Posts Tagged privacy

Passwords and passphrases – upgrade your password security

Sep 12

Posted by sheffner in lifehacks + cooltools | No Comments

I recently upgraded my password security after reading an Intercept article about passphrases vs passwords.

The skinny: passphrases are better when it comes to something like a master password, or for locking or encrypting a local folder or drive, but for individual websites, random passwords generated by a password generator (such as LastPass) are quite good enough. The article I read said that a 5-word passphrase should be good enough, but apparently no longer. Now 6 is the minimum.

A more complete article can be found here: https://www.cloudwards.net/how-to-set-up-a-strong-password/

Diceware, the solution offered in many articles, including the ones above, seems like an easy-to-implement, analog way to create secure passphrases. Don’t delay, upgrade your master password today. Use a passphrase.

Tags: passwords, privacy

How do you remember your passwords? Here’s a neat trick

Sep 4

Posted by sheffner in lifehacks + cooltools | Comments off

Update 17 Sep, 2017: Eric at Cloudwards emailed me recently to tell me of an excellent article on this subject that really covers a lot of ground. It’s long but worth the read if you’re concerned, or even just interested, in the security of your passwords. And if you’re not, maybe you should be:

My colleague James recently put together a pretty comprehensive piece on how to set up a strong password.There is a ton of information out there; our guide was designed to cut through the noise a bit. The post is here: https://www.cloudwards.net/how-to-set-up-a-strong-password/

Thanks, Eric. I also wrote about this more recently here:

How do you remember your passwords?

Do you have a lot of passwords? Is the Pope Catholic?!? I use Access Manager to help me keep track of mine, but I still need a few passwords that I use frequently, and it’s bothersome to open Access Manager and retrieve them each time. But if you don’t use a software program that can create highly secure passwords, you are probably going to end up recycling the same old passwords amongst your various accounts. This is obviously not very secure. So I was glad to read this tip on Gary North’s website.

If you want a password that you can remember easily, but which is close to unbreakable, here is a secret.Forget about symbols, such as @#$%^, which you will forget. Forget about mixtures of upper case and lower case. KISS: keep it simple.But aren’t simple passwords more easily broken? Yes, but only because they are short.Pick a phrase or the lyrics of a song. Then…

via Password Trick / Gary North.

(Graphic from http://www.addressmunger.com/password_hasher/ a password hashing website.)

A colleague recently had his gmail account hacked. And then there was the famous case of Honan.

Then today, Gary North offered this tip:

pick the first letter of each word. Then add five periods, like this ….. or five forward slashes, like this /////.

It is easy to remember five periods or five forward slashes. But this will add so many characters that code-breaking software will bog down.

How about you? Do you have a secure and simple way of creating and remembering your frequently used passwords?

Some have creative ways to remember their passwords. Do you?

(Comic found on http://www.anvari.org/fun/Computer/Passwords_Tattoo.html. Created by Randy Glasbergen.)

Tags: Gary North, Password Tools, passwords, privacy

Facebook: “you can check out but you can never leave…”

Oct 13

Posted by sheffner in culture and communication, lifehacks + cooltools | Comments off

Mouse-tip to Marketing Japan for pointing this out. I don’t really like Facebook, can’t figure out how to use it. Plus it’s annoying to see so much stuff I don’t want to see on my page. The most interesting view, I found, is “The Wall”, but that doesn’t come up by default, and when I first login, “The Wall” isn’t even listed in the sidebar menu. WTF?

The depressing, but not altogether unexpected, news below, may or may not be true, but I will be deleting my facebook cookies just in case, and will use a different browser JUST for facebook. If it turns out to be true, I’ll just delete my account. But will that make any difference?!? Perhaps Facebook is like that famous Hotel California from which you can check out but never leave.

With each new change Facebook makes, users’ privacy becomes a little less … nonexistent, if you will. The most recent “News Feed” modifications, for example, display everything you say and do on the site to all of your “friends,” and even to the public. And now, even after logging out of Facebook, permanent “cookies” track all your movements on websites that contain Facebook buttons or widgets.“Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit,” Cubrilovic wrote on a recent blog posting. “The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions” http://nikcub-static.appspot.com/logging-out-of-facebook-is-not-enough

via » Facebook tracks your every move, even after logging out Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!

This 1994, unplugged, version of Hotel California is very good, even more Mexican, and how the crowd applaud with delight at those entrancing, haunting melodic moments, especially the beginning, the chorus and those twin guitars moving in thirds in the “outro”. These guys hit musical pay-dirt with this song. Those musical movements imprint themselves on the mind effortlessly. Tho the lyrics are kinda depressing. “Hell Freezes Over” was the tour called, but what a nice bunch of serious men they all are, playing their old favourite with almost religious devotion.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHQceX8hGrI’]

Tags: Facebook, privacy