An Age of Magic

Google’s latest doodle

Go and checkout – pardon the pun – Google’s new doodle if you haven’t already; it is to celebrate the invention of the barcode. The barcode you ask…? aren’t they those annoying stripes on items in the supermarket that never scan properly…? yep, you are correct, those things which work in conjunction with the receipt printer and cause all manner of traffic jams in the queue!

If you did not know already, the traditional barcode is made of a series of vertical bars of varying width that are scanned by a laser – like the girl does in the checkout. This optical reader converts the information into a digital format which is then processed by a computer. Sometimes the computer gets it right, sometimes wrong – and of course if it is wrong you get the item for free

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One reason to change your password

One thing you must do on a fairly regular basis is change your passwords. In fact, it is better to have one password so that this is made easier. Why…? because internet hackers are increasingly finding bigger and better ways to hack into email accounts like that which has recently happened with 10,000 Hotmail users. The huge security that led to millions of Hotmail customers needing to be advised to change their passwords has now spread to users of email services including Gmail and Yahoo! Mail.

Almost twenty-one million people and businesses who use Hotmail’s service in the United Kingdom were issued with warnings that they are possibly at risk of being defrauded after many passwords were acquired illegally.  Around 10,000 passwords were obtained by a group of hackers who created a false website identical to Hotmail’s to trick users into entering their email address and password in a ‘phishing’ scam.

As you know ‘phishing’ sites con people into assuming they are using the bona fide website they wish to use and thus capture details like passwords and account numbers. Always type in the URL of the site that you wish to use if you are doing your online banking and generally beware!

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