Smarterware

Update Your Google Account Password Recovery Options · Now that you're auditing your online account security, log into your Google account(s) and visit the Account Recovery Options page. Here you can update your secret question and answer, your secondary email address, and even associate your mobile phone number with your account so you can get a password recovery code via text message. (Just a tip: don't set your Google Voice number as the phone number or automatically forward mail from your secondary email accounts to your Gmail account--if you do, in the event that you lose your password, the recovery process won't work.) · December 19th, 2009, 3 comments

Bruce Schneier’s Answer to Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Privacy · "...if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable." This is what you say in response to "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." (via) · December 9th, 2009, 6 comments

Google: “Faces are objects that can be recognized” · Now that you can point your cameraphone at an object and get Google search results back about that image, what about photographing a stranger and getting Google results back for his or her name? With facial recognition in Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, that doesn't seem far-fetched. Today Google confirmed that the search engine could recognize faces based on photos, but they decided not to enable that functionality until they "work through issues of user privacy." (These quotes may not be exact; pulled from Danny Sullivan's liveblog of Google’s Web Search “Evolution” Event today.) · December 7th, 2009

What do you do to protect your laptop’s data on open networks and in case of theft? · [twitalytic_reply_count status_id="4461348561" before=' '] · 4 comments

Yahoo Search as an Alternative to Telling Google Everything · Seems a foregone conclusion that Google's the best search engine on the web, but at this point, there's not that much of a gap between the second-place engine, Yahoo, and the big G. This morning over at Lifehacker I confessed that amidst all my Gmail, Google Voice, Android, Google Docs, and GCal usage, I pointed my web search keyword at Yahoo to break Google's monopoly on my personal data. Resistance isn't futile! · May 20th, 2009, 2 comments