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Author: Geoff Perlman

The Ultimate Password Solution

World Password Day brings attention to some simple steps everyone can take to secure their digital life: 1. Create Strong Passwords, 2. Use a different password for each account, and 3. Get a password manager, no, not a post-it note in your desk drawer!

The best password is one that is diffcult to guess. But difficult to guess takes on a new meaning when hackers use computers to do the guessing. Hence, the best password becomes one that would take a computer so long to guess that it’s not practical to do so. That means a long series of random characters and the longer and more random, the better, and a different password for every site you use.

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There’s No Excuse For Storing Passwords

A few years ago it was reported that Russian hackers had stolen 1.2 billion usernames and passwords from a variety of websites. This was only possible because those websites were storing the actual password. Because it’s World Password Day and because this is web security 101, let’s discuss why there’s really no excuse for a website to store your password – ever.

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Xojo Community Growth in 2016

As you may already know, 2016 was Xojo’s 20 Anniversary. Sitting down to write this post, I can’t help but think back to 20 years ago and starting what has now become Xojo. Most of the developer tools that were around when we started either no longer exist or are no longer published by the people who had the original vision to create them in the first place. In that respect, we are members of a very exclusive club. I’m also pleasantly surprised at how many users from way back then are actively using Xojo today. I take great pride in the fact that we have created something that has that kind of staying power.

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Sorry, You’ve Run Out of Memory

Most of us build apps without thinking too much about how much memory the app will need. Sure sometimes you end up creating an app that is a real memory buster but that’s unusual. With virtual memory, gone are the days when your app would just run out of memory and crash, or are they?

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If Smartphone Encryption Is A Red Herring, How Do We Track The Bad Guys?

In the blog post Smartphone Encryption is a Red Herring, I pointed out the folly of requiring an encryption back door for the Good Guys to use. So the question arises- “What can be done? If we don’t want a global encryption back door that can be used by anyone, can we still track the Bad Guys?”

The answer is yes. There are plenty of options that don’t require a global back door. I’m not passing judgment on whether these are inherently good or bad options, just that they are available when there is a reason to track a Bad Guy.

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