account

A German court has upheld Facebook's refusal to let the parents of a deceased girl access her private messages. It's the latest attempt to deal with the tricky balance of dealing with social network history after people die. The sheer number of ... people on Facebook means that users dying has become a significant issue. An estimated 10,000 users die each day and more than 30 million have already passed away. Facebook deals with the issue by "memorializing" accounts. Once it has seen credible evidence that a person has died, it can put the account into a special mode in which ... (view more)

Stolen Yahoo account details could be changing hands for as little as three-hundredths of a cent according to security researchers. It follows a hack of more than a billion accounts. It's the second Yahoo breach reported this year. Back in September ... the news broke that details of more than 500,000 accounts had been accessed by hackers in 2014. Now Yahoo has confirmed a separate attack in 2013 involved the theft of data for more than a billion accounts, something security experts believe makes it a record breach. It's suggested that the stolen data includes email addresses and passwords, ... (view more)

Lately we've been posting a lot of articles about websites and services that have been hacked . One of the primary recommendations we have also repeated is that users should use unique and hard-to-guess passwords for each site, as this will help to ... prevent any further breaches. The reasoning is that if user account data is stolen on one site ( Yahoo is a good example ), the same username and passwords may also be valid on other sites - but only if users are using the same account names, passwords or password hints. Unfortunately this is often the case, because using the same passwords on ... (view more)

Users of the Opera browser's sync tools have been warned to change their passwords for every website. The organization behind Opera says the warning is with "an abundance of caution." The warning only covers people who use Opera's system for ... synchronizing bookmarks, passwords and other information so that they can access the feature on any computer. This covers around 1.7 million people among the 350 million who use the browser. Writing on a company blog, Opera's Tarquin Wilton-Jones said an attack on the system had been detected and, although quickly blocked, was ... (view more)

Management at TeamViewer, a remote access computer tool, have confirmed that a "significant number" of users have fallen prey to hackers. However, the company insists that all evidence suggests that there is no flaw in the system, but is instead ... pointing fingers at its users. TeamViewer allows users to login to a remote computer (even their own) from anywhere with an Internet connection. Once connected, users can operate the computer just as if they had physical access to the machine. The security for the system works in two ways: first, users get a reference number that identifies ... (view more)

A series of massive but dated breaches of high-profile sites is yet another reminder of the dangers of poor password security. While the sites in question are taking preventative measures, experts warn that hackers could use the stolen details to ... access other sites. In the past few weeks, hackers have offered up massive hauls of stolen login details from four major sites. They include details of 360 million accounts from MySpace and 65 million accounts from Tumblr, both lists appearing to date from 2013. Questions Posed For Sites And Users This follows 164 million account details from ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently upgraded to Windows 10. During the installation procedure, it asked me to enter in an email address. I did that, however, now I can't remember what password I used for the email address - ... and now I can't login to Windows 10! I am completely locked out of the system. How can I get back in if I don't know my email password for Windows 10? If I'm able to get back in, how can I set it up so I can login without having to use the email login? " My response: This is a very frequently asked question. The short answer is that you can attempt ... (view more)

Google is testing a login method that doesn't require a password. The problem is that the method doesn't necessarily add any convenience and isn't as secure as it could be. Reports of the new method have come from a user at the discussion site ... Reddit, who was invited to test the new system. As part of the test, the user must have a smartphone registered. (Source: reddit.com ) The user posted screenshots which show the normal login screen but only asking for an email address (the Google equivalent of a user name) and not for a password. Code Sent To Mobile Screen The screenshots ... (view more)

Facebook is to warn users when it believes a government is trying to hack their account. The company is giving few details about how it will detect such attempts, or which governments may be involved. The warnings will appear when Facebook has ... reason to believe an "account has been targeted or compromised by an attacker suspected of working on behalf of a nation-state." According to Facebook, the message is not meant as an indication that Facebook's own servers or systems have been compromised - whether by a government or anyone else. Early Warning System Instead, Facebook will ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Terry C. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am trying to run the command 'sfc /scannow' (system file checker) through the Windows command prompt to repair corrupt Windows files, but every time I try and run 'sfc /scannow', it stops at 42% ... and gives the error message 'Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation.' Therefore, the 'sfc /scannow' does not complete and I can't repair my corrupt Windows files. How can I fix this so I can finish running the scan and fix my files? " Update 20200116 : I'm getting a lot of ... (view more)