Today, McAfee Corp., a global leader in online protection, announced the launch of its new McAfee Privacy & Identity Guard product available at Staples stores nationwide. McAfee's Privacy & Identity Guard will help Staples customers safeguard their identity and privacy online. In the U.S. 70% of adults are concerned about their ability to keep their information private. And more than half (52%) of U.S. adults want to be more in control of personal information and data online. Therefore, regaining control of personal data, and the data often most sought after by cybercriminals, has never been more important.

Staples customers will have access to McAfee Privacy & Identity Guard and will be able to proactively monitor and remove data online to help prevent potential identity theft and fraud. With an industry-leading set of features, McAfee Privacy & Identity Guard provides visibility into the risky places personal information is available, including the dark web, data broker sites, and sites that hold data tied to unused or old accounts. Customers can then take action to reduce the amount of personal data online and, in turn, lower the risk of identity theft.

Google has made changes to its Google One plans yet again, although this time around, its customers are actually getting more for their money. For those not familiar with the Google One service, it's Google's Dropbox, Microsoft's OneDrive and Apple's iCloud. However, Google has included things like support for its services though its One service and higher tiers have seen added benefits beyond more storage space, such as free access to Google's VPN service. Now the company has decided to give those on its 100 GB US$1.99 and 200 GB US$2.99 service tiers access to not only its VPN service, but has also added what the company calls a dark web report.

The dark web report allows you to search for potential stolen private information on the dark web, or rather, Google does the searching for you and tells you if there are any results in a report. The tricky part here is that you need to have the right info to search for in the first place, but it could be something simple like your email address or phone number, but it could also be your credit card details. The VPN service is for the time being limited to 22 countries that you can find in the screenshot below. It's unlikely that Google offers the best VPN service out there, but it could help protect against man in the middle attacks when using public WiFi if nothing else and it's a decent perk if you're already paying for the Google One service.

An Europol-coordinated international investigation has brought down Darkmarket, the largest operating illegal marketplace in the Dark Web prior to the takedown. The move saw Europol coordinate an international team composed of national security forces working in tandem with Europol's investigators, and culminated with the arrest (by German forces) of a 34-year-old Australian citizen thought to be the head of the operation near the German-Danish border. The partnership between Germany, Australia, Denmark, Moldova, Ukraine, the United Kingdom (the National Crime Agency), and the USA (DEA, FBI, and IRS), coordinated by Europol, thus put to an end an illegal operation that served some 500,000 users.

The DarkMarket featured over 2,400 sellers, and operated at an annual pace of 320,000 transactions - Europol estimates that the marketplace thus moved some €140 million. The website obviously made use of cryptocurrencies to operate, with an estimated flow-through of about 4 650 bitcoin and 12 800 monero being transferred related to the website's operation. Users of DarkMarket mainly trafficked in all kinds of drugs and sold counterfeit money, stolen or counterfeit credit card details, anonymous SIM cards and malware. The market's infrastructure was taken down as well, with the police forces confiscating over 20 servers in Ukraine and Moldova, where the operation was apparently located. Officials said Tuesday that the information gathered from the DarkMarket seizures would hopefully lead to further investigations.