Month: December 2010

If you invited me to try and crack your password, how many guesses would it take before I got it?

Dec 17, 2010 | Tips

“Why do I have to change my password every 3 months? It’s so unnecessary, who would want to get into my account?” “Why is ‘123456’ not a good password? It is easy to remember!” “Why all these capital letters and numbers and stuff mixed up in passwords? It is so difficult to remember them!” “My password is ‘password’, nobody will guess that!” Believe it or not, these are the sorts of comments that we encounter almost on a daily basis at the FHSCUA Help Desk. You would think that these would come from highschool children, but these are Medical...

The Ten Biggest Spam Myths

Dec 2, 2010 | Reviews & Opinions

1: There are only 200-300 hardcore spammers worldwide. They account for the overwhelming majority of junk e-mail. This idea is a staple of mainstream media. But I’ve never encountered anyone able to source this stat—and I’ve asked. DMA head Bob Wientzen cites it often. On a recent panel discussion, he was asked where the figure came from. He replied just that week he’d “talked with the FBI.” This neither answers the question nor addresses the fact he and others have bandied the figure about for years. My guess is the assertion had its genesis in the ROKSO list of...