Last week we dealt with a phishing attack that turned out to be a bit scary. The attack used a technique that I knew was possible, but had only read about before (check out this post on Reddit). This was the first time I had actually seen it for myself.
2023 update: I no longer recommend using LastPass for your password manager. I strongly recommend 1Password instead.
Passwords are, frankly, a bane of our online existence. You need a password to log in to pretty much everything, and in the year 2019 we log in to a lot of things.
If you have been on the internet much in the last 20-ish years, you may have noticed the padlock symbol next to the URL in your address bar. Here's what it looks like in Chrome:
In Firefox:
In Edge:
You may have noticed this on your mobile device as well:
he term "2FA" - short for "two-factor authentication" - has experienced something that I initially called "the Kleenex effect". After a bit of searching, I found out that "the Kleenex effect" is a real thing and even has a name: "genericide". Wikipedia defines it like this (lightly edited for clarity)