passwords

After the Associated Press' Twitter account was hacked into on Tuesday and the accounts of CBS News programs "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" were hacked over the weekend, it's been made clear that Twitter needs to boost security. But, it may be doing just that.

According to Wired's Mat Honan, the social-networking site has reportedly been working on creating a two-factor authentication for user password verification. Honan writes that the company is currently carrying out internal testing before rolling out the new security control.

This isn't a huge surprise considering Twitter posted a job advertisement … Read more

If you use different log-in information for all your online accounts, keeping it all in your head can be rather overwhelming. Password Bank for Mac helps you store all your precious data under one safe roof. Best of all, it utilizes 128-bit encryption to protect your passwords, too.

It only takes a few minutes to install and begin using this free security application. On startup, Password Bank for Mac offers a welcome screen with a log-in field. The default password is 1234, which you can change later. Logging in gives you access to a rather simple but quite intuitive interface. … Read more

A group of tech companies looking to replace passwords for online identity authentication gained a powerful ally Tuesday in the form of Google.

The consortium, called the Fast IDentity Online Alliance (FIDO), is working to develop standards-based alternatives for verifying a user's identity when trying to login to Web sites and online accounts. Formed in 2012, the group proposes specifications that will support a variety of authentication technologies, including biometrics such as fingerprint scanners and voice and facial recognition, as well as security tokens, near field communication, and one-time passwords.

The Web giant joins founding members Lenovo, PayPal, Nok … Read more

Video service Vudu began warning users today that it has instituted a systemwide password reset following an office break-in last month.

A burglary March 24 resulted in the loss of hard drives that contained users' sensitive personal information, including names, e-mail addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, account activity, dates of birth, and the last four digits of some credit card numbers, Vudu Chief Technology Officer Prasanna Ganesan informed customers in an e-mail. He said no complete credit card numbers were stolen because the company does not store that information.

The stolen hard drives also contained encrypted passwords, and while Ganesan … Read more

Mozilla's Web site log-in alternative known as Persona unveiled a Beta 2 version today. Now you can sign in to any Web site supporting Persona using a Yahoo Mail account.

Persona, which is still in development, is an open authentication system that works on desktops and mobile devices. In addition to being able to log in using either your Persona ID or your Yahoo credentials, today's release introduces support for Firefox OS, which means you can expect to use Persona to log in to any Firefox OS devices that launch later this year. It also includes back-end changes … Read more

In the OS X Security system preferences you can set the system to require a password when the system wakes from sleep or after the screensaver has been active for a period of time. However, you may run into a few cases in which entering your account password then does not work.

One cause can be if you have recently changed the name of your user account. For authentication, OS X will use either the short or long username, along with any aliases that you have associated with your account. However, if you have changed the long username for your … Read more

Proper Internet security requires users to manage multiple, complex passwords. Password Genie for Mac automatically stores and saves passwords in one secure location, and is a good option for those using various passwords.

After the user accepts a user agreement, installation of Password Genie for Mac occurs seamlessly due to the well-designed, native installer. Upon startup, the program requires exiting any open Internet browser before beginning its set up. Users can initiate the program by signing in with a Google ID or by registering their e-mail address. While designed to run in the background during Web browsing, the interface is … Read more

Chrome on desktops has been able to sync personal data like passwords and online form fields for ages, but the features just landed in the Android version of the browser today.

Chrome 26 for Android (download) brings automatic form filling and password synchonrization to the mobile browser, as well as unnamed performance and stability fixes. The new version of the browser also repairs a problem where a blank page would be shown instead of loading the correct URL.

Some features that made it into the beta version of Chrome 26 for Android don't appear to be in today's … Read more