In August of 2012, The Wired.com writer Mat Honan's online life was attacked and torn to pieces. this isn't the first or only thing we've learned from Matt Honan since he writes articles for Wired.com.

Last June (June 2012) over 6 million passwords for linkedin and last.fm were leaked and the passwords have been under study ever since.
According to antivirus software provider ESET, the 25 most common passwords are easy to guess.

There is an article on the Linux Journal about a relatively new service, bitcoin, which at first glance looks like an invitation for misuse or out right abuse. Bit coin basically pays people to avail their computers to others to break cryptographic keys. Well, what is the purpose of those keys? Are those hash passwords or credit card information?

The privacy we all need on the Internet isn't automatic and it takes a few steps to achieve. I go over some of those I use on my FaceBook page.

Just like you have to intentionally put curtains up on your windows so people can't look in, you have to intentionally make the Internet so others can't spy on you. I'll mention two things that pertain to the Internet as a whole and four that pertain to one of the big privacy threats on the Internet- FaceBook. By the way, I'm not saying FaceBook is evil, just that social networks can be used for evil and FaceBook is one of the biggest social networks.

A relatively new way to process credit card payments, Square-Up is in use now. It was created by one of the pillars in the Web2.0 world (Jack Dorsey who is the "Twitter creator"). However, will it help or hurt the merchant?

Square-up is a device you plug into a mobile device's USB port to make that mobile device a credit card scanner. But this kind of set-up comes with many security problems and it will cause even more problems with PCI-DSS compliance which anybody who takes credit card payments has to now worry about.

As convenient as ecommerce can be, it also is confusing and there is a tremendous risk. Here are some ideas that you should keep in mind whenever you are buying something online.

I keep seeing ads floating around the Internet claiming they will keep your information private on the Internet. But how much of their claim is real?

One such program "hide my ip address" says that "The Internet is NOT Anonymous" and "Discover Why Your PC is Broadcasting ALL Your Personal Details And How You Can Hide Your IP Address!" Let's look at their claims here.

ID theft can impact your monetary situation like having money stolen from your bank account, your credit ratings ruined, an increase in your income taxes due. It can also hurt you in less tangible ways like keeping you from getting a job.

The need to protect one's name is nothing new. Even Shakespeare talked about it.

The conflicts over the Kashmir border has been taken up by part-timers on the Internet. Pakistan's cyber-militia attacked India's CBI (like the CIA in America) after a militia there attacked 35 government sites in Pakistan. And now India is getting ready for more.

Mystic lessons from Gawker passwords, gawker, gnosis, encryption, 4chan

The security industry is panicking this week because of the breach at Gawker. Gawker, a National-Enquirer wannabe is a site with nine popular Blogging systems. It has had its whole password database stolen which included millions of its users email and passwords. Twitter, Yahoo, World-of-Warcraft, LinkedIn and more are all requiring some to reset their passwords if you are on the list.