Google aims to replace passwords with ID ring

The struggle to remember several long and increasingly complicated passwords simply to carry out everyday web tasks could soon become a thing of the past, if Google gets its way and introduces a ring that can confirm your identity online.

In a research paper, two security experts at the web giant have outlined a future in which the main way of guaranteeing we are who we say we are online will be possession of a physical token, perhaps embedded in smartphones or even jewellery.

They have added to growing claims that passwords are both inherently insecure and increasingly impractical.

To more make them more difficult for criminals to guess, web services have forced people to use longer passwords with different types of characters, but that also makes them more difficult to remember. To add to the headache, experts also advise against using the same password for different services, to reduce the impact if one is hacked.

“Along with many in the industry, we feel passwords and simple bearer tokens such as cookies are no longer sufficient to keep users safe,” said Google vice president of security Eric Grosse and engineer Mayank Upadhyay, in an article to be published in an engineering journal.

Cookies are small text files issued by websites to web browser software to keep visitors logged in once they have entered their password.

Source: The Telegraph

Group Finds More Fake Ingredients in Popular Foods

It's what we expect as shoppers—what's in the food will be displayed on the label.

But a new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice.

"Food products are not always what they purport to be," Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standards for the independent lab in Maryland, told ABC News.

In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.

USP, a scientific nonprofit that according to their website "sets standards for the identity, strength, quality, and purity of medicines, food ingredients, and dietary supplements manufactured, distributed and consumed worldwide" first released the Food Fraud Database in April 2012.

The organization examined more than 1,300 published studies and media reports from 1980-2010. The update to the database includes nearly 800 new records, nearly all published in 2011 and 2012.

Among the most popular targets for unscrupulous food suppliers? Pomegranate juice, which is often diluted with grape or pear juice.

"Pomegranate juice is a high-value ingredient and a high-priced ingredient, and adulteration appears to be widespread," Lipp said. "It can be adulterated with other food juices…additional sugar, or just water and sugar."

Lipp added that there have also been reports of completely "synthetic pomegranate juice" that didn't contain any traces of the real juice.

USP tells ABC News that liquids and ground foods in general are the easiest to tamper with:

• Olive oil: often diluted with cheaper oils
• Lemon juice: cheapened with water and sugar
• Tea: diluted with fillers like lawn grass or fern leaves
• Spices: like paprika or saffron adulterated with dangerous food colorings that mimic the colors

Milk, honey, coffee and syrup are also listed by the USP as being highly adulterated products.

Also high on the list: seafood. The number one fake being escolar, an oily fish that can cause stomach problems, being mislabeled as white tuna or albacore, frequently found on sushi menus.

National Consumers League did its own testing on lemon juice just this past year and found four different products labeled 100 percent lemon juice were far from pure.

"One had 10 percent lemon juice, it said it had 100 percent, another had 15 percent lemon juice, another...had 25 percent, and the last one had 35 percent lemon juice," Sally Greenberg, Executive Director for the National Consumers League said. "And they were all labeled 100 percent lemon juice."

Greenberg explains there are indications to help consumers pick the faux from the food.

"In a bottle of olive oil if there's a dark bottle, does it have the date that it was harvested?" she said. While other products, such as honey or lemon juice, are more difficult to discern, if the price is "too good to be true" it probably is.

"$5.50, that's pretty cheap for extra virgin olive oil," Greenberg said. "And something that should raise some eyebrows for consumers."

Many of the products USP found to be adulterated are those that would be more expensive or research intensive in its production. "Pomegranate juice is expensive because there is little juice in a pomegranate," Lipp said.

Source: ABC News