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

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).

Comments

Urg.

[khasim]

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.

translation from dice

[nimbius]

Tom Henderson is a long-time observer of the IT scene, complete with scowl and grey goatee. his presence, mannerisms, and outlooks are demographically similar to our core audience and in an effort to increase our brands relateability we have enlisted him to elucidate opinions that are so widely shared amongst our core audience as to become cannon to them all.

Tom will serve as a vehicle through which our customers and audience (but never our community) grow to engage our brand as its shuffled from buyer to buyer like a box of partially melted candies amongst children in a hot minivan on a summer road trip.