I wish that I could use a stronger password for this site. 8 characters are NOT enough.
Response (Gaurav Sharma) 02/06/2010 05:53 AM
Thank you for your email regarding your online password.
I would like to inform you that our website has a 128 bit encryption. With this base, passwords that comprise only of letters and alphabets create an algorithm that is difficult to crack. We discourage the use of special characters because hacking softwares can recognize them very easily.
The length of the password is limited to 8 characters to reduce keyboard contact. Some softwares can decipher a password based on the information of “most common keys pressed”.
Therefore, lesser keys punched in a given frame of time lessen the possibility of the password being cracked.
Moreover, American Express is committed to protecting the privacy and security of all of our Cardmembers, both on-line and off-line. We believe that our current security measures, which include our sophisticated monitoring systems to detect unusual or fraudulent card activity, provide strong, ongoing protections for our Cardmembers.
Rest assured, I have forwarded your comments to our webmaster for review. During this review, we may contact you if additional information is required.
We value your membership and wish goodness and health to you and your family.Sincerely,
Gaurav Sharma
Email Servicing Team
American Express Interactive Services
O_o
As we continue our collective foray into the brave new world of social networking, we keep learning the same lesson over and over again: don’t post photos of yourself doing stupid things. This is doubly true if said stupid thing is illegal, as yet another intellectually challenged Facebook user has discovered.
Full Article (Ars Technica - arstechnica.com)
A school district in Riverside County has pulled the Merriam-Webster’s 10th edition dictionary from school shelves because it includes the term “oral sex.” The Menifee Union School District took the action last week after a parent complained about the dictionary.
Full Article (Los Angeles Times - latimes.com)
Following the report earlier this week that the FBI regularly broke the ECPA law, in obtaining information from telcos without going through the proper process (and, in some cases using just a post it note!), some interesting details from the full report have come to light. The two key ones? First, “the Obama administration issued a secret rule almost two weeks ago saying it was legal for the FBI to have skirted federal privacy protections.” And, second, the original idea to use these bogus “exigent letters” didn’t come from the FBI, but from an AT&T employee. We noted in the original report that no one seemed to be placing any blame on the telcos for allowing this, and why they’re clearly abusing the law, in giving out such info without the proper rules being followed, seems like a big question:
Full Article (Techdirt - techdirt.com)
BlueBeat.com made waves this week in the music world by selling remastered Beatles tracks for a quarter a piece. Now, hit with a federal copyright lawsuit, the company behind the site has responded… and it says that BlueBeat actually owns the copyright on the works it sells. EMI is not amused.
Google has angered the Android enthusiast community by sending a cease and desist notice to a third-party developer who is building a popular custom version of the open source platform. Google doesn’t want its proprietary bits included in cooked ROMs.
Customers were left puzzled as to why Amazon would reach out and delete e-books from their Kindle readers, and the situation was made ironic given that the books were Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. Ars reports why this happened, and how the future will be different.
A court has found newsgroup provider Usenet.com liable for copyright infringement. Advertising to file-sharers, putting “warez” in your site’s meta tags, and tampering with evidence don’t amuse federal judges.
We told you last week that browser maker Opera was generating quite some buzz by being secretive about their plans to ‘reinvent the web’. Well, the company this morning unveiled what it was referring to: technology that essentially turns every computer running the Opera browser into a full-fledged Web server. Behold Opera Unite.
