In This Episode: Privacy and Paranoia
This week the TEH Podcast is hosted by Leo Notenboom, the “Chief Question Answerer” at Ask Leo!, and Gary Rosenzweig, the host and producer of MacMost, and mobile game developer at Clever Media.
(You’ll find longer Bios on the Hosts page.)
Top Stories
- 0:51 LN: PNW Corgi Picnic Photos
- 1:50 GR: Trip to Spain.
- 4:10 Using a VPN is getting worse.
- 8:00 Google doesn’t like VPN. Searches are constantly captcha’d.
- Logging in to services hits you with a lot of “prove you are you,” or log in again, etc.
- The problem is sites know if the IP address is a VPN.
- 17:00 Telling your credit card you are traveling.
- 28:30 GR & LN: Are passphrases good or bad?
- XKCD Password Strength
- 1:05:00 LN: – AARP recommendation
Ain’t it Cool
- 1:08:00 LN: Hacking Humans podcast
- LN: Dead Still – “postmortem photography”
- 1:10:30 GR: Baldur’s Gate 3 on GeForceNow
Interesting discussion about pass phrases versus long random passwords. I’m not sure who won that debate.
I use a password manager; generally it is great to use it. There is one the one thing that occasionally annoys me, sites that do not allow me to paste my password into their password field. I can understand that they are trying to prevent brute force attacks, but this seems to me like using a hammer to swat flies. Especially annoying are the ones that when you create an account they allow the password to be pasted into the first field but not into the second verification field. I cannot conceive of any justification for doing that.
I live in Germany and mainly use my VPN to watch regionally limited content. Verizon is wise to most if not all VPNs and blocks me.
I’m tempted to set up my own proxy at one of my kids’ homes and use that to watch movies. Leo, you have a few computers, maybe you can set one up for yourself and friends as a proxy. It doesn’t have to be a VPN, remote access should work.
As soon as I finished writing this, Gary answered my question
Using the onscreen TV keyboard can be a pain in the ass. It can be mitigated by choosing a passphrase with letters that are close together or even repeating characters, for example, aaaaassssskkkkkllllleeeeeooooo
The minute I read the recommendation from AARP to write down your passwords I tossed the issue in the trash. Worst advice ever. Especially for seniors who are much more likely to have a lot more in their accounts than the typical Gen Zer