Occasionally, you need to share a password with someone. Maybe it’s a shared office-wide password, your family’s Amazon login, or maybe you just want to share a router with your roommate. Rather than sharing it over email, you can more seamlessly and securely share passwords in just a few clicks with LastPass — and even prevent the person on the receiving end from ever seeing the password itself.
Another reminder that Macs are not immune from security issues: researchers have discovered that Apple’s own FileVault encryption system store the password for that system in a plain-text file, making it potentially vulnerable to attack.
Windows/Mac: Dashlane, an all-in-one password, form, and online purchase and checkout manager, has been in private beta for months now. When we last discussed it, it was already a great option for keeping your passwords secure and online purchases organises and easily searchable, not to mention giving you a great form manager that could fill out almost any web form with a single click. Now Dashlane is out of beta and open to all comers with some big improvements to show off.
In general, you want to avoid writing down sensitive information and just keeping it in your head, but that’s not always an option. If you have to write down a password, or some other sensitive information, you can use a Caesar Cipher to quickly encode and decode that message on your own.
Facebook and Twitter consume increasingly large chunks of our time, providing us with a public face to the world and accumulating personal data over time. Those benefits come with significant security risks, however. Make sure your social networking dream doesn’t turn into a nightmare by ensuring you follow good security practices.
Apple has long touted security as a selling point for Mac OS X. While it’s the case that there are far more viruses for Windows than Mac, the notion that Mac users don’t need to have any concerns about security is a myth that deserves to be well and truly busted.
We’ve discussed how using passphrases as passwords can boost your security, but if you’ve chosen a phrase used in every-day speech, you’re not doing yourself — or your data — any favours. According to a new Cambridge study, a common phrase such as “outofthepark” is only marginally more secure than a dictionary word, and anyone looking to crack your password already knows to try common phrases along with common words. If you prefer passphrases, here’s how to make them more secure.
If you’ve ever wanted a way to create your own USB dongle to automatically enter in a randomly generated password, hacker blog Code and Life has put together a tutorial for making your own from a USB and an ATtiny85.
We all should know that decent passwords are all that stand between us and a potential security incident. Yet many people end up infected with a virus or with a massive credit card bill because they failed to follow the basics of password security. Here are the 10 things that people keep getting wrong, and ways to make sure you get them right.
If a new study by the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory is correct, most of your ATM or debit card PINs are either “1111″ or “1234″. You may think it’s OK because someone would need physical access to your card to use the PIN, right? Wrong. Here’s why you should change your PIN right away, and some hacks to help you remember your new one.
