Here’s a simple little table taken from UberGlobal that shows how long on average it would take to randomly guess your password.

So now you know what to do – make sure your password contains lower and upper case letters, a number and a symbol – you know an @, &, $ and the like.

Do it now it’ll be worth it, there’s a lot of ideal hands out there since bankers broke the economy!

Hacking groups Anonymous and Lulz Security vow to carry on despite arrests in a post on Pastebin.

Hello thar FBI and international law authorities,

We recently stumbled across the following article with amazement and a certain amount of amusement:

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138555799/fbi-arrests-alleged-anonymous-hackers

The statements made by deputy assistant FBI director Steve Chabinsky in this article clearly seem to be directed at Anonymous and Lulz Security, and we are happy to provide you with a response.

You state:

We want to send a message that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable, [even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it’s entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts.

Now let us be clear here, Mr. Chabinsky, while we understand that you and your colleagues may find breaking into websites unacceptable, let us tell you what WE find unacceptable:

* Governments lying to their citizens and inducing fear and terror to keep them in control by dismantling their freedom piece by piece.

* Corporations aiding and conspiring with said governments while taking advantage at the same time by collecting billions of funds for federal contracts we all know they can’t fulfil.

* Lobby conglomerates who only follow their agenda to push the profits higher, while at the same time being deeply involved in governments around the world with the only goal to infiltrate and corrupt them enough so the status quo will never change.

These governments and corporations are our enemy. And we will continue to fight them, with all methods we have at our disposal, and that certainly includes breaking into their websites and exposing their lies.

We are not scared any more. Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea. Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir. It is our mission to help these people and there is nothing – absolutely nothing – you can possibly to do make us stop.

The Internet has become so important to so many people that we have to ensure that the World Wide Web does not become the Wild Wild West.

Let me ask you, good sir, when was the Internet not the Wild Wild West? Do you really believe you were in control of it at any point? You were not.

That does not mean that everyone behaves like an outlaw. You see, most people do not behave like bandits if they have no reason to. We become bandits on the Internet because you have forced our hand. The Anonymous bitchslap rings through your ears like hacktivism movements of the 90s. We’re back – and we’re not going anywhere. Expect us.

I can’t help agreeing with a lot of what they’ve written and I also can’t help but admire their actions, so far – that said who knows if the statements actually from Anonymous and Lulz Security?

Hat Tip: kaygeekuk.

How much information, photos, videos and the like do you have on Facebook – what would happen if they got deleted? Well Scott Wending has created a simple guide on how to back up your Facebook account – it’s simple and easy to follow – it’s a shame you can’t automate it – but it’s worth doing every so often.

Qwiki is the new search engine on the block – type in your request and Qwiki returns a mini presentation – who says there’s nothing new in the search engine world? Not only that you can embed a Qwiki in your website – rather brilliant I think.

View Gloucester and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.

I’ve not seen alerts on the Google homepage before (click the image for a bigger picture)

A tsunami alert – is this the start of a new service – although it doesn’t seem that useful for UK users of Google. And yes I’m aware of the awful Earthquake in Japan.

Katherine Noyes at PC World writes that we should use Stephen Fry’s Pushnote – what’s Pushnote? Simply put Pushnote is Web annotation software and it’s been tried before with limited success – Layerpad and Google’s Sidewiki spring to mind – so will Pushnote be any more successful? Personally I think not – not without improvements maybe something like the bit.ly sidebar would be a start.

If you’ve ever used twitter then you’ll know that how many people follow you is how you’re judged Steven Fry for instance has over 2 million followers on the other hand I’ve just nine. But what you maybe didn’t know is that you can buy twitter followers – just type “buy twitter followers” into Google and you’ll find 100’s of websites offering you followers – the going rate seems to be about $5 a hundred.

One fifth of Facebook users are exposed to malware contained in their news feeds, claim security researchers.

Security firm BitDefender said it had detected infections contained in the news feeds of around 20% of Facebook users. BBC.

No surprise that researchers working for security firm find a problem – come on they know who pays their salaries – how much interest is going to be generated for BitDefender’s Facebook security app Safego – how long before Safego starts charging?

Xkcd has updated its map of online communities it’s a bit of fun but it’s still interesting to see the differences between 2007 and 2010 – the most obvious change is the rise of Facebook and the demise of MySpace.

Online Communities 2007

Online Communities 2010

Hat Tip: Shiny Shiny.

Up until now Google’s street view has been limited to a few major cities now it’s been extended to cover 95% of the UK so now you can have a look at where you live, work or whatever takes your fancy.

Hat Tip: Trusted Reviews.