Time Warner Tests Charging Broadband Users Based on Usage

January 24, 2008 By Leave a Comment

According to a article on Yahoo News, Time Warner Cable will roll out a beta test of a new pricing structure later this year that will charge broadband users based on their monthly bandwidth usage.

This was only a matter of time. Downloading music is one thing, but as home users start downloading more and more videos the ISP’s see their chance to up monthly subscription rates. I suspect you can also count on not getting a lower rate if you don’t use a lot of bandwidth.

The cable companies are already suffering from oversold bandwidth and they are losing the new High Def customers to the satellite TV providers because they can’t compete. Bandwidth is the reason your cable company offers you 10 HD channels and as of this post, DirectTV offers 84 HD channels. If you have an HD TV, it is a no brainer who your HD channel provider will be.

One interesting aspect to this will be the millions of unsecured networks out there. I can’t drive one mile from my house without stumbling across at least 3 unsecured wireless networks named Linksys. Charging by the amount of bandwidth used will simply encourage people do their downloading on their neighbors wireless network.

It definitely isn’t a good time to be running a cable company. You are losing customers based on your old infrastructure and your only real prospect of growth is increasing billings on your current customer base.

Maybe they can lease some of that dark fiber from Google.

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Protecting Yourself From Identity Theft – Outsmarting The Challenge Question

January 10, 2008 By 1 Comment

I have really been focusing a considerable amount of energy on security lately. I have been looking at some of our conventional wisdom and trying to decide how it fits in with our current world. Is it still relevant or does it needs some to be updated.

That brings me to the topic of tonight’s post, the secret question. The secret question is the one that many of your more important services will ask you to supply an answer to so they can verify who you are. The most common question is what your mother’s maiden name is. They will also ask things like, where were you born, what is your dad’s middle name, what was your high school mascot, and many more just like that. The problem with these types of questions is they are easy for someone to socially engineer out of you.

My philosophy is this. Questions that have real answers are easier to answer than questions that don’t have real answers. When you are asked for your mother’s maiden name, pick a word or name or even a series of alphanumeric characters to supply as your answer. Don’t use your mother’s real maiden name. It is easy for someone to find out your mother’s maiden name. Hell, she might even tell them if they ask nice enough. They won’t be able to find out her maiden name is $fop()5tHg.

Filed Under: Internet Security Tagged With:

How Secure Are Your Passwords?

January 9, 2008 By 2 Comments

For many years, the conventional wisdom has been to never write down your passwords. You are suppose to make a strong password and remember it. This practice is very secure, however it is not practical in todays electronic society. Remembering 1 strong password is easy. Remembering 100 is a completely different thing.

In my opinion, forcing yourself to remember the strong password means you will use the same password in multiple places. This will leave you very vulnerable if your password is ever compromised. This also brings the “weakest link in the chain” effect into play. Your banks computers may be strong and your account information may be very secure on them. That internet message board or website you register with may not be as secure with the password to your electronic vault.

I carry a journal with me that has my passwords. I also guard the journal the same as I do my wallet. A journal may be overkill for most people so you could also write down your passwords and a single sheet of paper and store them in your wallet. Make sure you make a copy and stick it with your other valuable papers in a safe or safety deposit box. I create unique passwords for all of my sites and I write them down on a dedicated section of the journal as soon as I create a new account. I also don’t use words or dates in my passwords. Those are a lot easier to brute force than tougher passwords. For example, your name and birth date isn’t a good password. #eL9~ukl5f$ is a good password. EDqz~!)Oy$R:>jp;sd80_xCY}P=1^NVi41{.%GwPB”Dfqo4P,gentAG is an even better password. That last password is a 63 random printable ASCII character password generated by GRC’s Ultra High Security Password Generator. If someone can break that password, they were going to get your info anyway. I know some people have a tough time generating their own passwords so use that site. Steve Gibson of GRC is a legend in computer security.

It is ok to write down your passwords as long as you protect them and make sure you use different passwords for every logon you need. That way if one password is compromised somewhere you only have one password to change.

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