🚨🚨🚨!!!SCAM ALERT!!!🚨🚨🚨
For attention of people in Ireland - the #Mastodaoine @mastodon.ie
A good friend shared a text message they received from "eFlow" about an unpaid toll. eFlow is an Irish motorway toll operator.
(narrator's voice: It was not from eFlow 🙄).

Their phone had put it into the spam folder, but not all phones have equal capabilities, so this may get through on some devices.

If you click on the link, you will get taken to a very realistic and similar looking website, to the real eFlow one. They want you to update your details with them, including payment card.

I think most of you that have seen previous posts from me, won't fall victim to such a scam, but please do share this, so others will be aware of it.

If anybody has gone through with this "update", please contact your bank's fraud number immediately.

Let's stay safe out there.

h/t @justcallmepips for sharing.
#SecuritySimplified #Scam #ScamText #FakeSite

Time for my own #Introduction on #Mastodon. I planted a flag on my name here some years ago, though not realising at the time that there could be other Liam Lynches on other servers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm known as @L2actual on the bird.

I'm based in Ireland, in a rural location in County Tipperary, close to Limerick City. I'm a cybers trainer and consultant for micro, small and medium businesses and charities. I feel strongly about helping to protect these folk, as they typically don't have the resources that larger orgs can leverage. So I show them, in very simple terms, how they can easily and cheaply protect themselves and their organisations from the evil doers. I live to the maxim #SecuritySimplified as that is how I deliver the training and support.

I always had a kind of protective nature in me. I was in the FCA (army reserve) for 5 years in my late teens and I was often picked for sentry or escort duties. In college, I did event security at college gigs, especially rag week, for the 3 years I was there. I was recalled for rag week security for 2 years after I'd left college. I also worked as a doorman in a Limerick city centre pub/nightclub for a couple of years.

In college I studied for a diploma in Software Engineering and when I left I worked as a COBOL programmer on IBM System/38 and then AS/400s (iSeries). I was also handy with a toolkit and picked up a lot from watching PC techs working on the various computers and printers, so I was able to start looking after the hardware too. I also learned lots about networking in this time too, so I really enjoyed the technology side of things as opposed to the programming.

While I was still working full-time in my first job, the college I got my diploma in started to offer a degree course. So I came to an agreement with my employer that I would still work full-time, but with my timetable being flexible, to accommodate attending lectures, etc. My dissertation was titled "Computer Viruses: Germ warfare and the cost of health insurance". 😏 The only reason for the degree was to have it on the CV, because every job being advertised at the time had it as a requirement. I still see this today as a pass/fail criteria when I'm tendering for work. 🤷‍♂️

I moved around a few companies doing both programming and IT work. I subscribed to a pile of IT newsletters in order to keep up-to-date with things, but I was always more interested in reading the security type news. InfoSec was something of a new area in those days of the late 90s and most of the responsibility seemed to lay with IT ... i.e. Me!

In my last corporate job, while it was a "good" job and which I did it well, I never really enjoyed it. An opportunity arose to take some redundancy which got me out of the rut I was stuck in. I tried getting into some infosec roles, but I firmly believe the fact I was in my mid/late 40s at the time went against me and the hiring companies would have preferred somebody more junior.

So I took the plunge and set up my own business, L2 Cyber Security Solutions, in January 2016 and while it was very slow getting business early on, it has been growing steadily since.

Running my own business gives me the flexibility to be able to do something I truly love. Walking my dogs. I currently have two, Scamp and Paddy (see my other pinned toot for a picture). For the last 20 years or so, I've always had rescue dogs of some shape or description. Foxy (2002-2014), Scully (2002-2005), Abbey (2003-2018), Dino (2007-2020), Scamp (2014-today), Paddy (2019-today) - the first year given there may not be their birth year, but is the year they were adopted. Scully, for example, was at least 10 years old when we got him.

My ex-wife and I fostered dogs for smaller rescues for a few years as well. One time we had 14 dogs in the house. 10 puppies from the same litter, their mother and our own three. That was a pretty hectic time, particularly as the mother came to us VERY undernourished and the pups came a few days later. She also only had eight working teats, so we had to make sure all the pups got fed. We eventually stopped fostering as it was getting harder and harder for us to handover the dogs we looked after to their new forever homes.

There's probably lots more I could put in here, but I think the above gives a good understanding of me and my two loves - cybers and dogs.

🚨Top 5 tips for shopping safely online🚨
#SecuritySimplified