Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

The lesson from LinkedIn's data breach? Most online passwords are easy nuts to crack.

Fix your passwords, safeguard against email break-ins, and theft-proof your devices before that cup of joe gets cold. As long as we’ve had computers and gadgets, there’s been a tension between security and ease of use.

Fix your passwords, safeguard against email break-ins, and theft-proof your devices before that cup of joe gets cold. As long as we’ve had computers and gadgets, there’s been a tension between security and ease of use. On one extreme, there are the passwords that are so complex you intentionally can’t remember them, and emails that involve sending an encryption key to your recipients

We are constantly warned to protect our passwords, Social Security numbers and other “personal identifying information” to thwart thieves who may steal laptops or perpetrate online fraud. Although such breaches have soared since 2005 ( right ) as criminals try to commit identity theft, the truly enormous breaches ( bottom ) have increasingly been carried out by “hacktivists”--individuals or groups who are angry about an organization’s actions. Hackers, for example, exposed data about 77 million Sony customers after the company pursued legal action against other hackers.

This week, Amazon unveiled an Appstore for mobile devices that run on the Android operating system. Here are three business-friendly offerings currently available in the store: Scan2PDF Mobile 2.0 Using this app, you can scan multiple documents with your phone's camera and turn them into a single PDF that you can store on your phone and e-mail to your main computer. Cost: $4.99 SwiftKey This app replaces your standard Android keyboard, and accurately predicts the next word you are most likely to type based on what you've already written