Safety Security & Privacy

Digital note-taking service Evernote was forced to reset its 50 million-plus users’ passwords after suffering an unauthorized breach on March 2. Thursday, less than three months on from that incident, it is beefing up account security measures with three new measures, including two-factor authentication, which will initially go live to its premium users. In the Continue Reading →

There may come a day that you’ll get locked out of your Facebook account, whether you forget your password or run into another problem. Facebook recently introduced a feature called ‘Trusted Contacts’ to help you out if you run into this kind of problem. Trusted Contacts lets you pick three to five Facebook friends that Continue Reading →

Snapchat has taken the mobile world by storm. The application allows users to send pictures and videos to friends that will self-destruct after a maximum of 10 seconds. Even better, if someone tries to take a screenshot of the image, the sender is automatically notified. Although its founders may not be proud of it, the Continue Reading →

Hours after Twitter rolled out support for two-step verification, Kim Dotcom has claimed credit for inventing the security feature. In a series of tweets, the embattled Megaupload founder points to a patent dating back to 1997 as proof for his claim, and accuses companies including Google, Facebook, and Twitter of infringing his intellectual property rights. Continue Reading →

A Google security engineer accused Microsoft of treating outside researchers with “great hostility” just days before posting details of an unpatched vulnerability in Windows that could be used to crash PCs or gain additional access rights. Microsoft acknowledged the vulnerability late Wednesday. “We are aware of claims regarding a potential issue affecting Microsoft Windows and Continue Reading →

After months of people yelling at them to increase security, Twitter finally began to roll out two-step verification for its accounts on Wednesday. To ensure that your account is protected, you should enable two-step verification immediately. It only takes about two minutes, and all you need is a cell phone. What is Two-Step Verification? Two-step Continue Reading →

A Congressional survey of utility companies has revealed that the country’s electric grid faces constant assault from hackers, with one power company reporting a whopping 10,000 attempted cyberattacks per month. US Reps. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) sent 15 questions to more than 150 utilities and received replies from 112 of them. Only Continue Reading →

If you think the private messages you send over Skype are protected by end-to-end encryption, think again. The Microsoft-owned service regularly scans message contents for signs of fraud, and company managers may log the results indefinitely, Ars has confirmed. And this can only happen if Microsoft can convert the messages into human-readable form at will. Continue Reading →

Just after noon on April 23, the Associated Press put out a tweet: “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barak Obama is injured,” causing the Dow to plummet 150 points and traders to panic. AP quickly notified its following that their Twitter feed had been hacked. Taking claim was the Syrian Electronic Army, Continue Reading →

Over the past four years, an obvious pattern has emerged with Apple’s iPhone lineup. First, a redesigned iPhone launches and then the following year, and iterative upgrade makes use of the same external hardware but includes several internal upgrades. But according to a string of reports, including one from an industry watcher with a solid Continue Reading →