CAPTCHAs, those images of squiggly letters that are a pain to solve, help digitize books, and are increasingly being cracked by bots, are taking a new approach. Instead of being a still image, CAPTCHAs are now being made into videos of moving text so they're easier for a human to solve but more complicated for a bot with NuCaptcha. NuCaptcha's Basic service is free and still … [Read more...]
Jimmy John’s Lesson on Instant Communication and the Problem with Rumors
Apparently a rumor was going around that made its way into a "press alert" saying Jimmy John's was going to have $1 sandwiches on July 1st in the Champaign and Charleston, IL areas as part of a customer appreciation day. This press alert made its way to a local newspaper writer who put the information out on Twitter. The newspaper she works for then retweeted the information … [Read more...]
Adobe Releases Quarterly Update 9.3.3 for Reader/Acrobat
Adobe has accelerated its quarterly update for its Reader and Acrobat applications from the planned July 13th to today, June 29th. The reason behind the early release is a critical vulnerability announced June 4th that has been seen in the wild that could allow the program to be crashed and an attacker to take control of the system. Adobe Flash Player was patched on June 10th … [Read more...]
Google’s Terms of Service = Not Safe For Work?
Or Why You Might Reconsider Forwarding Your Work Mail to Gmail "Do No Evil!" That's Google's well-known catch-phrase that makes people more trusting of them. It has been called into question a few times when Google has over-stepped its bounds before and I'll cite the Google Buzz privacy issues as a recent example. Would it be evil for Google to do something that you have agreed … [Read more...]
Bing’s Search History via Proxy
My friend was telling me about this interesting tidbit people had found at his work when using Microsoft's search engine Bing. Bing keeps a search history for you based on your external IP address. For most this won't be a big deal but if you're at work and going through a proxy, everybody will be sharing the same external IP address. This means you'll have a shared search … [Read more...]