If you have engaged with internet culture at all in recent years, you have probably come across the term “catfish”, first coined in the 2010 documentary of the same name. A catfish is someone who uses false information to cultivate a persona online that does not represent their true identity. This commonly involves using stolen or edited photos, usually taken from an unwitting third party.

Catfish will use this information to create a more appealing version of themselves, then engage in continued one-on-one interactions with another person (or people) who are unaware of the deception.

Oh dear.

Late yesterday I received a strange text from "PayPal" informing me that a payment for $999.99 had just been declined. It looks like we might have a new scam on our hands.

The deep web and its inner recess, the dark web - those less well-trodden parts of the internet beyond the reach of Google and Bing - are not for the faint-hearted or untrained. With the right tools, however, there's little to fear and plenty to discover. Here's how you can start exploring the deep web without having to worry about your digital well-being.

Most internet users wouldn't want to share their browsing history with the rest of the world. (It's one of the reasons incognito mode is so popular.) This is especially true of people who look at questionable online material. So what would you be willing to pay if someone had a secret recording of you watching porn, taken on your webcam?

Ripping the faces off ATMs and injecting them with malware is great fun, sure, but not so much when you get caught by a security guard and tossed in jail. For these reasons and more, many cyber criminals are turning to a less than hands-on approach and attacking ATMs remotely instead.

Reporting a crime should not be as traumatic as the experience of the crime itself. But unfortunately this is the sad reality for many victims of online fraud. Australians reported more than $229 million lost to fraud according to a report published last year by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

But behind every statistic is a person, and there are millions of victims globally who experience a wide range of online fraud. Read on to find out more.

The persistent rumour of a massive Dropbox hack has finally been confirmed -- and the details aren't good. Independent analysis has revealed that over 68 million Dropbox user names and passwords are freely available on the internet. If you didn't do it already, you really need to reset your password.

If you’ve ever forgotten your phone or left it at home for the day, you will have realised just how much you use it. On average, we check our mobile phones about 110 times a day. Using them for just about everything, from summoning an Uber car and paying for our latest Amazon purchases, to receiving prescriptions and even tracking shares and trading on the stock market.

Mr Robot is a fictional TV drama following the life and times of security engineer, hacker and cyber-vigilante Elliot Alderson. The show has won plaudits for turning hacktivism and cybersecurity into exciting television -- but is any of it accurate? During a recent Reddit AMA, Kasperksy Lab's global director Costin Raiu weighed in on the authenticity of the show. Read on for his opinion.

In 2015, a whopping $229 million was reported stolen through online scams in Australia. Over 130,800 scam complaints were made to the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN) and ACCC -- a sharp increase from the previous year. In short, Aussies are losing more money and getting scammed more often, with the main culprits being investment and online dating scams. Here are some tips from the ACCC to help you protect yourself.

Online classifieds website Gumtree has been hacked. The incident occurred over the long weekend and attackers were able to access some user information. Here's what we know so far.

As any online shopper knows, all credit cards have a 3-digit card verification value (CVV or CVV2) code printed on the back. Merchants are forbidden from storing this information -- so how do online fraudsters manage to get hold of it? Here's what you need to know.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull served up a $230 million Cyber Security Defence Strategy to bolster our protection against cybercriminals and nation state hacking attempts. How did the IT security industry feel about the plan? Is $230 million even enough? Read on to find out.

Do you have a competitor to your business that you want to bring down? Why not launch a distributed denial of service (DDos) attack on them to cripple their website? You may not have the technical skills to do this yourself but there are plenty of hackers out there who are offering up their unique and highly illegal skillsets to do it for you; and they provide great customer service to boot. Want to find out more? Read on.

Not all hackers are out to get you. Ethical or "white hat" hackers use their expertise to evaluate the security of existing computer networks so they can be improved and strengthened. This infographic lists 15 famous ethical hackers, the vulnerabilities they helped to expose and how much cash they received for their troubles.

There's a lot of debate about which kinds of passwords are the most secure, but most agree you should change your passwords often to keep those pesky hackers guessing. However, it turns out that IT departments' obsession with mandatory password changes could be all wrong.

A large-scale malware hijacking threat has been discovered that's capable of taking over Android phones and gaining access to users' bank logins. Vulnerable banking apps include Westpac, Commonwealth Bank, St. George, National Australia Bank, Bankwest and ANZ. Here's what you need to know.

We’ve heard a lot about ransomware, a type of malware that holds a victim's computer and all its files to ransom, but how many people and businesses actually pay up? Security company Bitdefender has conducted research on this topic.