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Justin Lavelle is the social media director and blogger for BeenVerified.com. He is based out of Northern Virginia.
Recent Articles by Justin
3 Ways to Better Protect Yourself From a Hack
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December 18, 2014
The ongoing saga of the Sony hack, from gossip about Angelina Jolie’s acting skills to disturbing threats against theaters planning to show The Interview, has dominated headlines the past couple of weeks. Amid the North Korean intrigue, one lesser- followed aspect is that many former Sony employees whose data were hacked announced they would sue the company for failing to protect their data. Anyone paying attention to the news lately would be rightly concerned about the number of data breaches or hacks suffered by major companies from Home Depot to JP Morgan Chase and Target.
Read More >Avoid These Shocking Holiday Scams
December 23, 2014
It should come as no surprise that this time of year is ripe for scams and con artists. The NRF estimates that nearly 20% of all retail sales take place during the holiday months. Anytime there is a flood of money exchanging hands, there will unfortunately be a handful of thieves ready to take advantage. In addition to the tool utilizing a background check when you have a funny feeling about someone, you should be aware of the following perennial holiday scams to help prevent you from having a Blue Christmas (or Hannuakah, or Kwanza or… Festivus).
Read More >Blizzard Boyfriends
January 26, 2015
Here in NYC we are battening down the hatches as an historic blizzard approaches. If you’d like to nerd out to the snowfall potential and how many inches we need for it to break records, we recommend the data blog FiveThirtyEight. (The number some of us are rooting to surpass, and others dreading, is 26.9 inches). While headlines about the total snowfall, travel delays and emptying supermarkets have been common, one unusual storm-related headline in particular caught our attention from Business Insider:
Read More >Match.com Removes Profile of "Cannibal Cop"
January 23, 2015
In a reminder of all the types of people who you could possibly (and likely don’t want to) meet on an online dating site, The Huffington Post reports that Match.com decided to remove the profile of the alleged “Cannibal Cop” from its site after numerous requests from other users and strong media attention. The ex-NYPD officer who was initially convicted of planning to kill women and eat them, including his ex-wife, had his online dating profiled outed this week by the New York Post in a pun-filled article that noted among other things, the man’s passion for cooking.
Read More >New Year, Old Online Dating Scams
January 22, 2015
ABC 7 News reported yesterday of a woman targeted by an online dating scammer posing as a US Army sergeant. According to the official Armed Services newspaper Stars & Stripes, these types of scams are prevalent as the scammer simply steals a photo of the member of the armed forces from their social media profiles to use on unsuspecting women. We encourage you to read the full story at the link above on how this scam develops, but thought we would reiterate some of the key points for avoiding these type of romance scams, whether they come wrapped in camouflage or not.
Read More >One Million Reasons to Be Careful With Your Phone
December 11, 2014
Yesterday GigaOM reported that thieves steal over one million cell phones in the US annually. As the article notes, that means one tenth of all robberies involve a cell phone. We previously wrote an extensive post on why it’s not a good idea to keep sensitive photos, such as naked selfies, on your phone for this reason among others. The fact that added protections such as kill switches are becoming increasingly common, doesn’t invalidate the need to be careful with what you store on your phone.
Read More >Our Most Popular Blogs of 2014
December 31, 2014
As 2014 comes to a close here is a look at some our most popular blog posts: 1. Top 3 Surprising Things in a Background Check Other Than a Criminal Record There is more data than just a criminal record to be found in an individual’s background check. Read this post to find out some of the more surprising things you can find. 2. 3 Reasons to Keep a Background Check App Handy This Weekend
Read More >Top 3 Surprising Things in a Background Check Other Than a Criminal Record
January 13, 2015
When people think of background checks, their minds tend to go immediately to criminal incidents, but background checks actually provide a wide range of information beyond any criminal history. The top three surprising things you might find in a background check includes: past associates, bankruptcies, and information on old social media profiles. The old saying “birds of feather flock together” may not be true in all cases, but it is true that you can often judge a person by the company he or she keeps.
Read More >Top 3 Ways to Handle Rejection in Online Dating
December 10, 2014
Rejection is a difficult thing to stomach and new research indicates it can even impact your nervous system. One arena where rejection is a fact of life is online dating. The reality is that people use online dating for a variety of purposes, and on certain platforms like Tinder, the majority of users view it as a game and not a way to find a serious partner. With such an unpleasant feeling as rejection bound to impact almost anyone who tries online dating, we thought it a good idea to list the best ways to keep rejection from ruining your day, week or month.
Read More >Your Stupidly Simple Password Is Begging to Be Hacked
January 20, 2015
2014 was finally the year that Internet and data security became mainstream concerns from the celebrity iCloud hack to the alleged cyber assault by North Korea on Sony Pictures. Despite the constant headlines about the importance of a strong password, it seems few of us are taking that imperative seriously, based on the just released list of last year’s most popular passwords, compiled by SplashData. As Fast Company reports, some of the most common passwords are so simple such as “123456” and the perennial favorite “password” that one wouldn’t need a degree in computer science to hack into your computer or cloud storage account.
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