Passwords

Man nabbed for allegedly stealing sexy pics, posting online

A 23-year-old California man is in jail accused of breaking into more than 170 e-mail accounts of women and stealing explicit photos of them, as well as sending the photos to their e-mail contacts and posting them on their Facebook pages.

George Samuel Bronk, an unemployed 23-year-old from Citrus Heights, Calif., is believed to have targeted the victims by cruising women's Facebook pages and using information gleaned off the social network to trick different Web-based e-mail accounts into allowing him to change passwords linked to the women's accounts, Sergeant Kelly Dixon of the California Highway Patrol's Computer … Read more

Facebook offers one-time passwords

Facebook added several new security features today, including the ability for people to request a one-time password for use on public computers.

When using a computer on which you don't want to type in your regular password you can now request a one-time password by texting "otp" to 32665 from a mobile phone. You have to have already confirmed that the phone is yours on your Facebook account. The one-time password will expire after 20 minutes, the company said in a blog post.

Facebook is rolling the feature out gradually, and it should be available to everyone … Read more

Corral your passwords

Password Corral from Cygnus Productions is a free password-management tool that can help you remember and recover your passwords and protect them with strong encryption. You can add descriptions or comments that help you remember or organize your passwords as well as track their expiration date. You can set Password Corral to time out to the Windows system tray after a period of inactivity and prevent it from reactivating without your master password, which keeps your passwords protected even if you accidentally leave the program open. It can export and back up your password data in encrypted or unencrypted form, … Read more

1Password to rule them all

Anyone who uses the Web for a while knows that login information starts to pile up quickly. With online e-mail accounts, login information for online banking, and countless forums, most users start to use the same passwords for everything. It's pretty easy to see how this is a bad security practice.

Fortunately, you can download 1Password, which remembers all your passwords so you don't have to. Simply come up with a secure master password and then train 1Password to log in to sites for you. It integrates seamlessly with Apple's Mac OS X Keychain and generates complex … Read more

Password viewer

Passwords are perhaps the weakest links in the cyber-security chain; if they're complex enough to be secure, you probably won't be able to remember them. Add the fact that every other site seems to require a password, and it's easy to see why far too many people end up using one or two simple passwords that are easy to remember, and easy to crack, too. You can write your passwords down on a piece of paper that you can look for and fail to find when you need it, or you can download and install G&… Read more

Password generator

Good, strong passwords are critical to protecting your hardware, software, and personal data, yet how often do you find yourself using the same easy-to-remember, easy-to-enter passwords over and over again? Or do you draw a blank when trying to come up with a decent password that you can remember? JBCG's WebPassPro is a free password-generating program that can save you from using predictable passwords by generating unique, secure passwords for you. It doesn't save passwords on your system, and what data it does save on your PC is encrypted. It can regenerate passwords as required and export password … Read more

Security doesn't have to be complicated

Last week, I wrote about two simple ways to thwart Web spies. One of the methods prevents Web sites from activating your PC's built-in video camera and microphone without your permission.

In a comment posted in response to that article, a reader by the screen name of "BirdDog01" supplied a foolproof solution to the video portion of that equation: put a piece of duct tape over the camera lens. Aesthetics aside, that approach is about as simple and straightforward as they come.

A video has been making the rounds lately that shows crooks installing a card-skimming device … Read more

Dial-up password tool

Losing the password to your Internet service provider account can be frustrating, especially since the only way to contact many ISPs is online. Nirsoft's Dialupass is a free tool that enumerates all the dial-up and VPN entries on your PC and displays their details, including User Name, Password, and Domain. With it, you can recover a lost password or logon ID. You can run the tool when things are swell and save the list as text, HTML, CSV, or XML files for when you need it. You can also copy the results to the clipboard.

Like most of Nirsoft'… Read more

Microsoft beefs up Hotmail password security

Microsoft added new security features to Hotmail today that are designed to make it harder for accounts to get hijacked and easier for victims to recover them if so.

Hotmail users have been able to answer a security question or have an e-mail sent to an alternate e-mail address when they need to get into their locked account, either because it was hijacked or because they forgot the password. Those systems can be problematic as many people forget the security questions or they can be easily figured out by strangers with enough Web research.

Now, they can register a mobile … Read more