Researchers with Ontario Tech University, PureSquare, and CQR Cybersecurity have published a new study warning that consumers and businesses that use separate VPNs and password managers are susceptible to concurrent multi-vector attacks that put their data at risk.
The use of disparate password managers and VPNs from different vendors (security tool fragmentation) creates a previously unknown security gap. Threat actors exploit this gap and consumer ‘alert fatigue’ to steal credentials.
The measured cost of security tools fragmentation:
- 44% of users receive overlapping alerts.
- 38% receiving overlapping alerts say they ignore them.
- 29–34% of people leave tools disabled or miss paid features entirely.
- Redundant subscriptions account for 24% of annual security tool costs.
- The high cost of tool fragmentation and alert chaos: $400 million is lost every year to multi-surface attacks (see below).
- Personal pre-breach costs to consumers: duplicative “chaos tax” expenditures can cost more than $850 per consumer, per year.
- The average person now manages 3.4 security apps, spends up to 27 hours a year maintaining them, and wastes between $574 and $850 annually on redundant subscriptions and unmanaged risks.
Ironically, this results in people spend hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours every year managing overlapping, non-integrated security tools, but are actually spending more and working harder to be less secure.
The “alert fatigue” blind spot that stems from notification flood cycles became especially visible during the 2025 Google breach affecting 2.5 billion Gmail accounts. The breach drove individuals to flood forums and search engines with urgent “what to do” queries while scrambling across multiple apps.
One App, Complete Protection
Leading from this research, PureVPN has unified VPN, Password Manager, Dark Web Monitoring, Tracker & Ad Blocker, and Data Removal into a single unified platform. Instead of multiple apps competing for the consumer’s attention, users receive one alert stream, one workflow, and one place to act.
Notifications are consolidated and prioritized to reduce false alarms, while the new bottom navigation keeps breach-response tools easily accessible under stress.
You can read the study here.
New Research Reveals Coordinated Campaign Targeting Perplexity Comet Users Across Various Attack Vectors
Posted in Commentary with tags BforeAI on October 23, 2025 by itnerdToday, BforeAI released the company’s research of an investigation into fraudulent and malicious activities targeting users seeking to download Perplexity’s Comet AI browser.
The analysis reveals a coordinated campaign of domain squatting, fraudulent mobile applications, and deceptive advertising designed to capitalize on the legitimate Comet browser’s popularity.
The research dives reveals:
You can find the research here: https://bfore.ai/report/malicious-activity-surrounding-perplexity-comet-browser-launch-threat-research/
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