Clicks & Notes

Computerworld - FTC: Identity theft, online scams rose in ‘04

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said it received 635,000 consumer complaints in 2004, as criminals sold nonexistent products through online auction sites or went shopping with stolen credit cards. Identity theft – the practice of running up bills or committing crimes in someone else’s name – topped the list with 247,000 complaints, up 15% from 2003.

Technology Review - The Password Is Fayleyure

Today’s password authentication schemes are little more than security placebos. They perversely inspire abuse, misuse, and criminal mischief by deliberately making users the weakest link in the security chain. Greater teleprocessing power has made stealing or cracking password sequences ever faster, better, and cheaper.

(via Tomalak’s Realm)

Update: Here are some tips for making up passwords that are relatively easy to remember, but difficult to guess…

Cutting Through - Secure passwords with nursery rhymes

Take a phrase or saying, or perhaps a line from a song that you can remember readily, then type the first letter of each word as you say it to yourself… You can make it even more secure by throwing in a few number / character substitutions - zeros for the letter ‘o’, for example.

Eric’s Archived Thoughts - Password Production

The general idea is to pick a two-word combination you can easily remember (and) interleave the words… In cases where your two words have different lengths, you can always tack on numbers.

(via Cutting Through)