humanID Blog
Why SSO is Relevant
f you have more than a few passwords, then I’m sure you have had to click that “Forgot Password?” message recently. And, unfortunately, you probably had to go through all your email accounts to locate the one linked for this specific platform, scan through your spam, and log back into your account with a new password you might forget once again. Single sign-ons (SSOs) aim to limit this password fatigue by providing an efficient alternative
Defining Hashing and Encryption
Hashing and encryption are two common methods that are imposed to enhance digital privacy. It is necessary that enterprise users understand the purposes, functions, capabilities and limitations of each method.
What are Identity Providers?
For every service that people use in their daily lives, being identified as a legitimate user is a must to have access to the service. To identify a user, businesses use a set of credentials such as username/password, email, phone number, PIN code, and others.
A Guide to Privacy Policies for Minors
Technological advances have brought about detailed privacy policies. Over the years, privacy policies have been used to ensure company transparency about their data collection. Data collection and data mining are prevalent issues, especially in the US.
How to Stop Spam Comments
How to Stop Spam CommentsBy Quan Nguyen September 3, 2021 If you have spent some time on the internet, you most likely have come across spam comments. It is almost impossible to visit sites including comment and interactivity features without encountering spam. In...
Why Your Business Should Implement Single Sign-On
Single Sign-On solutions (SSOs) offer an opportunity to ease the navigation of the internet for users. They can resolve various complications often encountered by corporations, such as frequent password resets and CAPTCHA’s nuisance. As businesses and consumers become increasingly dependent on technology, most users have encountered these difficulties in some capacity.
Priest Resigns After Lack of Privacy on Grindr
This month, humanID has been cooking up a lot of new projects and the tech world has made a lot of questionable decisions regarding privacy and anonymity. Keep reading to see what new things we have released in the last month. Don’t forget to reply back to this email and let us know what you think of all the new releases!
How To Protect Yourself From Being Tracked Online
There are a few things that simultaneously happen each time you log into your browser. Your data is accumulated, aggregated, and put to use in ways that are unbeknown to you. Even something as trivial as the meme you shared with your friend can be accessed and used to extract a piece of the puzzle that is your online identity.
How to Protect Your Online Information
The pandemic has created a lot of issues, both in the real and virtual world. As a result of increased remote work and online activity, cybercrime has risen an alarming 400% in 2019 and 2020 combined. Ransomware also rose 69% in 2020.
How to Stop Spam Email Submissions
If you have an email address, surely you have dealt with spam email submissions. Spam messages come from illegitimate email addresses and usually contain malicious intentions. In fact, 320 billion spam emails are sent daily; 94% of malware is delivered via email spam messages.
Should you use email or phone number authentication?
Email authentication and phone number authentication are two widely used authentication methods that are said to protect people from hackers and other cybercriminals; but, they potentially make it easier for cybercriminals to invade user privacy and protection.
Top Five Single Sign-Ons
In this day and age, people have become increasingly wary of online privacy. Something seen in the U.S. where at least 75% of Americans say they want increased government regulation regarding data use by companies. This may not come as a surprise for most people given alleged reports on data mining from large multinational corporations (MNCs), like Target, Amazon, Facebook, and Google.
Pros and Cons of Single Sign-Ons
The internet has expanded to the point where we have accounts for everything. Whether you are shopping online, checking mail, or even watching videos, you are likely signed into some account. The process of signing into several accounts daily may prove bothersome and inefficient. Single Sign-On (SSO) services aim to reduce the number of logins you have to perform, but are they secure?
How to Stop DDoS Attacks
Hackers are always a step ahead of security measures. As data security quality increases, malicious entities create new methods to outperform those security measures. One of the most common attacks on the internet is Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS).
Is Data Privacy a Sacred Duty for Muslims? 🙏
What do the health sector, faith, and Congress have in common? Digital privacy! Or, well, problems when that privacy is violated. Read on for the latest on digital privacy breaches, some great tips on bot detection, and whether you should implement SMS authentication, from your friends here at humanID.
Malicious Life and humanID: A Better Internet
The internet is plagued by data collection, data leaks, bots, hacking, and disinformation. Large corporations, such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft, collect and monetize the data they gather from users. This is because data is highly versatile and profitable, making it the most valuable asset in the world.
How to Detect Bots
Many online activities, such as playing video games and reading tweets, include the use of programmed bots. A bot is an automated software program that is used to make HTTP requests and to perform repetitive tasks efficiently and consistently. Tasks that programmed bots facilitate include filling out forms, clicking on links, listening to music on Discord, posting on websites, and many more.
Should I Implement SMS Authentication?
Passwords are terrible at verifying identities. Computers cannot differentiate who is typing an alphanumeric password, so anyone with the information can authenticate themselves as another user. With the majority of people having some SMS–capable device, it is imperative that we transition away from solely using passwords.
How does Big Tech use data mining?
All of Big Tech collects a lot of data and utilizes data mining; consequently, these businesses become valuable assets in the global economy because collecting user data generates large earnings. After Facebook’s employees had developed apps for its business in 2008, they became very financially successful.
EA Games Source Code Taken By Hackers 🎮
The last month has been buzzing with news on privacy and misinformation while your friends at humanID have been busy putting out a lot of new content. Let’s look at what’s fresh at humanID and with the rest of the industry.
How do I implement Email Authentication?
Signing into a new platform like Facebook, Amazon, or Google is easy. With one click, you can enter the site with just your email. The website receives all your personal information and data, and you get to use the services the website provides. Many users are unaware of the policies they approve of when they sign into these platforms, as well as the third parties the user’s email address makes contact with.
How Safe are the Top SSO Solutions?
Single Sign-On solutions (SSOs) have become increasingly popular as concerns over cybersecurity and online privacy continue to grow. SSOs simplify the login process by eliminating the need for passwords. They generally increase security and protect user privacy as cybercriminals typically target usernames and passwords. Consequently, every time someone logs into a new account, a new opportunity for an attack is possible.
Best Ways to Prevent Data Loss
Personal data is constantly becoming more easily accessible and thus more susceptible to cybercrimes like data breaches. Personal data can include social security numbers, credit card information, as well as past and current addresses. Not only can data losses cause extreme privacy issues for individuals, but also mass financial and reputational complications for businesses.
How To Do Away with Passwords
How many passwords do you have? You likely have more than you can remember. In fact, users often have upwards of 90 online accounts and reuse 51% of their passwords. If you can remember all your passwords, it is likely that you reuse a portion of them, which is a serious risk for losing personal information. As more businesses are connecting to their users through online accounts, username and password combos are rising while password reliability and security are decreasing; anyone can access your account with the right credentials.
TikTok’s Third-Party Integrations
Assisted by the pandemic and the increasing interest in technology, internet reliance is more prevalent now than ever. Accordingly, TikTok, a video-sharing platform, has seen a surge in popularity these past few years. TikTok’s algorithm and ability to bring new and smaller content creators to the surface makes the app unique and popular. And while the platform’s influence has empowered many younger generations and grown as a whole, TikTok’s recent expansion of integration with third-party apps may have overstepped the boundaries of its power.
5 Alternative Authentication Types
Password-based authentication methods can easily be done through phishing attacks. This leads to many users not protecting their passwords. Indeed, just 54% of users use five or fewer passwords for their accounts because they do not think that people are going to gain entry into their accounts. Authentication is useful because it prevents infiltrators from accessing databases, networks, and other resources.
How Companies Can Improve User Safety
During a time in which there is a rising prevalence of user safety attacks, only 20% of Americans totally trust the organizations they interact with to maintain the privacy of their data. More importantly, out of the 80% of Americans that do not totally trust these organizations are a lot more concerned that hackers will access their data than companies using it without their permission.
Courts Force Disney to Stop Collecting Children’s Data 🧙
This past month saw promising headway made in the privacy space. There were critical steps taken in AI governance, a settlement by a big-name company regarding the handling of children’s data, and attempts by an internet giant to revise its website tracking technology.
What are COPPA App Guidelines and Why Do They Matter?
While we stand at the peak of technology, applications on computers and smart devices threaten children’s privacy and security. With the mass production and distribution of digital devices to most of the world’s population, the internet is becoming increasingly accessible.
Can CAPTCHA Prevent DDoS Attacks?
With the increasing reliance on the internet and technology comes the risk of malicious attacks and data breaches. While some attacks target everyday citizens and consumers, other attacks focus on information technology companies, e-commerce businesses, government agencies, and more.
How does Single Sign-On Work?
With the rapid growth of the internet and technology comes the risks of privacy protection and cybersafety. Passwords are one of the simplest security devices the internet utilizes for use protection. However, many believe that the password has become outdated and less effective.
What is Data Scraping and is it Illegal?
Generally, data scraping refers to the extraction of data from a computer program with another program. Data scraping is commonly manifested in web scraping, the process of using an application to extract valuable information from a website.
reCAPTCHA: How Much Will We Give Up for Security?
As so eloquently put by John Mulaney, “The world is run by computers, the world is run by robots and we spend most of our day telling them that we’re not a robot just to log on and look at our own stuff.”
The True Cost of Cybersecurity for Small and Medium Businesses
According to some estimations, the global cost of cyber attacks in a year could total up to about $1 trillion, over 1% of the global GDP. Such a high number should not be surprising to most readers.
How can SMEs bolster their cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity isn’t something only large, high-profile corporations that handle large amounts of sensitive data should worry about. From conception, any modern enterprise will need to plan on investing in a multitude of security measures to mitigate a growing array of cybersecurity risks.
Defining IAM and IGA
IAM and IGA are two of the most common methods for identity management, and it is important for enterprise users to understand the purposes and functions of each system, as well as the benefits and limitations.
What are CSRF attacks and how do we stop them?
Dreaded by companies and customers alike, Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks violate user privacy and generate distrust. Companies unaware of or unable to prevent CSRF attacks will not only fail to protect their clients but also receive damage to their reputations.
4 Alternatives to Passwords
Chances are you’ve had to log into a password-protected account or device within the past couple days. Whether it’s an email account or your phone, you probably find yourself entering a predetermined, secret password quite often.
How to Prevent Spam Messages
Nowadays, it seems like spam messages are an unfortunate but inevitable part of our lives. According to a recent report, 5.69 billion robocalls were made in the month of February 2021 alone.
How Truly Anonymous Login Protects Users
Even though a truly anonymous authentication system conceals user data better than any other login method, traditional media and social media have been reluctant to implement it. Many users interact with and value anonymity instinctively; the calculator app on smart phones is anonymous, but it still saves the user’s data, such as the history of their calculations.
How to Protect Yourself from Data Leaks
When a customer authorizes a company to use and store their personal information, no matter how many conditions are agreed to or what kinds of promises are made, the transaction always boils down to trust.
What is Privacy-Focused Differentiation?
What do consumers value, second to their time? With proposed and adopted laws across the world coming up such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), most of us wouldn’t think twice before answering privacy.
The Fight Against Bots
Since the advent of computers, we have been forced to confront the question of humanity. What distinguishes a human, and how does one recognize and deter non-humans that simulate those distinguishing factors? Today, bots make those issues increasingly prescient.
Online Data Protection for Minors
Everyone wants to feel safe about their personal information collected by data companies online, but they don’t necessarily stop to consider what is keeping their children safe in the same respect. By age 11, approximately half of all children in the United States own smartphones, and this number has only been trending upward over the past two decades.
Top Four Ways to Protect User Privacy
Hundreds of millions of emails, phone calls, app downloads, and user accounts are made each day, with the numbers only rising. With increasing news reports on data breaches, government tracking, and even personal targeted attacks, protecting user privacy has become an inevitable issue.
What is Multi-factor Authentication?
If living entirely off the grid sounds inconvenient but you are aware that data breaches and password hacks are becoming increasingly more common every year, perhaps you are in search of a high quality security system that is not overly complicated. Hacking techniques are getting better all the time, but some of the best security practices do feel unnecessarily complicated. In search of a relatively convenient authentication practice that is not overly complicated, many people and companies are turning to two-factor authentication.
Pros and Cons of Passphrase Login
Everyday, would-be and soon-to-be hackers alike are gearing up to break into the data of millions of people while cybersecurity professionals are paid to bear down on them from the other side. In this ongoing struggle between those trying to steal private information, and those whose job is to protect it, there remains one oft-overlooked, yet vulnerable gap in the armor that no amount of money can pay to fix.
Human Voices, Episode 7: Tech & Geopolitics: Why We Should Worry
Welcome back to Human Voices, HumanID’s podcast talking cybersecurity, privacy, and news in tech! This week’s focus will be on the short- and long-term impact of big tech on domestic and world politics, and how the COVID-19 pandemic and surrounding disinformation is used by authoritarian regimes to gain power.
Security Vulnerabilities of SSOs
Single Sign-On solutions, or SSOs, have become increasingly popular as a method for users to log into their favorite applications or platforms due to the convenience they afford. They spare users the arduous task of memorizing countless passwords for the growing number of applications available to them, as well as mitigate the security risk of users using the same password for all of their accounts.
Confusing Compliance: Risks of International Data Non-Compliance
As the world globalizes and digitizes, more and more companies are finding that they have customers in different countries and states, which presents the unique problem of satisfying the laws of each customer’s place of residence for setting up sign-on pages for your website.
8 Alternatives to Facebook Login
How many times have you used your Facebook account to sign into other websites and applications and felt confident about its security? Facebook is widely viewed as the largest social media communications platform. It also offers a single sign-on called “Login with Facebook” to sign up for third-party services such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
How Startups Can Mitigate Cybersecurity Risks
New tech startups are cropping up every day, leading the way with innovative technologies and beneficial applications and platforms. However, as these technologies grow, so do the methods of maliciously exploiting them, and according to this Medium article by Ryan McGheehan, startups must address and focus on security with the same intensity that they focus on growing and expanding their business.
What is Facebook Allowed To Do with Your Data?
How often do people agree to the terms and conditions of any company without reading them, and then proceed to use their online services without any knowledge of what they have agreed to? According to multiple studies and surveys conducted since 2010, more often than not, upwards of 90% of users of any given social media platform will agree to the “terms and conditions” without reading them.
Human Voices, Episode 6: Privacy and the Internet – Why the Two go Hand in Hand
Welcome back to Human Voices, humanID’s podcast talking cybersecurity, privacy, and news in tech! This week, we’re joined by Dick Hardt, an innovator and entrepreneur who’s been in the privacy space for over 15 years and has worked on projects like OAuth, and signin.org.
Human Voices, Episode 5: Legislation’s Role in Cybersecurity
This week, we are joined by Scott Watnik, and Michael Contos, two lawyers from Wilk Auslander who focus on cybersecurity and privacy. They’re here to talk with us about legislation in the cybersecurity space, and how it can affect companies, both big and small.
4 Steps to Improve Conversion Rates
For small businesses, website traffic is essential for marketing products and services to customers. The higher the number of visitors, the more opportunities a business has for growth. The NN group defines “conversion rate” as the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action.
The Risks Associated With Using Facebook Login
With over 2.7 billion monthly active users and counting, Facebook has become the go-to online social networking platform. Ever since Mark Zuckerberg launched the site in 2004, friends and family have been able to stay in touch with each other more digitally than never before. In fact, 88% of users are on the social networking site to keep in touch with loved ones. Friends and family members have instant access to each other’s life updates through news feed posts.
Alternatives to CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA, which stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” is a test that is meant to differentiate real human users from bots that are using whatever services the CAPTCHA is protecting. You’ve dealt with them before. While there are a number of different CAPTCHAs that are used, the most commonly used in the current era is reCAPTCHA. And this current iteration definitely has its merits, such as ease of implementation from a trusted source, but unfortunately, the ineffectiveness of CAPTCHA is slowly becoming more and more apparent , so developers are starting to look for alternatives.
Your Site and Bot Attacks
As a web developer, your visitors and your site’s information are crucial. The last thing you want are bot attacks affecting your site traffic. A major block of internet traffic online is dedicated to bots scouring and interacting with websites and apps; approximately fifty-percent of all internet traffic comes from bots with about one-in-five website requests being generated by bad bots.
Company data security and ensuring compliance with GDPR and CCPA Requirements
Privacy protection has become not just a concern for individuals but also a major topic of discussion for governments across the globe. Two major pieces of legislation that are forcing tech companies to become more transparent and accountable in their handling of personal data are the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
An Introduction to Online Privacy
The Internet is a really fun and cool thing. But, as I’m sure you know, the Internet can also be a terrifying place. There are many entities on the Internet who want, and can, get a hold of all the juicy details of who you are. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Holding Hospitals Hostage: An Overview of Ransomware Attacks on Hospitals and Healthcare Systems
As hospitals continue to increase their array of interconnected machines and software to care for and manage patients, they become increasingly reliant on digital ecosystems. Yet, this process of attempting to streamline and unify once separated systems is not without its dangers.
Designing Digital Identity
Personally identifiable information can be any data that helps identify a person. The more uniquely identifiable the data is, the more sensitive it is said to be. Features that are used to identify people in the real world often include our full name, date of birth, gender, residence, ZIP code etc. We are largely forthcoming with this information when asked. After all, why wouldn’t we be?
Password vulnerabilities and mitigations
Passwords are one of the most common forms of authentication in today’s very technological world, and for good reason. They are easy to set up and use, and for a lot of applications, are perfectly adequate. Unfortunately, as more and more applications require users to create accounts to utilize their full capacity, the weaknesses of passwords have begun to show themselves.
What is encryption?
Any phone call you make, text message you send, item you purchase online, or bill you pay for, uses some form of encryption to protect your identity and maintain your privacy. The roots of encryption can be traced to ancient Greece where codes, or ciphers, were used to jumble numbers and letters on paper to encode information that was transferred between generals.
Disinformation and misinformation: why the distinction matters
If you’ve been on the internet for any amount of time, you have likely seen something — be it a news article, a social media post, or whatever else — which seems sensationalized. Let’s imagine a self-described news agency that publishes an article about a presidential candidate making a policy promise, but intentionally alters what they say to such a degree that it no longer resembles the candidate’s initial statement; we’d call that fake news.
FAANGs Out: What Big Tech Wants With Your Data
Tech companies love to collect data on their users. Our personal data is a hot commodity for companies that want to optimize their services, sell something, or keep you as a returning user. With advertising being a 600 billion dollar industry, it comes as no surprise that there are many companies with a motive in utilizing personal data to try and get a profit out of you, the consumer.
Human Voices, Episode 4: Jon Callas on Entrepreneurship in Cybersecurity
This week, we have expert Jon Callas joining us and shedding light on President Trump’s TikTok ban, COVID tracking apps, and what it’s like to be an entrepreneur in the cybersecurity industry. He is a senior technology fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union. You might know him as the creator of PGP Corporation, makers of Pretty Good Privacy universal serve, The Blackphone, and an early developer of operating system software at Apple.
When are you sharing too much on social media?
Staying connected is important. In our current day and age, the internet gives us the opportunity to be more connected than ever, allowing us to communicate both actively and passively with friends and family around the globe in real time. Using social media like Facebook or Twitter, you can post updates on your life so that even without calling or texting people, they can still be informed on how you’re doing. This is a very powerful tool with a large amount of benefits, but are there risks?
Human Voices, Episode 3: Big Tech’s Control Over The Media, ft. Dipayan Ghosh
This week’s focus is on the intersection of digital media and civil rights. Dipayan Ghosh is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and lectures at the law school. He was a technology and economics policy advisor in the Obama White House and a global and private policy strategist at Facebook, both sort of around the 2016 elections.
7 Social Media Sites and their Data Breaches
In a previous article, we talked about how social media companies harvest a large quantity of data from the people who use their services. Monetizing data is how sites like Twitter and Facebook make most of their income, but these services have tried to promise users that their most private and compromising data is never sold or made vulnerable. In this article, we will explore times when these social media platforms have failed to adequately secure our data.
Why is humanID Superior to Other Social Logins?
You come across a new clothing website that has some shoes you are interested in purchasing, but it requires you to sign up for an account. Not another password to remember! Thankfully, they have an option to login with Facebook. You use your account to sign up and browse through the rest of the catalog. Soon you start seeing ads for more shoes on your Facebook timeline. How did this happen? The answer lies in understanding SSOs and social logins.
Human Voices, Episode 2: Bot Networks and the Spread of Disinformation, ft. Doctor Kathleen Carley
This episode features Doctor Kathleen Carley, from the School of Computer Science within the Institute for Software Research International at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the director for the Center of Computational Analysis of Social Organizational Systems there.
Why App Security is More Important Now than Ever
What is the most important part of an application? Depending on who you ask, the answer might be different. User experience? The features? The in-app purchases? These three things share one thing in common. None of them are the correct answer.
Human Voices, Episode 1: The Impact of Big Tech, ft. Bart Decrem
On humanID’s first installment of a Human Voices, a podcast series talking all things cyber and privacy, our founder Bastian Purrer interviews one of the most creative entrepreneurs in business, Bart Decrem. As a long time entrepreneur in both for-profit and non-profit sectors, the average internet user might recognize Decrem from his achievements at Disney Mobile Games and Mozilla Firefox or from Tapulous, the company that invented Tap Tap Revenge.
SSOs: a simple solution to the password problem?
For most of the internet’s history, we have interfaced with goods and services online by using multiple username-password combinations. These have often proved complicated for both users and firms. They’re complicated for users because these combinations are difficult to remember, or they may use the same combo for different services, consequently minimizing security.
What is data monetization and how does it use your personal data?
Maybe you were looking up the price for a new flat-screen television. Or maybe you decided to reorganize your pantry and searched online for some food storage containers. Within a few hours, your social media feeds started showing advertisements for televisions or BPA free containers. We’ve all been through this. It’s not that hard to figure out what happened. Somewhere in cyberspace, little packets of information are constantly being added to a secret and very personal profile about you and your habits.
