Microsoft could soon be “password free”

By John E Dunn

As each New Year rolls by, someone somewhere usually predicts the death of passwords as a trend for the coming months.

Every year so far, they’ve been proved wrong – somehow passwords cling on despite an exhausting list of maladies, mostly to do with how easy they are to forget, steal and misuse.

The moral would seem to be never to listen to predictions about passwords. However, post-Christmas comments by Microsoft chief information security officer Bret Arsenault offer a small but tantalizing sign that the password age might finally be nearing its end.

The evidence is usage figures for Windows Hello, the company’s technology for authenticating Windows users using facial recognition.

Launched in 2015 as part of Windows 10, Arsenault said that Hello was now the default way for the company’s 125,000 employees to log into computers.

The majority of Microsoft employees already log in to their computers using Windows Hello for Business instead of passwords. Very soon we expect all of our employees will be able to go completely password free.

No surprise that Microsoft might champion its own security technology, but Arsenault goes on to make an argument for replacing passwords that will strike a chord among professionals who manage credentials.

For several decades, the industry has focused on securing devices […] but it’s not enough. We should also be focused on securing individuals. We can enhance your experience and security by letting you become the password.

Whatever one thinks of Windows Hello, or biometrics in general, his observation sounds fair.

Passwords were created for a world of devices and systems, not one in which the need to verify a person’s identity in real time using something more substantial than a string of characters has become pressing.

Read more at https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/01/05/microsoft-could-soon-be-password-free/

JPMorgan doesn’t trust YouTube to keep its ads out of sketchy channels

By Lisa Vaas

Last March, Google found itself apologizing to many of its YouTube advertisers.

It was apologizing to their backs. They were running for the hills. Brands such as Marks & Spencer, McDonald’s, L’Oreal, Audi, Tesco and the BBC pulled ads that had wound up running alongside videos from rape apologists, anti-Semites, hate preachers and IS extremists.

The most recent YouTube ad scandal landed in November, when an investigation by the BBC found that a glitch in YouTube’s tool for tracking obscene comments on kids’ videos meant the tool hadn’t been working right for over a year. Meanwhile, an investigation by The Times found that YouTube ads were funding the habits of perverts.

Google’s response: sorry, we’ll do better!

Eight months later, the response from the advertisers: You’re not doing enough, and you’re not doing it fast enough.

Speaking at London’s Advertising Week Europe in March, Google’s European chief Matt Brittin said that the company was looking to give advertisers easier control over where their ads appear, that 98% of flagged YouTube content was being examined within 24 hours, and that it could, and would, do even better. However, observers noted that Brittin didn’t say anything about devoting staff to proactively seek out inappropriate content instead of just jumping on it after users had already seen and flagged it.

Read more at https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/01/05/jpmorgan-doesnt-trust-youtube-to-keep-its-ads-out-of-sketchy-channels/

Children at ‘significant’ social media risk

By Lisa Vaas

Slime.

It’s the most beautiful, satisfying, relaxing thing I’ve ever seen, and it proves that children are geniuses, because they’re smart enough to make it and smart enough to watch online slime videos.

Says 11-year-old Alina:

If you’re like really stressed or something and you watch a really satisfying slime video it makes you like calmer.

So that’s one of many plus sides of how kids – the under-13 crowd – are using social media. They say it takes their minds off things, too: “If you’re in a bad mood at home you go on social media and you laugh and then you feel better,” says 10-year-old Kam.

But according to a Children’s Commissioner report that looked at social media use among 8- to 12-year-olds, children aren’t getting enough guidance to cope with the emotional demands that social media puts on them.

For instance, many children interviewed for the report were over-dependent on “likes” and comments for social validation, according to researchers. They spoke to 32 children in eight focus groups, each including two friendship pairs, grouped by age and gender. The report says that the friendship pairing was done to enable the children to “open up with more confidence during the research, and to allow for insight around peer dynamics and other social factors to emerge more naturally.”

These are some of the things the kids said about getting social validation from social media:

If I got 150 likes, I’d be like, ‘that’s pretty cool, it means they like you’.

I just edit my photos to make sure I look nice.

My mum takes pictures of me on Snapchat… I don’t like it when your friends and family take a picture of you when you don’t want them to.

I saw a pretty girl and everything she has I want; my aim is to be like her.

Speaking to the BBC, Children’s commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, called on schools and parents to prep children emotionally for what she called the “significant risks” of social media as they move schools and meet new classmates, many of whom have their own phones.

Read more at https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/01/05/children-at-significant-social-media-risk/