Entertainment and Technology News
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HTC is acknowledging this morning a software flaw found on some of their Android phones that openly offers secure credential across any Wi-Fi network they are connected with. A report from TheNextWeb shows that there is little in the way of stopping someone from grabbing this information and using it for mischievous purposes. The flaw affects a number… Read more
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Foursquare, and most of the apps built on top of the location service’s developer platform, are great for exploring the physical world for entertainment. But a new iPhone app called 4sqwifi (download here) offers something that could help those of us who need to be productive remotely — a way to see nearby wifi locations, and the passwords to go with them.
Those of you who have been stuck needing to send an urgent work email while experiencing poor smartphone data reception will understand why this app is useful.
Yes, there are a bunch of other web sites and apps that try to help people find nearby wifi locations. All the ones I’ve seen have had various shortcomings, like outdated or incomplete databases, and no passwords. 4sqwifi solves this problem by finding Foursquare venues near to the user, then searching user tips related to getting WiFi connections (“free wifi,” “wifi password is…” etc.).
After downloading the app from the App Store, you log in with your Foursquare ID and see a list of all of the nearby venues. Click on any of the listings and you’ll see the name of the WiFi connection and its password. (Note that the app had some page-loading problems initially, although I got it to work.)
The team behind the app is a pair of young Greek entrepreneurs, Apostolos Papadopoulos and Giannis Poulakas. Apostolos tells me he got the idea while a senior in high school last winter, but had to finish his university exams before getting started over the summer. He’s going to school in Vienna now, and is continuing to develop the service. The app is currently free, but the team is exploring business models like an in-app payment for an offline map of all of the wifi locations and passwords within a city.
He also just posted a few thoughts on launching the app, which you can check out here.
View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile
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My voice is my passport, verify me.
This is a list of the 25 crappiest passwords of 2011. I guess some people just reallllllly hate their privacy. And identities. Did I tell you one time I got my identity stolen? I found out who did it and buried him in the desert. So, in a way, he kind of got his stolen too. PERMANENTLY. A list of the “God, change it now”:
SplashData, a password management app maker, compiled a list of the 25 worst passwords of 2011, based on millions of stolen passwords that were dumped online.
1. password
2. 123456
3. 12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football
I’m going to go try these out on my coworker’s computers and, if I manage to get in, do something serious — something to really make them reconsider the strength of their password. “Change their wallpaper to penises?” Bingo.
The 25 Worst Passwords of 2011 [pcmag]
Thanks to Dunc, who still uses a pet’s name. View full post on Geekologie – Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome
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Bad news for any shady iOS developers out there: if you were sneakin’ In-App Purchase opportunities into the first 15 minutes of your game in hopes that lil’ ones might accidentally buy it, your evil-genius plan has been foiled.
For those who haven’t been keepin’ up on the ruckus: soon after Apple introduced In-App Purchase for iOS, someone figured out that users could make In-App Purchases without entering their iTunes password if said In-App Purchase was made within 15 minutes of purchasing the app. That’s a marvelous idea, in theory — no one likes entering their password multiple times.
The problem? Parents would buy games, hand’em over to their kid, and come back to find that pint-size had unknowingly bought up all sorts of virtual goodies (friggin’ Smurfberries!) with real world cash. As of this morning, this should no longer be possible.
Beginning with iOS 4.3, Apple will require your password be entered with every In-App Purchase, regardless of how recently a purchase had been made. As long as you keep Junior’s prying eyes away from your password, there shouldn’t be any more surprise charges for $99 boxes of virtual food for your kid’s virtual cat.
Or you could, you know, tell your kid to not buy these things. If they’re too young to understand that, they probably shouldn’t be using $500+ slabs of glass completely unsupervised anyway.
[Via Washington Post]
[Original Image courtesy of AtomicJeep on Flickr]
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Scientists abroad have figured out how to access saved passwords in a locked, jailbroken iPhone in six seconds flat, all without cracking the passcode. How? It’s yet another pesky SSH issue. If you have a jailbroken iPhone, Read more
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