : Bluesky is rolling out age verification in the UK



0:26:49 : Huge fines coming for Californians caught by drone with illegal fireworks



0:29:36 : McDonald’s AI Hiring Bot Exposed Millions of Applicants’ Data



0:35:31 : Drug cartel hacked FBI official’s phone to track and k...
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Freezing Your Mobile Account

Freezing Your Mobile Account

Carey Parker