Hacker-Proof Your Password

How to create one you’ll remember, and computers won’t guess.

Don’t believe proclamations that the password is dead. Even with increasingly sophisticated software programs able to rapidly burn through an endless array of possible character combinations, the password is not only alive, but as important as ever.

“Passwords are the bane of our existence, but they’re here to stay,” says Hilary Schneider, president of LifeLock, an identity-theft protection company.

Think of the password as a mouse trap. As simplistic as it seems, there’s nothing out there more effective and straightforward for accessing sites likes your bank and favorite retailer. “A better system can be developed but it needs to be easy to use before it can have the widespread adoption to abolish the use of the password,” says Cameron Camp, a security researcher for ESET, an antivirus and Internet security provider. “If it’s not convenient, you won’t transact with the bank as much and the bank loses revenue.”

We’ve been told time and again how important it is to have tricky, unique passwords that are known to no one but ourselves. We should make them long and add numbers and symbols to fool the fraudsters combing the Internet for access to our records.

And we should always, always have different passwords for each site.

But apparently, we’re not listening very well. The annual compilations of “worst passwords ever” are numerous but remarkably similar in their results. Moreover, the top 25 or so passwords are held by an alarmingly large number of people.

Source: yahoonews.com

From world's texting capital, RP now leads in online videos

MANILA, Philippines - From the world’s text messaging capital, the Philippines is once again in the global limelight for having the highest percentage of users that watch videos over the Internet.

According to global media agency Universal McCann’s Power to the People - Social Media Tracker - Wave 4 survey 98.1 percent, of more than four million Filipinos who are active Internet users watch videos on the Internet, higher than the global average of 82.8 percent. China and Spain follow with 89.1 percent and 84.1 percent, respectively.

“Filipinos use the Internet not only for social networking but also for watching videos in websites like YouTube. This highlights the importance of having a superior, high-speed broadband Internet network in order for subscribers to fully enjoy real-time video streaming such as the previous fights of boxing champion Manny Pacquiao,” Smart Communications public affairs group head Ramon Isberto said.

“We are broadbanding the nation, so to speak. Like what we did to the cellphones, we aim to make Internet accessible and affordable to all Filipinos nationwide,” Isberto said. As of end-June, Smart Bro has 1.3 million subscribers. Of Smart’s 45.3 million cellphone subscribers, meanwhile, roughly 10 percent access the Internet from their mobile phones.

Universal Mccann’s survey involved 22,729 Internet users (those who use the Internet everyday or every other day) between 16 and 54 years old in 38 countries.

Source: By Mary Ann LL. Reyes (The Philippine Star)

Yahoo Mail Site Block

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A very peculiar day again here in Dubai United Arab Emirates, Why? because just this morning of February 16, 2009 Yahoo Mail was block by the Etisalat Telecom and the ISP provider. While I'm browsing my mail and read the first email it was all of a sudden when I need to open my second mail it appears a message of Site Block written in Arabic and English script. I thought its my company's IT department block the site but it's not, the blocking of the site was come from the ISP provider not in my companies IT department.