tracebook

inspired by the revelation that facebook tracks you online even if you never sign up with their service. maybe tracebook is really just the next stage of facebook.

value found in strangest of places

from here (original story)

never assume you're safe just because you don't have anything a crook would want. the variety of things that people will try to steal never ceases to amaze. like these plastic weapons of foot contusion, for example.

passphrases: how secure are they?

from here

inspired by this tweet by @virusbtn suggesting that passphrases are very secure in theory. i question some of the basic assumptions of that theory when the best case scenario requires a 43+ character passphrase in order to rival a 10 character password (based on an entropy of 1.5 bits per character in english text versus an entropy of 6.555 bits per character of printable ascii).

password selection formulas

found on memebase

i can't decide which is worse: using "password" as your password, or using a password selection formula so simple that the next password is "password2".

i don't think people who give out password advice (like using password selection formulas) take these kinds of degenerate cases into account; which is a shame, because the info they're passing on definitely degenerates on it's trip into the user's head.

beware of stupid

from here (image source)

it's not unheard of for fake security to work as a deterrent, but only if you're smarter than your adversary. otherwise your bluffing will be as obvious as an electrified wooden fence.

stopping crime

from here (image source)

of course in reality you can't really stop all crime, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect cops to be able to at least stop this from happening.

facebook (on the onion)

this is, as you might imagine, satire. i gather it's from the onion news network. the thing about the onion is that it's satire is sometimes so close to reality that it's hard to distinguish the two. it's not that hard here, but this does elicit some interesting questions about the compatibility of facebook use and operational security.

social networking profiles

from here

if someone is caught compiling detailed profiles on people in order to better manipulate their purchasing decisions, not only are those profiles error prone but the entire practice is generally considered creepy and kind of evil (in a big brother sort of way).

but if they give people the opportunity to build those same sorts of profiles about themselves with the (rather empty) promise that it will help them connect with people then nobody seems to pay attention to how that profile data will be abused.

giving things (or services) away seem to stop people from considering you as a potential adversary. no wonder it figures so prominently in con artist scams.

targeted ads are a strange game

from here

i really can't see how google can compete with facebook for the hearts and minds of advertisers without descending to facebook's level of evil (zuckerberg: "they 'trust me'. dumb fucks.").

hope is not a strategy

if you're just doing something willy-nilly and hoping for the best, you're in for a rude awakening because:

hope is not a strategy.

i don't recall where i first heard this but it goes along quite nicely with yesterday's post about prayer not being a defense. hope is a nice thing to have, but it doesn't actually get you what you need. it doesn't help you achieve any concrete goal.