Yahoo rejects fears hackers will exploit old user IDs

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc on Wednesday downplayed concerns that its plans to recycle inactive user IDs could leave users exposed to hackers, saying only 7 percent of those IDs are tied to actual Yahoo email accounts.

The Internet company, which announced last week it would release user IDs that have been inactive for more than 12 months so that other people can claim them, was pressed to defend the plan after critics warned that hackers who take control of inactive accounts could also assume the identities of the accounts' previous owners.

Yahoo hopes the plan will spark fresh interest in its Web products like Mail, where users prefer individualized user IDs often derived from common names. But criticism of the plan comes at a time when fears over the security of personal information on the Internet have been heightened by revelations of massive U.S. government snooping and international online crime.

Yahoo stressed that it has put in place various safeguards, such as coordinating with other major Web companies including Google Inc and Amazon Inc to minimize the risk of identity theft.

The possibility of identity theft is "something we are aware of and we've gone through a bunch of different steps to mitigate that concern," said Dylan Casey, a senior director for consumer platforms. "We put a lot of thought, a lot of resources dedicated to this project."

Critics say hackers could claim inactive accounts for identity theft. If a Yahoo email is associated with a Google account, for instance, an identity thief with access to the Yahoo email account could use it to reset the Google account password and assume control.

Mat Honan, a Wired magazine writer who has previously written about being the victim of a devastating hacker attack, on Wednesday slammed Yahoo's plan as a "spectacularly bad idea."

"This is going to lead to a social engineering gold rush come mid-July," Honan wrote, referring to hacker tactic of obtaining passwords by deceiving people rather than cracking codes.

But Casey said that the vast majority of inactive accounts were more limited, used for services such as Yahoo's Fantasy Sports that are not tied to an email address and therefore not susceptible to identity theft.

Yahoo will also unsubscribe its inactive email accounts from mailing lists so that their new owners will not receive unwanted mail, Casey said.

"Can I tell you with 100 percent certainty that it's absolutely impossible for anything to happen? No. But we're going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that nothing bad happens to our users," Casey said.

Since the company announced its plans on June 12, users have 30 days to claim their inactive accounts before they are released, Yahoo said.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Stephen Coates)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-rejects-fears-hackers-exploit-old-user-ids-004851758.html

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London School of Economics denounces BBC tactics

LONDON (AP) ? One of Britain's leading academic institutions, the London School of Economics, is accusing the BBC of putting students at risk by using them as cover for a covert reporting trip to North Korea.

The school says BBC's decision to send three TV journalists to the secretive communist state in March to shoot a documentary without governmental permission to work there by posing as members of a student trip could have caused grave trouble for the pupils, if the deception had been uncovered by North Korean authorities.

The squabble between two powerful British institutions comes at a time of uncertainty caused by North Korea's bellicose threats to launch a new medium-range missile at its enemies.

It brought more unwelcome attention to the BBC, which has faced sustained criticism for its handling of an investigation into alleged child sex abuse committed by the late Jimmy Savile, long a top BBC talk show host.

The "Panorama" documentary on North Korea based on the eight-day trip in March is set to air Monday night.

The BBC has thus far refused the university's plea to keep it off the air to protect the students from possible retribution if their identities are revealed on the show. The broadcaster said three students who have asked to be removed from the show will have their images blurred so they cannot be identified.

The trip was not organized by LSE but by a students' society known as the Grimshaw Club. University officials said they did not know about the BBC arrangement and would not have approved it if they had known about BBC's plans.

The BBC's John Sweeney, who LSE officials say posed as a post-graduate LSE student, said Sunday it was "entirely wrong" for the university to try to prevent the broadcast. He said all of the students had been told about the potential risk and had agreed to allow the journalists to join the trip, adding that all were over 18 years of age and capable of making their own decisions.

A BBC story about the trip that the network filed online Sunday said Sweeney and a two-person crew that included his wife spent "eight days undercover" in North Korea.

LSE student union general secretary Alex Peters-Day said Sunday that the students were lied to and that at least one of the students on the eight-day trip was not told in advance of the journalists' participation.

"This is a student welfare issue," she told a BBC interviewer. "We don't know what could have happened to those students and, truthfully, neither does the BBC. It's absolutely disgraceful that he (Sweeney) put students in that position. It's incredibly reckless."

She said Sweeney was being "disingenuous" by citing free-speech concerns as justification for putting students in danger.

LSE blamed BBC for not being forthcoming about its reporting plans in North Korea. In the past, journalists have at times been detained for working without authorization in North Korea, where foreign reporting crews usually have to operate under strict governmental supervision.

In an email sent to staff and students, the university complains that the BBC program was produced "using as cover a visit to North Korean which took place from 23-30 March in the name of the Grimshaw Club, a student society at LSE."

BBC News Head of News Programs Ceri Thomas said on a BBC News program Sunday that the students were given the information needed to give informed consent to the increased risk of traveling with journalists who did not have authorization to work in North Korea.

He said, however, that the students were told roughly a month before the trip that there would be "a journalist" traveling with them but were later told, once they were en route to North Korea, that there would be three journalists who would be conducting undercover filming for TV.

Thomas said the students may have been under the impression that a print journalist, not a three-person TV crew, was going to be involved.

He said BBC would air the documentary despite LSE's concerns because of high public interest in the show.

"It is disappointing for us that LSE has chosen to make this public," he said. "We would have kept them out of this altogether. They could have avoided the publicity, and we think that would have lowered the reputational risk."

He said BBC executives felt that if the deception was discovered the students likely would have been deported, but he admitted he could not "categorically" rule out the possibility that their lives might have been at risk.

BBC press officials said senior executives would not discuss the matter but might issue further statements.

The BBC's action sparked concerns that the use of a British academic research trip as a cover for a clandestine TV reporting venture might undermine the ability of researchers to operate overseas.

Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, said BBC must understand how its actions might hurt research institutions. She said the BBC may have not only put students in harm's way but also damaged the reputations of British universities.

"We regret the BBC's approach," she said.

A BBC story about the trip says Sweeney and a two-person crew that included his wife spent "eight days undercover" in North Korea.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/london-school-economics-denounces-bbc-tactics-105828164.html

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Google Glass API documentation now live, Glassware sample code provided

Google painted the broad strokes of its Mirror API for Glass at SXSW in March, and now it's released comprehensive documentation, replete with example code. Despite the fact that the application programming interface is still in a limited developer preview, you can dig in and read up on everything from location features to timeline cards. The cheeky devs in Mountain View also announced that they've named services for the spectacles "Glassware." In case you missed the presentation in Austin, you can catch a handful of videos with Glass developer evangelist Timothy Jordan condensing the API basics. Hit the source link below to dive into the docs, and to download client libraries for the eyewear written in Dart, Go, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby and .NET.

Comments

Via: Google Developers (Google+)

Source: Google Glass (Google Developers)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/15/google-glass-api-documentation-now-live-glassware-sample-code/

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Picture this: A dramatic drop in wrong patient errors

Apr. 15, 2013 ? Adding a photo of a face to x-ray images can reduce "wrong-patient" errors five-fold, a new study finds.

"X-rays can look alike, and if one patient's images are confused with another before the radiologist sees them, it can be difficult for the radiologist to determine there is a mismatch," said Dr. Srini Tridandapani, of Emory University and an author of the study.

As part of the study, ten radiologists interpreted 20 pairs of radiographic images with and without photographs. Two to four mismatched pairs were included in each set of 20 pairs of images. When photographs were added, radiologists correctly identified the mismatch 64% of the time. The error detection rate was about 13% when photographs were not included, said Dr. Tridandapani.

The radiologists in the study did not know they could use the photographs as a means to identify mismatched x-ray images, and some said they purposely ignored the photographs because they thought the study was designed to determine if a photograph would distract them. "We did a second study of five radiologists, and we told them to use the photographs. The error detection rate went up to 94% in the second study," said Dr. Tridandapani.

Surprisingly, the interpretation time went down in the first study when the photographs were added to the images, said Dr. Tridandapani. "We're not sure why this happened, but it could be because the photograph provided clinical clues that assisted the radiologist in making the diagnosis," he said.

"I estimate that about 1 out of 10,000 examinations have wrong-patient errors," Dr. Tridandapani said. "It occurred to me that we should be adding a photograph to every medical imaging study as a means to correct this problem after I received a phone call, and a picture of the caller appeared on my phone. The picture immediately identified for me who the caller was," he said.

The study required additional personnel to take the pictures of the patients immediately after the patients' x-ray examination. However, Dr. Tridandapani and his colleagues have developed a prototype system where the camera can be attached to a portable x-ray machine; the picture is taken without additional personnel.

The study, jointly conducted at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, will be presented at the ARRS annual meeting on April 15 in Washington, DC.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/X5AWwqBR5j0/130415100848.htm

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Package for Sheriff Joe Arpaio posed a serious threat, authorities say

A postal carrier collected the suspicious package, which was addressed to Sheriff Joe Arpaio, on Thursday evening. The FBI and other agencies are investigating the case.

By Allison Terry,?Correspondent / April 12, 2013

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio speaks with the media in Phoenix in January. Authorities say law officers in Arizona have intercepted an explosive device that was earmarked for Arpaio.

Ross D. Franklin/AP/File

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A package addressed to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-described ?toughest sheriff in America,? could have caused serious injury or death if opened, Arizona authorities say.

Skip to next paragraph Allison Terry

Correspondent

Allison Terry works on national news desk for the Christian Science Monitor. She previously worked on the cover page desk and contributes to the culture section of the Monitor.

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A postal carrier collected the suspicious package Thursday evening from a parcel locker in rural Coconino County, near Flagstaff, Ariz., which was addressed to Arpaio at his office in downtown Phoenix, said Jerry Sheridan, chief deputy of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, at a news conference Friday.

The carrier brought the package to the Flagstaff post office, where postal officials X-rayed it and found an improvised explosive device. The Flagstaff Police Department bomb squad used a water cannon to neutralize the explosives, said US Postal Inspection Service spokesman Keith Moore.

Arpaio told reporters that this is not the first time he has been threatened.

?That?s the nature of the business,? he said at the news conference, citing the recent killings of Colorado?s corrections director, two Texas prosecutors, and a West Virginia sheriff.

"Of course you worry. I'm a victim, I'm a witness,? he said. ?When you convict people, the victim has to be somewhat concerned. I'm a little concerned about my family. I didn't ask for all these threats."

Sheridan said the Maricopa County Sheriff?s Office had endured ?years of threats? against Arpaio, including $4 million bounties on his head, but the bomb package raised the threats to a new "height of seriousness."

?What evidence we have indicates that had someone opened that package, it would have created a major explosion and caused serious physical injury, burns, and maybe death,? Sheridan said. ?That is a very serious threat.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Z5b8p_cueFY/Package-for-Sheriff-Joe-Arpaio-posed-a-serious-threat-authorities-say

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CA-NEWS Summary

Kerry says U.S. ready to "reach out" to North Korea

TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday stressed the United States is willing to engage with North Korea as long as it takes steps to give up nuclear weapons. He also vowed Washington would protect its Asian allies against any provocative acts by the North, but said it wants a peaceful solution to rising tensions in the region.

Venezuelans vote on future of "Chavista" socialism

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelans went to the polls on Sunday to vote whether to honor Hugo Chavez's dying wish for a longtime loyalist to continue his self-proclaimed socialist revolution or hand power to a young challenger vowing business-friendly changes. Acting President Nicolas Maduro had a double-digit lead over opposition challenger Henrique Capriles in most polls heading into election day, buoyed by Chavez's public blessing before he died from cancer last month. But the gap narrowed in recent days, with one survey putting it at 7 percentage points.

Kremlin criticises U.S. blacklist ahead of Obama adviser visit

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said on Sunday called a U.S. law barring Russians from the country over alleged rights abuses unacceptable interference in Russia's affairs, setting a tough tone before a visit by a senior White House adviser. Dmitry Peskov's remarks were the first comment from Putin's office after the U.S. administration named 18 Russians subject to visa bans and asset freezes over the Magnitsky Act legislation passed by Congress late last year.

Canada's Liberal Party prepares to crown Trudeau scion

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's charismatic rising political star, Justin Trudeau, was set to capture the leadership of the Liberal Party on Sunday and begin contesting seven years of Conservative rule. The 41-year-old son of the swashbuckling former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin is the overwhelming favorite in the election, with results due on Sunday evening.

Al Qaeda adds urgency to search for Syrian peace

AMMAN (Reuters) - International powers will search for a peaceful settlement to Syria's civil war with fresh urgency at an Istanbul meeting after a rebel faction aligned itself with al Qaeda, diplomats and opposition sources said on Sunday. Saturday's meeting of 11 countries from the Friends of Syria alliance will come after the al-Nusra Front, among the strongest formations seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad, pledged allegiance to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri on April 10.

Egypt to try Brotherhood members accused of torture

CAIRO (Reuters) - Two Muslim Brotherhood members in northern Egypt have been ordered to stand trial on charges of detaining and torturing students during a protest against the president the group propelled to power. The charges are a rare acknowledgement of the alleged role that some of the president's supporters have had in attacks on his opponents.

Palestinian PM's resignation complicates U.S. plan

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian officials and the United States voiced optimism on Sunday that the resignation of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad would not hinder Washington's planned development initiative for the West Bank. Fayyad quit on Saturday after months of tension with President Mahmoud Abbas, leaving the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in confusion just as the United States tries to revive peace talks with the Jewish state.

Bombs and gun battles kill at least 19 in Somali capital

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - At least 19 people were killed in the Somali capital on Sunday in suicide bombings and assaults by al Shabaab militants linked to al Qaeda, breaking a fragile return to peace in Mogadishu. A bomb exploded outside law courts in the city as gunmen stormed the compound. Security forces then arrived and battled the fighters inside. Later, a bomb exploded near an African Union and Turkish Red Crescent convoy near the airport.

Iraq election candidates killed before local vote

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two Iraqi Sunni Muslim candidates were killed less than a week before local elections that will be a test of the country's political stability after U.S. troops left more than a year ago. The election on Saturday to select provincial council members will measure Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's political muscle against Shi'ite and Sunni rivals before the parliamentary election in 2014.

Analysis: Don't underestimate Germany's new anti-euro party

BERLIN (Reuters) - The political establishment has dismissed Germany's new anti-euro party as a fear-mongering populist aberration that could implode even before a looming federal election. But the first congress of the "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) showed that the movement, launched only a few months ago by a group of renegade academics, journalists and businessmen, is striking a chord with voters and may prove an influential force come September.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ca-news-summary-001316516.html

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What mutant surgery is this Nexus 4 about to undergo?

Well, would you look at that. Someone went and dissected their Nexus 4. 

But that's not just any someone. That's Rod Whitby of webOS Internals fame who's taken apart his Nexus 4, with the intent of swapping out the Qi wireless charging for the tried and true, old-school (and now defunct) Palm Touchstone. (As we showed last year, the Nexus 4 and Touchstone are not compatible.)  "Qi charging (or at least the physical implementation of it on current devices) is inferior to Palm Touchstone charging," Whitby wrote recently on Google+.

Nexus 4 wireless charging became a bit of a thing this week when webOS Nation editor -- and like many of us here a multi-platform tinkerer -- expressed his loathing for the Nexus 4's official wireless charging orb. So Whitby, as any good Android hacker should appreciate, is doing something about it. And he's no stranger to this sort of mod, having performed it on the Galaxy Nexus as well as on the Nexus 7.

Will this one be successful? It's going to be a tight fit, Whitby writes. But if anyone can do it, it's him. 

Source: +Rod Whitby

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/hFfZKeAEbrg/story01.htm

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