Archive for the ‘Gotcha’ Category
March 28, 2018
According to Pew, teens don’t care (and, they’re in control now, right?)
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Thanks to social media, today’s teens are the first to have a complete record of their whole lives — their thoughts, their actions, and their friends.
Eric Schmidt — Google chairman and ex-CEO — worries, however, that they’ll be the first who’ll never be allowed to forget their mistakes.
Schmidt says: “People are now sharing too much.”
More specifically, privacy pundits say that it just takes your name, zip code and birth date to ID you and start linking your online and offline personal data … forever.
Now, Pew has published a research study re: teen’s online habits .
Here are the Pew results …
(more…)
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Posted in Gotcha, Internet - Soc Networking, Polls & Surveys, Privacy | Leave a Comment »
August 16, 2017
How long does it take to hack a 16-character password?
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Last week, NIST ((the National Institute of Standards and Technology) issued new guidelines for password security.
After a review, NIST concluded that its former rules — passwords to include upper and lower case letters, numbers, special characters — made logins more complicated but didn’t materially improve online security.
Now, NIST is recommending using long, easy-to-remember phrases instead of relatively short strings of mixed letters, numbers and characters.
The rationale: the longer the string, the harder it is to crack.
For example some researchers concluded that it would only take 3 days to crack a password like “Tr0ub4dor&3” — but over 550 years to crack the password “CorrectHorseBatteryStaple”
Oh really?
The story reminded me of a prior HomaFiles post that reported on a hacking test.
Hackers were given 1 hour to crack more than 16,000 cryptographically hashed passwords.
Her are the (frightening) results …
(more…)
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Posted in Computer hints & tricks, Computers & PCs, Gotcha, Hacking - Hackers, Passwords | 1 Comment »
August 4, 2016
First, how many of us have a 16-character password?
If the over-under is 1, I’m betting the under.
Still, let’s pretend that that your passwords are 16-characters long – a mix of capital and lower case letters, numbers and special characters.
Here’s how long it takes to crack it …
(more…)
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Posted in Computer hints & tricks, Computers & PCs, Gotcha, Hacking - Hackers, Passwords | 1 Comment »
April 14, 2015
Thanks to social media, today’s teens are the first to have a complete record of their whole lives — their thoughts, their actions, and their friends.
Eric Schmidt — Google chairman and ex-CEO — worries, however, that they’ll be the first who’ll never be allowed to forget their mistakes.
Schmidt says: “People are now sharing too much.”
More specifically, privacy pundits say that it just takes your name, zip code and birth date to ID you and start linking your online and offline personal data … forever.
Now, Pew has published a research study re: teen’s online habits .
Here are the Pew results …
(more…)
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Posted in Gotcha, Internet - Soc Networking, Polls & Surveys, Privacy | Leave a Comment »
January 15, 2015
You gotta start scratching your head a bit when the Dept. of Defense gets its Twitter account hacked and issues an internal directive to change social networking passwords.
Not obvious to me why the DOD even has a Twitter account, and laughably frightening that they didn’t already have a policy for frequent password changes.
The fiasco reminded me of a competition to see how long it would take uber-hackers to crack 15,000 15-character passwords
Let’s pretend that that your passwords are 16-characters long – a mix of capital and lower case letters, numbers and special characters.
Here’s how long it takes to crack them …
(more…)
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Posted in Computer hints & tricks, Computers & PCs, Gotcha, Hacking - Hackers, Passwords | Leave a Comment »
May 30, 2014
Thanks to social media, today’s teens are the first to have a complete record of their whole lives — their thoughts, their actions, and their friends.
Eric Schmidt — Google chairman and ex-CEO — worries, however, that they’ll be the first who’ll never be allowed to forget their mistakes.
Schmidt says: “People are now sharing too much.”
More specifically, privacy pundits say that it just takes your name, zip code and birth date to ID you and start linking your online and offline personal data … forever.
Now, Pew has published a research study re: teen’s online habits .
Here are the Pew results …
(more…)
SHARE THIS POST WITH FRIENDS & FAMILY
Posted in Gotcha, Internet - Soc Networking, Polls & Surveys, Privacy | 1 Comment »
May 23, 2014
On balance, I’m ok with speed cams as long as their tolerances are reasonable … say 7 MPH over the speed limit.
According to WTOP, DC is implementing zero tolerance on more than a dozen speed cams being installed around the District.
Here’s the rub.
They primarily target areas with posted speed limits of 25 mph.
If you’re snapped driving 1 mph to 10 mph above the limit, there’s a $50 fine.
Doing 11 mph to 15 mph over results in a $100 ticket.
The price increases in 5 mph increments, up to $300 for driving in excess of 26 mph above the posted limit.
As a public service, here’s a partial map of the cam locations.
(more…)
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Posted in Gotcha, Legal - justice, Speed cams | Leave a Comment »
March 7, 2014
Might not be your imagination.
In some locales, city-fathers are shortening the duration of yellow caution lights – you know, going from green to red.
Why?
Simple. To increase the odds that you get ticketed by a red light “safety” camera.
According to a News 10 TV report, in Tampa, the yellow light duration was reduced by a fraction of a second at intersections with red light cameras.
The result: red light tickets and their accompanying revenue more than doubled.
Red light cameras generated more than $100 million in revenue last year in approximately 70 Florida communities,
What’s the impact on traffic safety?
(more…)
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Posted in Consumer behavior, Gotcha, Red light cameras, Traffic safety | Leave a Comment »
February 5, 2014
Might not be your imagination.
In some locales, city-fathers are shortening the duration of yellow caution lights – you know, going from green to red.
Why?
Simple. To increase the odds that you get ticketed by a red light “safety” camera.
According to a News 10 TV report, in Tampa, the yellow light duration was reduced by a fraction of a second at intersections with red light cameras.
The result: red light tickets and their accompanying revenue more than doubled.
Red light cameras generated more than $100 million in revenue last year in approximately 70 Florida communities,
What’s the impact on traffic safety?
(more…)
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Posted in Consumer behavior, Gotcha, Red light cameras, Traffic safety | Leave a Comment »
February 4, 2014
Speed cams are bad … AAA has done audits revealing that 1 in 10 tickets issued by them are in error … with drivers having little recourse since only the cameras are are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Yep, they’re bad, but …
Imagine all speed limits being tightly enforced … 24 X 7.
Scary thought, right?
Here’s what will replace the speed cam … and disrupt our lives.
(more…)
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Posted in Consumer behavior, Gotcha, Predictive Analytics | Leave a Comment »
June 18, 2013
In a prior post Feds: “Hire ex-cons … we do” … say, what? … we reported that Feds are hiring ex-cons into the State Department … and pressuring private companies to hire them, too.
Sounds risky to me, but what if there was some objective way to cut the risk … to determine the likelihood that an ex-con would (or would not) go straight.
There is a way.
Some courts and parole departments are using predictive analytics to help decide who belongs in prison.
Here’s the scoop …
(more…)
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Posted in Gotcha, Predictive Analytics | Leave a Comment »
June 13, 2013
Consumers are signing up to share personal data at an alarming rate via sleep monitors, pedometers and activity trackers, dietary logs, brainwave monitors, grocery and restaurant loyalty cards, credit cards, Foursquare and Facebook check-ins, photo geotagging, and other digital means.
As insurers, lenders, and others attempt to manage risk, they will inevitably turn alternative data sources to round out the picture of each consumer applicant –
Here are some ways that companies can (and are) using the data they collect on you.
(more…)
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Posted in Gotcha, Internet - Soc Networking, Internet Tracking, Privacy, Privacy issues | Leave a Comment »
June 7, 2013
Yesterday it was revealed that the Feds are routinely gathering and mining “metadata” on all phone calls and trolling through emails and other Internet content.
Ostensibly they’re just on the look out for terrorists … that’s a good thing.
I think most folks would agree.
But many folks are in an uproar over the matter.
Why?
For starters, a lot of folks don’t trust the Feds much anymore.
According to Gallup, less than 1 in 5 Americans say that they trust the Federal government
… over 80% only trust the Federal government some of the time or never.
And, those numbers are before accounting for:
(more…)
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Posted in Gotcha, Obama - Promises Made & Kept, Obama Administration, Obama Scandals | 5 Comments »
June 3, 2013
First, how many of us have a 16-character password?
If the over-under is 1, I’m betting the under.
Still, let’s pretend that that your passwords are 16-characters long – a mix of capital and lower case letters, numbers and special characters.
Here’s how long it takes to crack it …
(more…)
SHARE THIS POST WITH FRIENDS & FAMILY
Posted in Computer hints & tricks, Computers & PCs, Gotcha, Hacking - Hackers, Passwords | 1 Comment »
May 29, 2013
Thanks to social media, today’s teens are the first to have a complete record of their whole lives — their thoughts, their actions, and their friends.
Eric Schmidt — Google chairman and ex-CEO — worries, however, that they’ll be the first who’ll never be allowed to forget their mistakes.
Schmidt says: “People are now sharing too much.”
More specifically, privacy pundits say that it just takes your name, zip code and birth date to ID you and start linking your online and offline personal data … forever.
Now, Pew has published a research study re: teen’s online habits .
Here are the Pew results …
(more…)
SHARE THIS POST WITH FRIENDS & FAMILY
Posted in Gotcha, Internet - Soc Networking, Polls & Surveys, Privacy | 1 Comment »
May 23, 2013
Might not be your imagination.
In some locales, city-fathers are shortening the duration of yellow caution lights – you know, going from green to red.
Why?
Simple. To increase the odds that you get ticketed by a red light “safety” camera.
According to a News 10 TV report, in Tampa, the yellow light duration was reduced by a fraction of a second at intersections with red light cameras.
The result: red light tickets and their accompanying revenue more than doubled.
Red light cameras generated more than $100 million in revenue last year in approximately 70 Florida communities,
What’s the impact on traffic safety?
(more…)
SHARE THIS POST WITH FRIENDS & FAMILY
Posted in Consumer behavior, Gotcha, Red light cameras, Traffic safety | Leave a Comment »
The Homa Files 