Archives October 2015

Seriously, it is 2015 now.  Every big service provider should be supporting some form of 2-factor authentication.  Google is a prime example of the right way to implement this, and everyone should be following their lead.  This weekend I had an email account I hadn’t used in over a year get its password cracked.  The bot then pulled my extremely outdated online address book and sent spam links out to them all.  Fantastic!  So, I changed the password and deleted all of the contacts out of the address book.  Had this provider (cough… AOL …cough) had a 2FA implementation this would have NEVER been able to happen.  Their service wouldn’t have been used to send out spam, and I wouldn’t look like a doofus with an apparently weak password on that old account.

I’ll also add, if you have a service like Google and you’re NOT using 2FA, you need to go set that shit up right now.  It makes your account nearly IMPOSSIBLE to get in to unless the hacker also has your physical device (usually your phone with an app, I recommend Authenticator Plus) to access your account.  Knowing your login name and password alone would never get them in.

Wondering if a service you use supports 2FA or now?  Well, check out this nifty website: https://twofactorauth.org/

Google has FINALLY fixed all of the issues with Lollipop.  Too bad it did take a whole system update to a new version of Android to get there, but alas, WE ARE THERE!  The awful memory management issues I originally complained about are completely resolved at last.  In addition, the new Doze feature which puts the phone in to a super deep sleep when idle for a while has made a tremendous impact on standby battery life.  I’ve picked up my phone 6 hours after setting it down and seen maybe 1-2% battery loss.  This is a stark improvement as any previous version of android would’ve easily given a 5-10% loss in the same time period.  The added little tweaks like FINALLY being able to show battery percentage in the pull down shade is nice, and the new permissions system will eventually be nice too.  I say eventually because no app can really use it until the devs release an update for their app targeting the new Marshmallow API level.  But it’s finally here, and as more and more apps incorporate it, things will just be better and better.  Now if Google could just pull its head out of its ass and put Qi charging back in the 2016 Nexus phone(s)…