The United States and Russia has hardly agreed on anything this year. There’s Edward Snowden. There are international conflicts. Now there’s this.
Last week, President Obama signed a bill killing Russia’s plans to build monitor systems on US soil. They’re supposed to be about six of them. Russia says this will help improve GPS systems around the world, particularly Russia’s Global Positioning Network. But many in congress, especially House Republicans who put the killing of this plan into motion, fear Russia may have more sinister motions. Many in Congress are cynical Russia would use this plan to spy, or something even worse. To show how bad tensions are, nobody is returning anybody’s phone calls between the two nations.
I’m glad Congress took a stand against this. Hasn’t there been enough spying in the US and around the world this year? Due to the Edward Snowden scandal and Syrian conflict, among other issues, US and Russia aren’t best friends these days. What if they were allowed to put their GPS systems on our soil? What if they got access to everything we were saying or doing? Worst yet, what if they got access to military or government secrets? Am I being paranoid?
Over the years, few things on the Internet have caused more security, or more stress, than the password. So many to remember. So many guidelines. But do these things do more harm or good?
These days, the majority of passwords will make you choose at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter and one digit. Most have to be at least eight digits/letters long. Some will make you change your password every 30 days. Some people use software like Lastpass.com to manage and control their passwords. And then there are the life questions: Who was your first teacher? What street did you grow up on? What was your first car? What’s your mother’s maiden name?
Do these make us safer? I and many others think they do. I can tell you one thing not to do: give all your accounts the same password. I read one article where one guy had his life ruined when doing that. Many years ago, strange things were coming to my email. This was my first experience of being hacked, and I was advised to change my password immediately. There were no more hacks after that. So to avoid confusion and headache, I would advise a password management website like Last Pass to help you manage your accounts. Do all these password policies keep you safe or are they just a royal pain?
According to security watchdogs like Krebs on Security, much of that data has entered the underground stolen credit card market. Some people’s credit card numbers, security codes, and other info is being bought, sold and traded for as little as $20 a pop as I write this. In fact, the breach was encouraged after one underground ‘card shop’ advertised there would be a place where thieves could get stolen credit/debit cards. Not only that, this particular card shop has a reliable reputation throughout the cyber crime community. What they do is clone cards. They get the stolen number and the pin, put their name on the cards, and then use the cards at stores and ATMs like it’s theirs.
But you want to know the saddest thing of all is? Chain stores and law enforcement, or legal banks can’t seem to catch up with this disturbing trend. While some cards have been recovered, the majority of them looks like they’ve entered this underground market. While these markets thrive, legit companies are struggling to fight back, or even keep up. What can be done to turn this tide?
Earlier today, it was learned the credit/debit cards of around 40 million Target shoppers are at risk of being compromised. Basically, anyone who shopped at any Target in the US between Thanksgiving weekend and December 15 is at risk.
The risk isn’t for online Target shoppers, just for those who used their cards in the store. Stolen info includes customer’s names, card numbers, card expiration date, and even that 3 digit security code. It’s believed this breach was an inside job. It’s believed the machines were broken into to get the information. This isn’t the first time this happened to a major store chain. Back in 2007, TJ Maxx and Marshall’s had over 45 million cards compromised.
There are things you can do. First off, call your credit card company and make sure every purchase is on the up and up. If anything sounds or looks fraudulent, cancel the card immediately and get a replacement card. I know getting a new card can take a couple of weeks and can be an inconvenience, especially this time of year. But it’s better to be inconvenienced than to be wiped out. Use cash whenever you can. There’s no way cash can be hacked into. What are some other ways these crimes can be prevented?
Online dating service Cupid Media, which gives you a choice of ethnicity and lifestyles while looking for a mate, suffered a major, major compromise.
An online break-in caused 42 million accounts to be compromised. This compromised included consumer records, password and email addresses. The breach took place way back in January 2013. According to Cupid Media director Andrew Bolton, they have notified those who may have been affected. He said they found the break in and took immediate actions to confront it. It’s also believed the same hacking group that got Cupid Media also got Adobe and PR Newswire, among others.
But there is a lesson to be learned here. Apparently, these hackers knew what passwords to use. Cupid users used passwords ‘123456’ and ‘111111’ over a combined three million times. Letter passwords, ‘iloveyou’, ‘lovely’, ‘qwerty’, ‘mylove’ and ‘iloveu’ were used a combined over 240,000 times. Now that pales in comparison to three million, but keep in mind this is a dating service website. So my conclusion is when you use straight number passwords or passwords retaining to the host website, that makes it easier for hackers to use and abuse. I’m glad many websites make you use a combination of letters and numbers to make you mix it up. That’s what I try to do anyway. And I know it’s hard to do, but try to get a different password for every site, or at least every other site. What tips do you have for password safety?
The Internet, particularly Google, is intensifying it’s fight against online child abuse. They plan to implement changes to prevent abusive, perverse images of children and teenagers from being sought after? through their search engine.
According to Google chairman Eric Schmidt, “We’ve fine-tuned Google Search to prevent links to child sexual abuse material from appearing in our results.” First, these changes will take place in the English speaking countries. But in six months, it will be implemented to all nations around the world. Search engine sites like Bing and Yahoo are expected to enforce similar restrictions to fight child pornography and other child abuses. A major advocate of fighting online child abuse is British Prime Minister David Cameron. Prime Minister Cameron goes as far as to say if search engines can’t do their part to keep child abuse images away from pedophiles, the search engine sites will be held accountable. England was the site of a major tragedy that started with child abuse images. Five year-old April Jones was murdered by online child porn addict Mark Bridger.
I’m glad something is being done, finally. I’m sorry it took the murder of an innocent small child to get people to wake up to this real evil. If you’ve read my blogs, you know I’m pro-freedom on just about all things. But in this case, I’m glad restrictions are being implemented. Anything that glorifies the abuse and exploitation of children in any way needs to be snuffed out! Another thing, if anybody seeks out these abusive websites, they will be directed to charities who help treat child porn addicts. Do you think this is an effective way to fight the savagery of child abuse and exploitation?
