When setting up a new online account, we are all confronted with the frustrating exercise of generating a password. Even more frustrating is the “password critic” we often encounter at the point of account creation – the password strength meter. (This story originally ran at Insedia.com. Read it there.) If [Keep reading]
Spam calls have basically killed cell phones. At least, the “phone” part of cell phones. If you’re like me, you just don’t bother answering calls from unexpected numbers any longer. The FCC says Americans get 2.4 billion fake calls every month. I think I got that many last week on [Keep reading]
It’s tempting to ignore the warning sirens that blared Dallas out of bed Saturday night — but that would be a very serious mistake. We hear so much about the importance of securing America’s critical infrastructure systems. Then you find out that the company responsible for maintaining the Dallas outdoor [Keep reading]
UPDATE 4/7/2017 — The Department of Homeland Security has withdrawn this request, so Twitter has voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit. That’s good, but the main theme here remains: What a shocking level of seriousness. It’s been great fun to watch the list of Twitter accounts run, allegedly, by federal workers [Keep reading]
Like so many public policy arguments, this Internet Service Provider privacy story is not sexy right now, because it doesn’t *really* have immediate consequences. But by the time it is sexy, it’ll be too late to do anything about it. That leaves people who want you to care about it [Keep reading]
As President Donald Trump continues to Tweet things that strain credulity, the warning we’ve heard from sensible people is this: Who will believe the U.S. government when it has something important to say? It didn’t take long to test this theory. When the Department of Homeland Security announced it was [Keep reading]
This weekend brought a fresh reminder that you should always have some “burner” email address accounts handy for interactions with e-commerce Web sites. Shoppers at Saks Fifth Avenue who had asked the firm for notifications when sold-out items were available had their personal information exposed by the firm, I [Keep reading]
Wikileaks got everyone’s attention again this week, with dire headlines proclaiming the entire American government spook infrastructure had just been decimated by the secret-smashing site. Hold on to your hyperbole: there’s a lot more to this story. Julian Assange, true to form, has shared a little leaked data and promised [Keep reading]
Howard Schmidt had an incredible American life. He was cyberczar to two presidents – a Republican and a Democrat. Before that, he ran security at Microsoft, and later practically rescued eBay when it was turning into a cesspool of fraud. He was a soldier (Air Force, then the Army Reserves), [Keep reading]
Several major online job listing sites potentially discriminate against older job applicants because of age limitations built into their software, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan alleged on Thursday. Menus that let users create resumes and profiles prevent would-be applicants from entering years beyond a certain date, in some cases prohibiting [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan