More Articles for you (hat tip to Arnold Woodworth)

Hacker-proof your password

We've been told time and again how important it is to have tricky, unique passwords that are known to no one but ourselves. We should make them long and add numbers and symbols to fool the fraudsters combing the Internet for access to our records.

And we should always, always have different passwords for each site.

But apparently, we're not listening very well.

It's just too hard to remember so many different passwords. Our memory function doesn't grow as our list of password-protected sites does.

It's a matter of mental overload. Nobody can remember 150 passwords.

In big breaches where passwords are stolen from major companies, hackers typically write a short computer program to sort all the passwords out. They find a number of common passwords and start applying them to random bank accounts with your name. For example, if the password on your LinkedIn account is "letmein1," the hacker will run that password and your user name against accounts at Bank of America, Chase Bank, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, for starters - just to see if maybe you have an account there.

If that doesn't work, they may change the password to "letmein2" and then "letmein3" and so forth.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hacker-proof-your-password-2012-12-19

Apple pinch-to-zoom patent invalidated

Remember how you make things bigger or smaller on your iPhone or iPad?

By Pinching?  Like in the Youtube movie below?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXFFEFSJTpk

Apple patented that pinch several years ago, but the court has declared that patent invalid.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-pinch-to-zoom-patent-invalidated-wsj-2012-12-19

Australian Police warn of safety concerns from Google Maps

Google maps may be better than Apple, but even Google's maps are not perfect.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/news/article/-/15610781/police-warn-of-safety-concerns-from-google-maps/

Why You Should Want to Pay for Software, Instagram Edition

the only way to get around the privacy problems inherent in advertising-supported social networks is to pay for services that we value. It's amazing what power we gain in becoming paying customers instead of the product being sold.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/12/12/why-you-should-want-to-pay-for-software-instagram-edition/266367/