passwords

There is nojustification for a boss, prospective employer or college admissions officer to demand access to private Facebook accounts, but they are doing it more and more often. Until it's ruled illegal, camouflage can preserve what confrontation can not.

As at other breached sites, Sony customers used short, simple passwords that could be cracked easily; if Sony hadn't stored them as plain text that could be read without even that much effort.

In the wake of the Gawker security breach some pundits are using the lists of leaked passwords as a means to scold us all about our poor password choices. I disagree. Match the password to the value of the data you store on the site. A lousy -- but easy to remember -- password is fine for some sites, as long as you're set up properly.

With some very simple encryption tools, you can have a system that doesn't give up its secrets -- and you won't have to spend your weekend figuring out how to get it that way.

Don't want usernames and passwords to be stored on your client machines? You can disable this using Group Policy.