Scanning Twitter for responses to the Zappos breach, we have a few favourites that are awfully telling: From @jjmartucci: I bet 99% of the stolen Zappos passwords were “shoes”. // Fact: most passwords are frighteningly easy to guess. We bet that those passwords aren’t “shoes” at all, but rather “password”, “abc123″ and others from the [...]

As mobile devices flood the market and consumers increase their browsing time on small screens with smaller keyboards, the alphanumeric password is seeming less and less user friendly. Windows, trying to appeal to the mobile savvy user, is initiating an authentication system that is based on a picture – but with a twist. Their system [...]

Two studies show that young people are more likely to be victims of online fraud.  You’d think that since most of them have not experienced a world without Internet and email, they’d be more knowledgeable about phishing and other schemes.  But the insurance group CPP reports that the 16 to 24 age group is most [...]

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show brought us some interesting trends and ideas.   In his review of the show, Lance Ulanoff lists 9 things he’s learned there.  In the last point in that post, he makes the observation that “the marriage of technology and content took center stage”. There is a fundamental change in how we’ve [...]

Do you hear that? The sound of drip… drip… drip…? It’s the sound of money ever so gradually leaving your account through insecure transactions. There are these clever little ways to send money through text messaging – Yele does it to help humanitarian aid after the quake in Haiti. Just text “Yele” to a specific [...]

Zack Whittaker’s post on whether we still need usernames/passwords is fueling an interesting debate at ZDNet.  The premise is familiar  – everyone is tired of storing their hundreds of passwords in an Excel sheet or a password management app.  Wouldn’t it be nice if all websites would just “join hands” so to speak, and create [...]

The quip at the bottom of this password worksheet is priceless. Why try to remember what you could just write down? The sad thing is that there are actually products like this still out there, encouraging people to write down and maintain a paper trail of their various passwords – especially for ‘important’ information. Those [...]

We all think we’re pretty observant people. We notice things that are important to us – a friend’s new shoes, the boss’ new briefcase. If we sit down with one of those “Spot the difference” puzzles we can find 5 things. In our own minds, we can all spot a criminal, a bad website, or [...]

Making it to the top of the BBC Technology page, a video posted on YouTube shows how the latest HP face recognition technology fails to “see” a black person.  The video is pretty funny to watch. Have you seen it? If not, here it is for your viewing pleasure. In light of this interesting story, [...]

Don’t you know that December is a great time to blog? There are end of year reviews, predictions for the next year, holiday hubub – this stuff nearly writes itself. Speaking of which, Earl Perkins at Gartner put up an interesting question the other week that prompted some soul-searching. He wants to know what identity [...]