You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Unless you’re quick to sign up with new services, snagging a simple user ID with your name, or just about any word from the English dictionary, can be unlikely. If you’re only first joining Yahoo today (for one reason or another), however, registering any account without a handful of random numbers tacked on at the end is downright impossible. That’ll soon change. The internet giant has announced on Tumblr that come July 15th, IDs that have been inactive for more than a year will be released to the public, giving shoegurlmary1992@yahoo.com a chance to snag mary@yahoo.com, for example. The decision seems perfectly reasonable to us. We only hope that other sites (Twitter) follow suit.
Filed under: Internet
Via: The Next Web
Source: Yahoo (Tumblr)
Identity theft is a huge black market industry, costing US consumers $1.52 billion in 2011 and stealing headlines all last year. Here are five habits that all but guarantee you’ll become just another statistic in 2013—and how to break them. More »
It’s 2013 and white hat hackers like Adam Laurie are still breaking into ID chips that are supposed to be secure. How come? Partly it’s the way of the world, because no man-made NFC or RFID security barrier can ever be truly impervious. But in practical terms, a chip’s vulnerability often stems from the fact that it can be taken apart and probed at a hacker’s leisure. The secure element doesn’t necessarily need to have power running through it or to be in the midst of near-field communication in order to yield up its cryptographic key to a clever intruder who has sufficient time and sufficient desire to breach the security of a smartphone, bank card or national border.
Which brings us to the latest device in NXP‘s SmartMX2 range — a piece of technology that is claimed to work very differently and that is expected to hit the market next year. Instead of a traditional key stored in the secure element’s memory, every single copy of this chip carries a unique fingerprint within the physical structure of its transistors. This fingerprint (aka Physically Unclonable Function, or PUF) is a byproduct of tiny errors in the fabrication process — something chip makers usually try to minimize. But NXP has found a way to amplify these flaws in a controlled way and use them for identification, and it’d take a mightily well-equipped criminal (or fare dodger, or Scrabble cheater) to reverse engineer that.
We do have our concerns when it comes to protecting our identity online these days, but on the other hand, one cannot remain too protective or coddled up. If you are concerned that your personal information on a printed piece of paper, such as name, address, Social Security number, bank account numbers, the mistress’ phone number – anything that you deem was necessary to be included on the print at one point in time but is no longer needed, then the $19.95 ID Guard Stamp would certainly come in handy.
The ID Guard Stamp is an amazing little stamp which is said to be able to mask all personal information, including the above mentioned – and anything else which has been written or printed that you would like to cover up. This is made possible thanks to a specially designed, indecipherable, permanent ink pattern that will jumble up confidential information which has been printed on mail, checks, magazines, and letters among others. No longer do you need to shred mail, tear off magazine covers, or rip up checks to help prevent identity theft – although if you have hundreds of pages of sensitive information, the paper shredder is still the most important and efficient tool. Each inkpad is said to offer up to 1,000 impressions.
[ ID Guard Stamp copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
If staring at the incoming callers’ visage just wasn’t enough, Current’s Caller ID might worth a try. The utility app adds a raft of extra detail to your smartphone when it rings, from recent tweets and status updates through to weather conditions and even location data. After loading up the app, you can connect to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, which Current Caller ID combines with your existing contact list. Based on your use history, the app will even offer up a time to return missed calls. There’s the nice addition of some metrics between you and your phonebook, visualizing that precarious balance between text messages and calls with your significant other — or a timegraph of when you call Mom. These stats are possibly more useful than the caller ID features, and while the design does jar a little with the typical Android aesthetic, it’s hard to complain when the app’s free. If you’re willing to forgive those minor visual flaws, the download awaits at the source below.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software
Current Caller ID app adds social info, weather details, suggests a good time to ring back originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Aug 2012 19:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink 
Lifehacker | 
Current Caller ID (Google Play) | Email this | Comments
Because July 4th falls on a Wedneday, a lot of Americans will spend a five-day weekend traveling and drinking. It’s pretty common to misplace a wallet or a purse on that kind of vacation. And getting on a return flight without a valid ID, as you might imagine, is not easy. But it can be done. Here’s how to work it with the TSA. More »
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
