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Veteran IT Journalist Worries That Online Privacy May Not Exist (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the resistance-is-futile dept.

Tom Henderson is a long-time observer of the IT scene, complete with scowl and grey goatee. And cynicism. Tom is a world-class cynic, no doubt about it. Why? Cover enterprise IT security and other computing topics long enough for big-time industry publications like ITWorld and its IDG brethren, and you too may start to think that no matter what you do, your systems will always have (virtual) welcome mats in front of them, inviting crackers to come in and have a high old time with your data.

Note: Alert readers have probably noticed that we talked with Tom about cloud security back in March. Another good interview, worth seeing (or reading).

1 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. Urg. by khasim · · Score: 4, Informative

    Robin Miller: One thing that I think my wife and I are doing right: we don't have a bank anymore, we have a credit union, a local credit union and they do use secondary authorization on everything, you have to not just know the account number and the password, but you also need to know the answers to fairly obscure questions about our past, what year teacher was your favorite in what grade, things like that. Does that help?

    NO!!! It does NOT!!!

    1. It does not because that information can be collected at other sites controlled by crackers. So unless you enter incorrect information (which is, in effect just another password) then it is useless.

    2. It is still on your computer. So if your computer is cracked then the crackers get your username / password / favourite-dog-food / whatever.

    3. Find a bank / credit union that uses real two factor authentication.