password

Twitter plans to introduce an "account verification" feature that the social networking site hopes will help beef up security. The move follows a spate of attacks in which high-profile media accounts have been taken over and used to publish bogus ... news claims. The new system is a form of 'two-factor verification', meaning that merely providing a standard password isn't enough. When a person uses two-factor verification security, a hacker who gains access to a password still won't be able to break into an account. If users enable the new system in their account settings, they'll be able to add ... (view more)

Facebook has a new solution for people who are having trouble accessing their accounts: if you sign up for the site's 'Trusted Contacts' feature, you can log in with a little help from your friends. The system is designed for people who've forgotten ... their password and is an alternative to existing security measures that involve answering questions and awaiting a confirmation email. Using the feature you can designate between three and five people from your Facebook friends list as Trusted Contacts. If and when you are unable to access your account and trigger the feature, Facebook will send a ... (view more)

In one of the most spectacular research projects ever carried out online, an anonymous security researcher has scanned the entire Internet for security holes. They found that millions of devices have no password protection whatsoever. The project ... was simple in concept: the researcher tried to contact and then access devices by trying every possible IP (Internet Protocol) address using IPv4, a system by which every device connected to the Internet uses 12 digits as identification. This means that IPv4 allows for a maximum of around 4.2 billion IP addresses. The researcher tried to contact ... (view more)

Drive Speedometer 1.1 Interested in finding out more about how your Windows computer's hard drives are performing? This free software utility monitors the read and write speeds of your hard drives, and reports the information to you. This kind of ... data can help you keep track of your hard drives' performance and also prepare for a crash, if hard drive problems are detected. http://www.pcwintech.com Network Password Recovery 1.32 Each time you connect to a remote server, Windows asks for your network password, which can be saved and stored for future use. This free software utility is capable ... (view more)

Password Security Scanner 1.1 This program for Windows computers scans the passwords stored for applications like Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Outlook. It then provides you with useful information about those passwords, ... including their length and style. It's a great way to help you track your passwords and construct better ones. http://www.nirsoft.net Pretty Run 6.7.0.133 Pretty Run is a special tool designed to help you navigate the Start Menu on your Windows computer. For example, if you think you've got a program installed on your PC, but don't want to sift through all ... (view more)

We recently received this question from a regular Infopackets reader: "Hi there, Thanks for all the great information you've been supplying me. Now I have a question: I'm a Windows 8 user who has never really appreciated the log-in prompt. Is there ... a way to disable it on my computer? Thanks! John C." My answer: Yes, John, there is. Windows 8 users who don't like the log-in screen can bypass this part of the normal process when starting up their PCs. Ending Log-In Prompts in a Few Easy Steps To get rid of the usual Windows 8 log-in, first boot up your computer and enter your log-in ... (view more)

A newly-unveiled password-cracking system can reportedly guess billions of unique passwords every second. At that rate, it's entirely practical to have the device attempt every possible eight-character Windows password. The password-cracking system ... is a Linux-based graphical processing unit (GPU) 'cluster' that uses a special type of virtualization software which allows it to use not one, not two, but 25 Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Radeon graphics cards. 350 Billion Passwords Guessed Each Second That kind of GPU power enables the cluster to guess passwords at an astonishing rate: 350 billion ... (view more)

Random Password Generator 1.2 Random Password Generator is designed to help you create secure, random passwords that are extremely difficult to crack. This program produces passwords that feature a combination of random lower and upper case letters, ... numbers, and punctuation symbols. Easy to use, and very important if you go online regularly. http://www.iobit.com Game Booster 3.4 Game Booster 3 is capable of delivering a great gaming experience even if you are playing on an older PC. It does this by temporarily shutting down the computer's background processes and any unnecessary Windows ... (view more)

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's personal email account has reportedly been hacked. According to some observers, security weaknesses in Microsoft's Hotmail email service allowed the hack to occur. In reality, however, slip-ups by both ... Romney and Microsoft facilitated the hack. The incident occurred after the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) obtained and printed several emails sent to and from Romney during his time as governor of Massachusetts. The newspaper did not hack the account to obtain the emails, but rather made a legal request for Romney's office to hand them over. The WSJ ... (view more)

KeePass Password Safe 2.19 KeePass is a free open source password manager. You can put all your passwords in one database, and keep it locked with one master key or a key file. With KeePass on your computer, you have to remember only one master ... password or select the one key file to unlock the whole database and have access to all your many passwords. It's a great time saver, and greatly improves your peace of mind. http://keepass.info Blank And Secure 3.16 "Blank And Secure" is a free, portable software tool you can use to securely delete any of your data files, and be sure they ... (view more)