Emojis might be your next password. Here's why

People commonly use emojis to express moods, emotions and nuances in emails and text messages

Current News :  Would you rather unlock your smartphone with a plain four-digit PIN or with a smiley-face emoji? Would it be easier and more pleasant to remember emojis for example, or “2476”?

Smartphone users commonly use emojis to express moods, emotions and nuances in emails and text messages – and even communicate entire messages only with emojis. In 2015, a British company tried using emoji passcodes in place of PINs at bank ATMs. But there had been no formal study of how easy they were to use, or how secure they were in comparison to other methods, like PINs.

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To learn more, in the lab and in the real world, a team of researchers from the Technical University Berlin, Ulm University and University of Michigan, led by TU Berlin Ph.D. candidate Lydia Kraus, developed EmojiAuth, an emoji-based login system for Android smartphones. How well would users remember their emoji passcodes? Could they be more secure, too? And might they be more fun, adding a bit of enjoyment every time a user unlocked her phone? (read more...)

8 ways to protect your digital privacy in era of hacking and public shaming

Password management software is best defense against phishing attack: EFF technologist Jacob Hoffman

 

 

Latest News - We are living in an era of widespread hacking and public shaming. Don't like your political rivals? Beg Russia to hack them, and their emails mysteriously show up on Wikileaks. Don't like your ex-spouse? Post a revenge porn video. Don't like your video game opponents? Find their address online and send a SWAT team to their door.

And, of course, the US government has the capability to do even more. It can spy on much of the globe's Internet traffic and has in the past kept tabs on nearly every American's phone calls. Like it or not, we are all combatants in an information war, with our data under constant siege.

So how can ordinary people defend themselves? The truth is you can't defend everything. But you can mitigate threats by reducing how much data you leave exposed for an intruder to grab. Hackers call this minimising your "attack surface."

The good news is that there are some easy steps you can take to reduce the threat. Here is what I am doing this year:

1. Updating Software
2. Making Passwords Longer
3. Securing Communications
4. Protecting Mobile Web Browsing
5. Dropping Dropbox
6. Deleting Some Data
7. Reconsidering Installing Cameras and Microphones at Home
8. Opting Out of Data Brokers

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Don't share your user ID & password, may be misused: I-T dept warns users

'If a password is hacked or stolen, it can result in information security breach', warns I-T dept

Latest news - The Income Tax Department has warned taxpayers against sharing their user ID and password with any unauthorised person, saying they too will be liable to face consequences for misuse of their confidential information.

It further said that "if a password is hacked or stolen, it can result in information security breach, leading to undesirable consequences, including privacy violations".

It asked taxpayers to exercise caution in use of log-in credentials at TRACES, which should not be disclosed to any unintended or unauthorised individual. "If shared, the person using login credentials shall also be liable to consequences," it added.

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TDS Reconciliation Analysis and Correction Enabling System (TRACES) helps easy filing of tax deducted at source (TDS) or tax collected at source (TCS) correction statements by deductors/collectors and related functionalities.

Breaking news is The taxman asked users to secure their password with at least eight characters in length and a combination of lower case, upper case, numeric and special characters.

"Do not write your password on notepads or the whiteboard at your desk," it cautioned.

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