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FOR OUR SECURITY special lastmonth, we decided to conduct a littlesocialexperiment.Weaddedinalittle box on page 45 called

“A forward youshould ignore”

,whichbasicallytoldyouthattherewasawaythatyoucouldgetGmail passwords of other people. There are several reasons why thisexperiment should have failed:1. The title of the box seemeddescriptive enough.2.Thearticleitappearedinwasabout“social engineering”.3. The entire magazine was centeredaround “Security”.4. It was in

Digit

, and our readers aresupposed to be “tech gurus”. As of last count, over 1,100 peoplehad happily parted with their ownpassword,totryandgetintosomeoneelse’s account — with the numberincreasingonadailybasis,thisishard-ly a failed experiment.SohereIam,sittingwithover1000passwords,andpotentialaccesstoalotofyourpersonalinformation.AlthoughI’mnotvoyeuristic(andamnotgoingtoaccess your mail), all those of you whohave sent me your passwords, are cer-tainlyquitetheopposite.Since I had to put your passwordstosomegooduse,Idecidedtodoalit-tle data mining... Theveryfirsttrendthatemerged, was that most of the respondents weremale,andlookingforpasswordsof females — so basically, a bunch of voyeurs,orstalkers.Weevengotafewdozen women looking for passwordsof male friends, so apparently stalk-ingisn’tgender-specific.It’salsoquiteapparentthatnoonereallycaresthathacking someone else’s emailaccount is illegal — fines, jail terms,that kind of illegal.It’snotjustaboutsnoopingeither;I found that most of you use reallypoorpasswords.Simplekeyboardcom- binations like “qwerty”, “123456” and“abcdefg” were common enough toupset me. What’s worse, a few people wereactuallysillyenoughtoput“password” as their password! Almost all of the passwords used wereunder8characterslong.Thoughit wasquiteinterestingtonotethatafewofyouweresmartenoughtousestrongpasswords — over 8 characters, withupper and lowercase letters, numbersand even punctuations — but dumbenoughtofallforourlittleprank. Themostridiculoustrendwasthat between10and15percentofyouwereusing your mobile numbers as yourpasswords — so anyone who has evercalled you could potentially hack into your account. Also, some people usedtheirownnames,ortheirpostalcodes. A lot of guys out there seem touse girls’ names as their passwords,andofthose,surprisingly,onlyabout10 per cent were looking for passwords for that same girl’s account.Interestingly, an equal amount werelooking for the password to a differ-ent girl’s account — you two-timers, you know who you are. Although fewer in number, thegirls were more faithful, with most of thegirlswhohadaboy’snameastheirpassword, looking for that same boy’slogin details — perhaps suspicious of thetwo-timingguysmentionedabove?Celebrity names were quite com-monlyusedaspasswords,withAamirKhan and John Abraham being themost popular. Religious terms werealso popular passwords, though being caught trying to hack anoth-er’s account is hardly ethical, letalone religious.“Syncmaster” seems to be a pop-ular monitor model, with enough of you using it as a password to getnoticed. A few of you had “thinkdig-it” as your password, and we’re flat-tered. One password actually read“iamaloser”.Quite a few of you got conned byour little ruse, and tried to regainaccess to accounts that you had for-gottenthepasswordsto,sowe’llbealittle less harsh on you, but youshould realise that what you didcouldhavelostyouanotheraccount.Sowhatdoesallthistellme?FromwhereIsit, alotofusIndiansseem to be inquisitive — bordering on voyeuristic. Perhaps that’s why I knowof women on our Thinkdigit forum whoprefertoposeasmen,justsothey won’t get harassed. In this particularcase, it doesn’t seem like the womenareanylessvoyeuristicthough.I suppose I should be thankfulthat less than 1 per cent of our read-ership has fallen prey to this so far, butwithmillionsofhoaxmailsreach-ing that same number on a regular basis, even a few thousand victims iscauseforconcern.Getyouracttogeth-er people — re-read our last month’sissue if necessary, but secure yourself from your own gullibility.

Editorial

Robert Sovereign-Smith, Editor

Shameonyou

“...no one really cares thathacking someone else’semail account is illegal —fines, jail terms, that kindof illegal.”

editor@thinkdigit.com

DIGIT

FEBRUARY 2009

YO U R T E C H N O L O G Y N AV I G AT O R

Printed and Published by

Kanak Ghosh,

for Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt. Ltd. C/o KPT House, Plot41/13, Sector 30, Vashi (Near Sanpada Railway Station), Navi Mumbai 400703Editor:

Sujay Nair,

C/o KPT House, Plot 41/13, Sector 30, Vashi (Near Sanpada Railway Station),Navi Mumbai 400703Printed at Silverpoint Press Pvt. Ltd, Kohinoor Estate, 165, Tulsi Pipe Road, Lower Parel,Mumbai 400 013

To advertise

South

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E-mail: sanjay.bhan@9dot9.inMobile: +91 9341829285Phone: (080) 25546370-73Fax: 41518330Phone: (044) 28235186/88Fax: 28230731Phone: (040) 27894167/ 55221051Fax: 27720205

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E-mail: arvind.ambo@9dot9.inMobile: +91 9819904050Phone: (022) 40373636/40373626/24494572/24467130/1Fax: 24482059/24481123

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Jayanta Bhattacharyya

E-mail: jayanta.bhattacharyya@9dot9.inPhone: +91 9331829284(033) 22317344/46

North

Pranav Saran

E-mail: pranav.saran@9dot9.inPhone: +91 09312685289,(011) 41608655/56/57/58

International

Navin Chand Singh

E-mail: nc.singh@9dot9.inMobile: +91 99013 00772

Bazaar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73

BenQ E900HDCanon Selphy CP 760Divoom XFORCE-1Epson Stylus TX101Intex IT-5400FMLG KP500McAcfee Internet Security 2009Mitashi TFD-7608Mr Site Takeaway WebsiteMSI PR201Palit HD 4870 Sonic 1GBSamsung T220WD My Passport Elite 500GBXFX 750a SLiXFX 9800GTZotac GeForce GTX285 AMP! Edition

Entry-level Cell Phones . . . .51

LG KM380TLG KP199LG KP220LG RD 3500LG RD 3510LG RD 3600LG RD 3610LG RD 6100LG RD 6600Nokia 2626Samsung E1410Samsung L700Samsung M200Samsung SCH F309Sony Ericsson W350Sony Ericsson Z555

Netbook Comparison Test . .46

Acer Aspire OneASUS Eee PC 904HAASUS Eee PC 1000HBenQ Joybook Lite U101Lenovo IdeaPad S10LG X110MSI Wind U100

February 2009 • Volume 9 • Issue 2

Advertisers’ index

Client Page No

Corona 49Creative Inside Front CoverDell 3Elent 115eSys 19Fortune 117iBall 11, 57Microsoft 15Microworld 63MSI Inside Back CoverMTNL 103Ricoh Back CoverRx Tech 113SBI 17Top Gun 45Vodafone 6, 7

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Products reviewed this month

Managing Director

Dr Pramath Raj Sinha

Printer and Publisher

Kanak Ghosh

Publishing Director

Asheesh GuptaEditorial

Editor-in-Chief

Edward Henning

Editor

RobertSovereign-Smith

Writer

AdityaMadanapalleTest Centre

Manager - Test Development andSourcing

Michael Browne

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Rossi Fernandes

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Kumar Jhuremalani

Product Co-ordinators

KP NambiarDesign

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Kabir Malkani

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Rohit A Chandwaskar

Senior Designers

MVSajeev,URavindranadhan

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SoumyaMohanty

Illustrators

Shrikrishna Patkar,Ashwini Baviskar

Sr. Photographer

Jiten GandhiMultimedia

Project Head

RobertSovereign-Smith

Content Co-ordination

AdityaMadanapalleSales and Marketing

VP Sales and Marketing

Naveen Chand Singh

Product Manager

Navneet Miglani

Assistant Brand Manager

Arpita Ganguli

National Marketing Manager

Vikram Duggal

Marketing Communication

ThomasVarghese

Co-ordinator, Scheduling,MIS and Ad-sales

Aatish MohiteProduction and Logistics

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Shivshankar Hiremath

Production Executive

Vilas Mhatre

Logistics

M P Singh, Mohd.Ansari,ShashiShekharSinghCirculation and Subscription — Sales

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Customer Service

Prerana Panchal,Vrushali LondheCustomer Service:022-40789612/13/14Head Office: Editorial, Marketingand Customer Service

Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt. LtdC/o KPT House, Plot 41/13, Sector 30,Vashi (Near Sanpada Railway Station),Navi Mumbai 400703Phone: 40789666Fax: 022-40789540, 022-40789640Cover Design

Andre Rodrigues