TECH

Speed matters more than anything else. Call the company that moved the money, lock down your accounts, report it — and watch out for the second scam that targets victims of the first.

A SIM swap moves your number to a scammer's phone — and with it, every text-message login code. Every major carrier now has a free lock that stops it. Turn yours on.

Photos, contacts, texts, and the two-factor codes you need to get into everything else. Here's how to back up an iPhone or Android — and the step almost everyone forgets.

A password manager plus two-factor authentication closes off the two most common ways accounts get compromised. Neither takes more than twenty minutes to set up.

Urgency, a mismatched sender address, and a link that doesn't go where the text says it does. Learn the pattern once and you'll catch it every time after.

Data brokers compile and sell your personal information legally. You can opt out of most of them — it's just not made easy, and no one tells you it's an option.

Most of the web is encrypted by default now, which changes what a VPN actually protects you from on public wifi. It's not nothing — it's just not what the ads say.