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Many people use just a single password across the Web. That’s a bad idea, say online-security experts.

“Having the same password for everything is like having the same key for your house, your car, your gym locker, your office,” says Michael Barrett, chief information-security officer for online-payments service PayPal, a unit of eBay Inc.

To come up with a strong password, some security officials recommend taking a memorable phrase and using the first letter of each word. For example, “to be or not to be, that is the question,” becomes “tbontbtitq.” Others mash an unlikely pair of words together. The longer the password — at least eight characters, experts say — the safer it is.

Once people figure out a phrase for their password, they can make it more complex by replacing letters with special characters or numbers. They can also capitalize, say, the second character of every password for added security. Hence “tbontbtitq” becomes “tB0ntbtitq.”

No matter how good a password is, it is unsafe to use just one. Mr. Barrett recommends following his lead and having strong ones for four different kinds of sites — email, social networks, financial institutions and e-commerce sites — and a fifth for infrequently visited or untrustworthy sites.

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Facebook is making changes to the process for tagging friends in photos uploaded to the social network, the company announced on Tuesday.

Starting in a few weeks, the system will scan all images posted to Facebook and suggest the names of people who appear in the frame.

Facebook’s more than 500 million users have been automatically included in the database, but the company is allowing each person to choose whether to be identified by toggling a pane in the account’s privacy settings.

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Additionally, owners of Android smartphones are being warned to avoid public WiFi networks after researchers found a security flaw that could affect the vast majority of devices based on Google’s software.

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You can sign up for Facebook HTTPS by going to Account Settings and then selecting “Account Security,” third from the bottom. Then click under “Secure Browsing” — if it’s there. Facebook says everyone should have this by the end of the day, but in the meantime you might be missing the relevant option toggle.

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Interested parties include the Connecticut state attorney general, the FBI, government privacy officials from Australia, Canada and the U.K., and even the city of Taipei.

Sony’s online network has been down since April 20, when the company took down the PlayStation Network and the related Qriocity cloud music service due to a external intrusion, or hack into the network.

That may have been on Sony’s mind on Friday, when the company’s latest blog post addressed the issue of compensation, and what will happen to customer’s saved games, data, and other aspects of game play.

Customers, meanwhile, have complained that their credit-card information that was given to Sony has been compromised, perhaps by a hacker group. “There have been charges at retail stores, restaurants, parking garages, and hotels in TN [Tennessee] and MD [Maryland],” Thomas O’Brien wrote in an email to PCmag.com. “There have also been charges in AZ [Arizona], but those may be online, and not a physical retail location.”

Sony has contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation in San Diego, and its cybercrimes unit is investigating.

“The situation also raises questions about the effectiveness of Sony’s measures to protect the confidentiality and security of private information it receives from consumers,” Jepsen wrote. “I am particularly concerned that breaches of this sort do not reoccur and that affected individuals, many of which may be children, are provided sufficient protections to safeguard their information from further disclosures.”

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Note: Full Timeline Here – Friday, April 29 – Hackers claim to have access to PSN customers’ credit card numbers and reportedly try to hold the data for ransom, demanding payment from Sony, which refuses and declares that the data is encrypted.

The three stories all fall along the same theme: a Buffalo man, Sarasota man, and Syracuse man all found themselves being raided by the FBI or police after their wireless networks were allegedly used to download child pornography. “You’re a creep… just admit it,” one FBI agent was quoted saying to the accused party. In all three cases, the accused ended up getting off the hook after their files were examined and neighbors were found to be responsible for downloading child porn via unsecured WiFi networks.

Being accused of amassing the world’s largest collection of child pornography is just one of the many downsides to leaving your network open, yet people (including some self-identified geeks) continue to do it. But why? As evidenced by reader e-mail over the last few years, some users claim they’re providing a service to their neighbors by letting them use their WiFi every so often (in turn, these users tend to also make use of open WiFi networks when they see them). Others hope that leaving their WiFi networks open will help to exonerate them if they were to be accused of downloading copyrighted music or movies—Big Content would never sue the wrong individual for copyright infringement, right?

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Security researchers have discovered that Apple’s iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner’s computer when the two are synchronised.

The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone’s recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner’s movements using a simple program.

For some phones, there could be almost a year’s worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple’s iOS 4 update to the phone’s operating system, released in June 2010.

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Questions about iPhone Tracker

Senate Bill 850, which was presented to committee Tuesday by state Sen. Stuart Greenleaf, R-Willow Grove, would modify the crimes code to create the offense of “cyber bullying and sexting by minors,” which would be classified as a third-degree misdemeanor.

Greenleaf’s bill would target only those minors who utilize images to intentionally harm another person, which clearly constitutes a crime, Levick said.

“It does not penalize children for engaging in what is often stupid, reckless, adolescent behavior, but focuses on harm, which is what our criminal justice system is designed to address,” Levick said.

The Greenleaf bill specifically makes it illegal for a minor to transmit an image of another minor in a state of nudity with the intent to “coerce, intimidate, torment, harass or otherwise cause emotional distress to the other minor.” The transmission must have been done without the minor’s knowledge or his or her consent.

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Posted just mere minutes before she attempted to take her own life on Tuesday by jumping off a South Scranton bridge only a short distance from their home, it read:

“If You Got An I Love You, Know That It Means You Meant Something To Me. I’m Sorry I Disappointed You All Especially FAMILY I must Go Now, I Am A Disgrace, Love You All. GOODBYE!”

“Your heart is gone: a piece of you just leaves,” said Blackwell, 50, in an interview with Times-Shamrock newspapers. “This could have been prevented. She was being terrorized. I’m really, really angry for this even happening.”

Blackwell and authorities say it may have happened because of social media.

While Blackwell said her daughter has been the target of severe torment and bullying in and out of school over the past two months by a small group of teenagers, the trigger may have been when the harassment seeped onto the pages of Facebook
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