Loren Wiener aka mrinternet
Melbourne Australia
10 August 2012 (tomorrow for many of you)

Convenience  vs.  Security You Do not Have to Choose 

We are all grateful for Mat Honan from Wired full story here raising to our attention the ease that we sometimes offer hackers. I was in charge of Business Internet Products and Security in a previous life for a large Telco and I wasn’t even aware of how easy some of this was, for the hacker.  The daisy chain effect where accounts are linked etc. was part of the issue, and not a relatively new event (5 years or less old) the not so tight processes at Amazon and Apple (now changed thanks to Mat ) was another part also not new. But the part where it pretty much all started is the part many take for granted, and the oldest issue, that many is that of the domain name. Mad had linked (daisy chained) various accounts) in the process of identification a home address was needed, and this was freely offered by looking up Mat Honan’s address from his domain name. Public addresses, for all domain is public by default as technical, billing, and domain owner name is required. There are options for all domain names to hide this information, and you can usually just not put in address in this. If we learn nothing else here (besides doing back-ups) is hide, use a PO box, or do not offer your address on your public domain name info.

Note: I hope Mat gets back his data, and I for one would contribute to any costs in helping him do that. We need more Mats’