Internet Passwords - Your password to internet security

Managing an arsenal of passwords is an indispensable part of the internet culture.The use of password is your first line of security defence, without which keeping data safe will be an insurmountable challenge. With the need for numerous login accounts, using the same password for each login is tempting, BUT it might not be the most sensible decision around as some websites do not have strong security. Illegal access to password information from seemingly innocent-looking websites like ecards site may lead to the same information being used to hack into payment sites like paypal. The loss of personal financial data could result in grave consequences that one would do better without. To demonstrate how easy it is to hack a Facebook account, let's take a look at the following video (i bet you'll probably starting hacking around after viewing it!)

I'm sure all of you have hear of the saying that goes "to err is human", perhaps they should complete it by adding "to slack is normal". We all have the tendency to get lazy and complacent, that is only human nature. How many times have we heard of passwords being set as "password" and other outrageously simple and easy-to-guess security codes. There's a chinese saying that goes, the more dangerous the place is, the safer you are. So it seems like people have been putting that into practice. But they're WRONG! Numerous ingenious programs have been written to crack passwords at high volume, some by hackers while others are created by legitimate security testing tools. Most of these programs use a variety of dictionary based attacks to combine common words and word variations to try thousands of passwords as fast as the targeted system will permit. Some begin by guessing a whole bunch of common passwords. Outsmarting these intelligent attacks is not as easy as we think.

Strong passwords are essential in providing important protections to your online transactions. A password should be sufficiently long and complicated to make it difficult to guess. One trick is to use mneumonics. Instead of using a common word, the first letters of each word of a phrase is used to make the password. Adding numerals or symbols to a password makes it harder to crack. A password cracker has to guess the correct string and may try to use all possible combinations. By using numerals or symbols, this will increase the number of possibilities and cause the process to take longer.

In addition, short passwords should be avoided as they can be guessed in an reasonable amount of time by a motivated individual and offers little resistance against software hackers. In Roger A Grimes' 2006 article, Password Size Does Matter, he recommended using a password of at least 15 characters to keep it from being cracked. Other common password pitfalls include creating passwords using dictionary words in any language, words spelled backwards, sequences or repeated characters as well as personal information (birthday, passport number etc).

Passwords should be known only by the computer user and the applicable service provider. They should not be written down since they may be viewed by someone else. Writing down a password makes it simple for another person to pretend to be another user. If, say, login information is written on a Post-it stuck underneath a keyboard, another employee can use that to gain unauthorized access to files.

Since there are so many computers attached to the Internet, performing online transactions carries the risk of being seen by another person. To minimize this risk, when making an online purchase, a secure site should be used. The beginning of the website address may read “https:” which Eric Lawrence explains in his 2006 article HTTPS Security Improvements in Internet Explorer 7, this indicates a site that will use encryption to hide information being sent over the Internet so that no one can read it along the way.

It is important to use unique passwords for services that store personal financial data such as banking and payment sites. This reduces the risk that a password stolen from another site list could be used to access the confidential data. Shopping and travel sites may keep credit card information so those should be unique as well.

Is Atlantis Found On Google Earth?

Internet giants Google's revised version of the Google Earth (5th edition), which allows users to access undersea data sparked a mass debate when British aeronautical engineer noticed something queer off the coast of Africa , about 600 miles west of the Canary Islands. The area is approximately the size of Wales, resembles the pattern of a street grid. Many believed that this could be the mythical sunken city of Atlantis, since it lies awfully close to one of the spots that Plato had pinpointed as a possible resting place of Atlantis. However, Google has moved swiftly to deny the rumor, stating that the lines are remnants of sonar traces left by boat as they surveyed the area. The following are two video clips that compiled the information gathered from youtube that offers a quick lowdown on what was seen on Google Earth

Skeptics have a point, why is it that prestigious marine research institutes, armed by sophisticated technology & equipments have not been able to locate Atlantis all these years, yet a software by Google can detect the location (even with the exact coordinates!) seemingly without much effort?

Yet, the evidence is compelling. The grid of crisscrossing lines don't quite seem to be the work of mother nature, remember, mother nature doesn't make straight lines, intelligent beings do. The site seem to be too vast and organized to be caused naturally. And while Google had claimed how did the lines originate, they were unable to explain why the blank spots within those lines.

Is it really Atlantis that is seen on Google Earth? And if it's not, do you still believe that Atlantis had actually existed? I'll leave the decision up to you :)

Internet & Alleviating Poverty

Poverty, a perennial phenomenon that afflicts thousands of people worldwide, has been a compelling presence amidst the focus on issues like political turmoils and natural disasters. According to figures from the United Nations, an astonishing 25, 000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes. In reality, shortage of food is never the source of the problem, the problem is that many of these hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. Without money to buy food, these people become malnourished, this makes them weaker and often sick. With their ability to work reduced, their plight is worsen as they become hungrier and poorer, until the vicious cycle ends in death. Alleviating poverty thus becomes a point of paramount significance, one of which aspects that we'll be exploring for today is the use of internet.




The Internet is commonly made available to poor communities in the form of community-based telecentres. These telecentres provide shared access to the Internet and are the only realistic means of doing this for poor communities. One such example is the "Village Internet Program" spearheaded by Grameen Communications and Grameen Foundation in Bangladesh. In it, village computer centers will make it possible for people to access the Internet in search of income-generating activities and to provide education and computer-based employment.

One major benefit of this is increased access to agricultural and market information. Farmerscan learn about the current market price of their product through the Internet, resulting in increased economic efficiency. Consequently, accurate and timely information will reduce exploitation of poor rural producers by allowing them direct access to the market rather than go through middlemen who can control prices at both ends when they control information and transport.

Cyber Kiosks also bring employment opportunities to the community at large. With training, young people will be able to perform data entry and provide transcription services for any company in the world, a better alternative (in monetary terms) than migration to urban slums in search of employment. These educated youths can then become a resource for teaching others, providing educational opportunities beginning with the most basic primary education, before moving to distance learning and to remote classroom facilities in villages that until now had not even a schoolteacher.




Having arrived at an age dominated by science and technology, many of us are finding that science and technology act as aids to help us perform more efficiently. For the more affluent, science and technology have improved, but not revolutionized, their lives. For the poor, however, science and technology are likely to have a far greater impact as they promise to provide new, important, and sometimes even life-saving economic opportunities.