Integrid LLC Blog

It’s fun to be critical of social media, but there’s no denying the massive influence it has on individuals, societies, businesses, and even the political landscape. Since social media plays such a big part in so many areas of your digital life, it’s important to know how it all factors into your personal rights and privacy. Today, we want to examine the idea of who really owns what you post on social media and who is in control of your accounts… because it’s definitely not you.

Blockchain technology is in the zeitgeist, but few people know how to explain it to someone else. They might think that it’s something to do with Bitcoin, to which they would be right, but it’s more broad than that. Today, we want to explore what the blockchain is and some of the ways businesses are using it.

Subscription services are all over the place these days, and we’re willing to bet that you have a couple of lingering subscriptions that you’ve either forgotten about or don’t care enough about to cancel immediately. The Federal Trade Commission, however, seems to care enough to take action with a ruling that makes canceling subscriptions easier. Businesses won’t be able to add more hurdles to their subscription cancellations, which is good for end users.

You may remember the hubbub and hullabaloo that ensued when Josh Allen, a digital artist, won first place at the 2022 Colorado State Fair’s Fine Arts Competition in the Digital Arts/Digitally Manipulated Photography contest with an image—"Théâtre D'opéra Spatial"—that he had created using AI. Allen continues defending his work, now butting heads with the Copyright Office.

Problems with cybersecurity can really sink your business. Unfortunately, more opportunists are out there today looking to profit off of business’ lack of vigilance. One example of this are large-scale scam operations that have been running in Southeast Asia, and they are now spreading to other parts of the world. These scams, called "pig butchering" scams, have caused major harm, with around $75 billion lost worldwide in 2023.

Funerals are solemn events, and sadly, some people take advantage of those who are grieving. Recently, scammers have been using Facebook to target people by offering fake links to live-streamed funerals in exchange for credit card information.

Sextortion scams are far from glamorous. These attacks involve a scammer claiming to have compromising photos or videos of their target engaged in explicit activities—often suggesting this footage was captured through their online behavior. The scammer then threatens to release this material unless a ransom is paid.

The state of Internet security is always a trip. There are scams literally everywhere and there are better minds than ours that want to solve the myriad of problems that users run into online. One such platform is the secure communications software Telegram founded by Pavel Durov. In this attempt to revolutionize the instant messaging space, he’s found himself in some pretty hot water. Let’s dive right in.

On Friday, July 18th, a global update—codenamed “Falcon”—to cybersecurity company CrowdStrike’s software triggered events that brought major infrastructures and societal needs to their knees… despite affecting less than one percent of all Windows systems.

Now that about one and a half weeks have passed, let’s check in and see what happened, both leading up to this event and in the days since.