Re: Starbucks iPhone app can provide thieves with free coffee

["Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah" <rMslade () shaw ca>]

Date sent:              Mon, 14 Feb 2011 23:29:25 -0500
From:                   Jeffrey Walton <noloader () gmail com>

> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41585345/ns/technology_and_science-security/

It's definitely something to think about if you leave your smartphone with 
prankish friends while you go to the bathroom, but there are all kinds of things 
they could do that are worse than that.  (Leave your unprotected 
phone/laptop/tablet/etc with those kinds of "friends" and you pretty much deserve 
everything you get.)  This new "threat" really isn't going to keep me up at night.  
(Should I be attempting to make some kind of joke about the lack of caffiene 
helping?)

Context (as one of the members here keeps saying in another forum) is 
everything.  I'm a security "expert" (if there even is such a thing), and I don't 
have a particularly strong password on my desktop computer.  Why should I?  I 
don't have any remote access running, and I have the physical protection of it 
being in the house.  I even "weakened" a password on a Mac laptop this morning 
because the Mac promotes having the thing "sleep" and wake up every time you 
use it, and you can go for weeks without rebooting.  Hence, unless you change it to 
require a login every time it wakes up (which I may, eventually, do), the danger of 
forgetting a complicated password is likely much greater than that of someone 
getting into your stuff because they can guess your weak one.

However, this is just a curmudgeonly gripe, so I suppose I should proffer 
something else more amusing.  Today Time magazine's Twitter account asked 
what country trails only the US and Yemen in terms of guns per capita, and said 
that you'd never guess.  Of course, as soon as I read the answer I realized I *would* 
have guessed, and I'd be willing to bet that a substantial number of the membership 
here would as well.  http://ti.me/eDsuC3

======================  (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade () vcn bc ca     slade () victoria tc ca     rslade () computercrime org
           GOVERNMENT.SYS corrupted, reboot Ottawa? (Y/N)
victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm http://www.infosecbc.org/links
http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/author/p1/
http://twitter.com/rslade
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