Yes, and as someone else here pointed out when I suggested finger-prints (John Myers, I think), you'd have to store the data about whose finger-prints they are are on a database, databases can be hacked, and telling people to change their passwords because their data has been compromised is easier than telling people to change their fringer-prints.
Exactly. One master password is one major potential point of failure. But is there any way around this?
Perhaps biometrics, such as retina or fingerprint scans, could be an option in the future. But they are still too expensive or too unreliable.
Also, any thriller, movie or novel, can find ways around those methods. I've seen people use an eyeball and a finger that have been removed to enter secure locations! Seems like a new business in the making.
A breach was actually mentioned by Google in its Chromium Projects site that first disclosed the password generator. Google said storing passwords could leave its servers more prone to being hacked. Of course, Google is always under attack, so it would be one more capability to defend.
I've seen the one password idea, Alan, and I agree that it's a good one. Even if one of the first stories I wrote here was about a breach at LastPass (although they handled it well!).
There are password programs that generate different passwords for every site, but just require a single password to open for all sites. The idea is you create just one very strong password and remember it. Also, I've read that the length of a password is more important than peppering it various ASCII symbols.
Writing down passwords in an office is, of course, a bad idea. But I wonder whether writing them down at home (assuming you're careful about where you keep them) is really such a big deal.
As for businesses requiring employees to create strong passwords and then change them frequently can indeed result in everyone writing them down.
I'm sorry, Alan, but I think strong passwords are drinking in the last chance saloon. At a rough count, I have something like sixty or seventy passwords now - and of course I have to use simple variations in order to have a chance of remembering them. I try to use the simple ones for sites which don't really need passwords at all - and there are plenty of them.
But demanding users generate strong passwords, over and over again, and change them regularly, simply guarantees they'll write them down.
Yes, I thought about that, and it's a good point. But many of these other password programs aren't free, and Google's would be free (at least for some period).
Also, Google might promote the program on its services, so people would know about it. Perhaps Google could more easily integrate it into its own services.
In addition, typical consumers might be more willing to use something from Google than an unknown third party password generator and management tool. As I said, it's still a techie thing to do.
All true, but as you point out, Alan, there are many password generators out there. Why take time and resources to create another one--especially when there are plenty of other problems to solve?
It's in the interest of Google to reduce the number of people whose accounts are hacked. Google wants people to use its applicationss, such as Gmail, and people have had their Gmail accounts compromised. Also, Google wants lots of people to click on its ads and buy things, and it doesn't want people afraid to purchase because of security concerns.
So it actually is in Google's interest to offer a service with strong passwords.
LED lightbulbs will be used not only for home and business lighting automation, but possibly also for locating shoppers inside stores and transmitting data at hundreds of megabits per second.
Businesses helped neighbors with Internet access and mobile device charge-ups during Sandra. Following that example, enterprises should consider preparing Internet disaster plans to help the public during disasters.
In the final episode of this series about the death of Internet anonymity, Saunders describes how the Internet of the future will start to attain a level of intelligence that requires no human intervention. Scary.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
Mozilla's Firefox OS could be a major advance in building smartphones and tablets with a more cloud-friendly and open interface, but there are still questions of performance and security that will have to be managed.
The quest for Webpage clicks and ad impressions is creating a market for sensational truths and lies in equal measure. How are we going to get to the bottom of any real issue online – like what's really going on with Carrier IQ, for example – if we can't separate hype from reality?
David Vladeck, Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, discusses the state of "Do Not Track" and the problem with consumer behavior tracking online.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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