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Microsoft has joined a group determined to ditch the traditional password as a security measure. The group wants to develop alternatives that are more capable of protecting our favorite devices and most sensitive data. The group is called the FIDO ... (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, which is based around the idea that passwords, although widely used and easy to understand, are an inherently flawed security measure because they can be guessed or stolen. Although many new authentication measures -- such as fingerprint scans -- have emerged and are more secure from a technical perspective, FIDO ... (view more)

Google has agreed to pay a $17 million penalty for cheating a privacy system in Apple's Safari browser. Google was fined because it effectively lied to customers about its privacy policy. The case involves cookies, small text files placed in a ... user's web browser so that websites can quickly get information about the user. In some cases this can be beneficial; for example, a movie listing site can make a note about a user's ZIP code so that they immediately receive localized listings when they visit the site. In some cases, though, advertisers will use cookies to track which sites a user ... (view more)

Google says it plans to change the way users install add-on tools (known as "extensions") for its Chrome web browser. It's expected the changes will make the browser more secure. A Chrome extension is the same thing as an "add on" in Internet ... Explorer. It's a tool made by an independent developer that adds new functionality to the browser. For example, Amazon has released a Chrome extension that adds a button to the top of the browser screen. When you are reading a lengthy web page, such as a newspaper article, you can click the button to have a copy of the page sent to your Kindle device in ... (view more)

The Facebook privacy plot thickens. A new report suggests the site may begin tracking the movements of your mouse cursor as you navigate the site. In a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Facebook analytics leader Ken Rudin reveals that his ... company is considering several new measures designed to help improve the system it uses to track user activity. That means monitoring how long users hover their mouse cursor over certain parts of the Facebook website. Cursor Tracking Could Help Boost Ad Revenue For Facebook management, the most valuable information will involve how long users hover ... (view more)

Up to ten different router models, including some by popular manufacturer D-Link, are now vulnerable to hackers. It appears the code that runs the devices contains a master password that anyone could find and use. The problem was discovered by ... security researcher Craig Heffner, who admitted he had nothing more exciting to do on a Saturday than nose through code accompanying a recent firmware update for his D-Link DIR-100 router. Like most routers, the settings menu for the D-100 router is accessible through a web browser -- the idea being that the user can access the router through one of ... (view more)

Thought the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death" (BSoD) only affected Windows computers? Not quite. According to reports, Apple's newest version of the iPhone, the iPhone 5S , can also suffer BSoD. The Blue Screen of Death is an error screen that appears ... after a system crash. On Windows-based computers the BSoD appears when a system encounters an error from which it cannot recover. In most cases, the only way to reclaim control of the system is to initiate a hard reboot. That often results in the loss of any unsaved data and a whole lot of cursing by the user. No Single Explanation for iPhone ... (view more)