Microsoft has released Windows 11 Dev build 26120.1930, which contains the ability to remap the Copilot key. The changes are rolling out gradually to Dev Insiders with the "Get the latest features as soon as they are available" toggle on. Neowin reports: [H]ere are the updates that are also gradually rolling out, but this time for all Dev Insiders: "We are adding the ability to configure the Copilot key. You can choose to have the Copilot key launch an app that is MSIX packaged and signed, thus indicating the app meets security and privacy requirements to keep customers safe. The key will continue to launch Copilot on devices that have the Copilot app installed until a customer selects a different experience. This setting can be found via Settings - Personalization - Text input. If the keyboard connected to your PC does not have a Copilot key, adjusting this setting will not do anything. We are planning further refinements to this experience in a future flight." Other changes introduced in the build include a new simplified Chinese font, Windows Sandbox improvements, and several bug fixes. Full release notes are available here.

The one-and-done nature of 23andMe is "indicative of a core business problem with the once high-flying biotech company that is now teetering on the brink of collapse," reports NPR. As 23andMe struggles for survival, many of its 15 million customers are left wondering what the company plans to do with all the data it has collected since it was founded in 2006. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Andy Kill, a spokesperson for 23andMe, would not comment on what the company might do with its trove of genetic data beyond general pronouncements about its commitment to privacy. "For our customers, our focus continues to be on transparency and choice over how they want their data to be managed," he said. When signing up for the service, about 80% of 23andMe's customers have opted in to having their genetic data analyzed for medical research. "This rate has held steady for many years," Kill added. The company has an agreement with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, or GSK, that allows the drugmaker to tap the tech company's customer data to develop new treatments for disease. Anya Prince, a law professor at the University of Iowa's College of Law who focuses on genetic privacy, said those worried about their sensitive DNA information may not realize just how few federal protections exist. For instance, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA, does not apply to 23andMe since it is a company outside of the health care realm. "HIPAA does not protect data that's held by direct-to-consumer companies like 23andMe," she said.

Although DNA data has no federal safeguards, some states, like California and Florida, do give consumers rights over their genetic information. "If customers are really worried, they could ask for their samples to be withdrawn from these databases under those laws," said Prince. According to the company, all of its genetic data is anonymized, meaning there is no way for GSK, or any other third party, to connect the sample to a real person. That, however, could make it nearly impossible for a customer to renege on their decision to allow researchers to access their DNA data. "I couldn't go to GSK and say, 'Hey, my sample was given to you -- I want that taken out -- if it was anonymized, right? Because they're not going to re-identify it just to pull it out of the database," Prince said.

Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who specializes in privacy and technology policy, said the patchwork of state laws governing DNA data makes the generic data of millions potentially vulnerable to being sold off, or even mined by law enforcement. "Having to rely on a private company's terms of service or bottom line to protect that kind of information is troubling -- particularly given the level of interest we've seen from government actors in accessing such information during criminal investigations," Eidelman said. She points to how investigators used a genealogy website to identify the man known as the Golden State Killer, and how police homed in on an Idaho murder suspect by turning to similar databases of genetic profiles. "This has happened without people's knowledge, much less their express consent," Eidelman said.

Neither case relied on 23andMe, and spokesperson Kill said the company does not allow law enforcement to search its database. The company has, however, received subpoenas to access its genetic information. According to 23andMe's transparency report, authorities have sought genetic data on 15 individuals since 2015, but the company has resisted the requests and never produced data for investigators. "We treat law enforcement inquiries, such as a valid subpoena or court order, with the utmost seriousness. We use all legal measures to resist any and all requests in order to protect our customers' privacy," Kill said. [...] In a September filing to financial regulators, [23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki] wrote: "I remain committed to our customers' privacy and pledge," meaning the company's rules requiring consent for DNA to be used for research would remain in place, as well as allowing customers to delete their data. Wojcicki added that she is no longer considering offers to buy the company after previously saying she was.

Meta has confirmed that it may use images analyzed by its Ray-Ban Meta AI smart glasses for AI training. The policy applies to users in the United States and Canada who share images with Meta AI, according to the company. While photos captured on the device are not used for training unless submitted to AI, any image shared for analysis falls under different policies, potentially contributing to Meta's AI model development.

Further reading: Meta's Smart Glasses Repurposed For Covert Facial Recognition.

Apple's iOS 18 update has introduced changes to contact sharing that could significantly impact social app developers. The new feature allows users to selectively share contacts with apps, rather than granting access to their entire address book. While Apple touts this as a privacy enhancement, developers warn it may hinder the growth of new social platforms. Nikita Bier, a start-up founder, called it "the end of the world" for friend-based social apps. Critics argue the change doesn't apply to Apple's own services, potentially giving the tech giant an unfair advantage.

Two Harvard students have developed smart glasses with facial recognition capabilities, sparking debate over privacy and surveillance. The project, dubbed I-XRAY, uses Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses coupled with facial recognition software to identify strangers and retrieve personal information about them. AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, the creators, tested the technology on unsuspecting individuals in public spaces. The glasses scan faces, match them against online databases, and display personal details on a smartphone within seconds. The students claim their project aims to raise awareness about potential privacy risks.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Federal prosecutors have charged a man for an alleged "hack-to-trade" scheme that earned him millions of dollars by breaking into the Office365 accounts of executives at publicly traded companies and obtaining quarterly financial reports before they were released publicly. The action, taken by the office of the US Attorney for the district of New Jersey, accuses UK national Robert B. Westbrook of earning roughly $3.75 million in 2019 and 2020 from stock trades that capitalized on the illicitly obtained information. After accessing it, prosecutors said, he executed stock trades. The advance notice allowed him to act and profit on the information before the general public could. The US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a separate civil suit against Westbrook seeking an order that he pay civil penalties and return all ill-gotten gains. [...]

By obtaining material information, Westbrook was able to predict how a company's stock would perform once it became public. When results were likely to drive down stock prices, he would place "put" options, which give the purchaser the right to sell shares at a specific price within a specified span of time. The practice allowed Westbrook to profit when shares fell after financial results became public. When positive results were likely to send stock prices higher, Westbrook allegedly bought shares while they were still low and later sold them for a higher price. The prosecutors charged Westbrook with one count each of securities fraud and wire fraud and five counts of computer fraud. The securities fraud count carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years' prison time and $5 million in fines The wire fraud count carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of either $250,000 or twice the gain or loss from the offense, whichever is greatest. Each computer fraud count carries a maximum five years in prison and a maximum fine of either $250,000 or twice the gain or loss from the offense, whichever is greatest. "The SEC is engaged in ongoing efforts to protect markets and investors from the consequences of cyber fraud," Jorge G. Tenreiro, acting chief of the SEC's Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, said in a statement. "As this case demonstrates, even though Westbrook took multiple steps to conceal his identity -- including using anonymous email accounts, VPN services, and utilizing bitcoin -- the Commission's advanced data analytics, crypto asset tracing, and technology can uncover fraud even in cases involving sophisticated international hacking."

Meta has been fined $101.5 million by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) for storing over half a billion user passwords in plain text for years, with some engineers having access to this data for over a decade. The issue, discovered in 2019, predominantly affected non-US users, especially those using Facebook Lite. AppleInsider reports: Meta Ireland was found guilty of infringing four parts of GDPR, including how it "failed to notify the DPC of a personal data breach concerning storage of user passwords in plain text." Meta Ireland did report the failure, but only some months after it was discovered. "It is widely accepted that user passwords should not be stored in plaintext, considering the risks of abuse that arise from persons accessing such data," said Graham Doyle, Deputy Commissioner at the DPC, in a statement about the fine. "It must be borne in mind, that the passwords the subject of consideration in this case, are particularly sensitive, as they would enable access to users' social media accounts."

Other than the fine and an official reprimand, the full extent of the DPC's ruling is yet to be released publicly. The details published so far do not reveal whether the passwords included any of US users as well as ones in Ireland or across the rest of the European Union. It's most likely that the issue concerns only non-US users, however. That's because in 2019, Facebook told CNN that the majority of the plain text passwords were for a service called Facebook Lite, which it described as being a cut-down service for areas of the world with slower connectivity.

23andMe is not doing well. Its stock is on the verge of being delisted. It shut down its in-house drug-development unit last month, only the latest in several rounds of layoffs. Last week, the entire board of directors quit, save for Anne Wojcicki, a co-founder and the company's CEO. Amid this downward spiral, Wojcicki has said she'll consider selling 23andMe -- which means the DNA of 23andMe's 15 million customers would be up for sale, too. The Atlantic: 23andMe's trove of genetic data might be its most valuable asset. For about two decades now, since human-genome analysis became quick and common, the A's, C's, G's, and T's of DNA have allowed long-lost relatives to connect, revealed family secrets, and helped police catch serial killers. Some people's genomes contain clues to what's making them sick, or even, occasionally, how their disease should be treated. For most of us, though, consumer tests don't have much to offer beyond a snapshot of our ancestors' roots and confirmation of the traits we already know about. 23andMe is floundering in part because it hasn't managed to prove the value of collecting all that sensitive, personal information. And potential buyers may have very different ideas about how to use the company's DNA data to raise the company's bottom line. This should concern anyone who has used the service.

Ars Technica's Dan Goodin reports: Last week, NIST released its second public draft of SP 800-63-4, the latest version of its Digital Identity Guidelines. At roughly 35,000 words and filled with jargon and bureaucratic terms, the document is nearly impossible to read all the way through and just as hard to understand fully. It sets both the technical requirements and recommended best practices for determining the validity of methods used to authenticate digital identities online. Organizations that interact with the federal government online are required to be in compliance. A section devoted to passwords injects a large helping of badly needed common sense practices that challenge common policies. An example: The new rules bar the requirement that end users periodically change their passwords. This requirement came into being decades ago when password security was poorly understood, and it was common for people to choose common names, dictionary words, and other secrets that were easily guessed.

Since then, most services require the use of stronger passwords made up of randomly generated characters or phrases. When passwords are chosen properly, the requirement to periodically change them, typically every one to three months, can actually diminish security because the added burden incentivizes weaker passwords that are easier for people to set and remember. Another requirement that often does more harm than good is the required use of certain characters, such as at least one number, one special character, and one upper- and lowercase letter. When passwords are sufficiently long and random, there's no benefit from requiring or restricting the use of certain characters. And again, rules governing composition can actually lead to people choosing weaker passcodes.

The latest NIST guidelines now state that:
- Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT impose other composition rules (e.g., requiring mixtures of different character types) for passwords and
- Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT require users to change passwords periodically. However, verifiers SHALL force a change if there is evidence of compromise of the authenticator. ("Verifiers" is bureaucrat speak for the entity that verifies an account holder's identity by corroborating the holder's authentication credentials. Short for credential service provider, "CSPs" are a trusted entity that assigns or registers authenticators to the account holder.) In previous versions of the guidelines, some of the rules used the words "should not," which means the practice is not recommended as a best practice. "Shall not," by contrast, means the practice must be barred for an organization to be in compliance. Several other common sense practices mentioned in the document include: 1. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL require passwords to be a minimum of eight characters in length and SHOULD require passwords to be a minimum of 15 characters in length.
2. Verifiers and CSPs SHOULD permit a maximum password length of at least 64 characters.
3. Verifiers and CSPs SHOULD accept all printing ASCII [RFC20] characters and the space character in passwords.
4. Verifiers and CSPs SHOULD accept Unicode [ISO/ISC 10646] characters in passwords. Each Unicode code point SHALL be counted as a single character when evaluating password length.
5. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT impose other composition rules (e.g., requiring mixtures of different character types) for passwords.
6. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT require users to change passwords periodically. However, verifiers SHALL force a change if there is evidence of compromise of the authenticator.
7. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT permit the subscriber to store a hint that is accessible to an unauthenticated claimant.
8. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT prompt subscribers to use knowledge-based authentication (KBA) (e.g., "What was the name of your first pet?") or security questions when choosing passwords.
9. Verifiers SHALL verify the entire submitted password (i.e., not truncate it).

Mozilla has been hit with a complaint by EU privacy group noyb, accusing it of violating GDPR by tracking Firefox users by default without their consent. TechCrunch reports: Mozilla calls the feature at issue "Privacy Preserving Attribution" (PPA). But noyb argues this is misdirection. And if EU privacy regulators agree with the complaint the Firefox-maker could be slapped with orders to change tack -- or even face a penalty (the GDPR allows for fines of up to 4% of global revenue). "Contrary to its reassuring name, this technology allows Firefox to track user behaviour on websites," noyb wrote in a press release. "In essence, the browser is now controlling the tracking, rather than individual websites. While this might be an improvement compared to even more invasive cookie tracking, the company never asked its users if they wanted to enable it. Instead, Mozilla decided to turn it on by default once people installed a recent software update. This is particularly worrying because Mozilla generally has a reputation for being a privacy-friendly alternative when most other browsers are based on Google's Chromium."

Another component of noyb's objection is that Mozilla's move "doesn't replace cookies either" -- Firefox simply wouldn't have the market share and power to shift industry practices -- so all it's done is produce another additional way for websites to target ads. [...] The noyb-backed complaint (PDF), which has been filed with the Austrian data protection authority, accuses Mozilla of failing to inform users about the processing of their personal data and of using an opt-out -- rather than an affirmative "opt-in" -- mechanism. The privacy rights group also wants the regulator to order the deletion of all data collected so far. In a statement attributed to Christopher Hilton, its director of policy and corporate communications, Mozilla said that it has only conducted a "limited test" of a PPA prototype on its own websites.While acknowledging poor communication around the effort, the company emphasized that no user data has been collected or shared and expressed its commitment to engaging with stakeholders as it develops the technology further.

Apple has pulled 60 VPNs from its App Store in Russia, according to research from anti-censorship org GreatFire. From a report: The iThing-maker's action comes amid a Kremlin crackdown on VPNs that has already seen a ban on privacy-related extensions to the open source Firefox browser. The software's developer, Mozilla, defied that ban and allowed the extensions back into its web store. In July, Apple removed at least one VPN from its Russian App Store. Cupertino removed at least 60 more between early July and September 18, according to research by GreatFire posted to its site that tracks Apple censorship. The org's research asserts that 98 VPNs are now unavailable in Russia -- but doesn't specify if the removals were made in the iOS or macOS app stores.

Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has defended its decision to automatically replace its antivirus software on U.S. customers' computers with UltraAV, a product from American company Pango, without explicit user consent. The forced switch, affecting nearly one million users, occurred as a result of a U.S. government ban on Kaspersky software.

Kaspersky spokesperson Francesco Tius told TechCrunch that the company informed eligible U.S. customers via email about the migration, which began in early September. Windows users experienced an automatic transition to ensure continuous protection, while Mac and mobile users were instructed to manually install UltraAV. Some customers expressed alarm at the unannounced software swap. Kaspersky blamed missed notifications on unregistered email addresses, directing users to in-app messages and an online FAQ. The abrupt change raises concerns about user autonomy and privacy in software updates, particularly as UltraAV lacks an established security track record.

The Tor Project: Today the Tor Project, a global non-profit developing tools for online privacy and anonymity, and Tails, a portable operating system that uses Tor to protect users from digital surveillance, have joined forces and merged operations. Incorporating Tails into the Tor Project's structure allows for easier collaboration, better sustainability, reduced overhead, and expanded training and outreach programs to counter a larger number of digital threats. In short, coming together will strengthen both organizations' ability to protect people worldwide from surveillance and censorship.

Countering the threat of global mass surveillance and censorship to a free Internet, Tor and Tails provide essential tools to help people around the world stay safe online. By joining forces, these two privacy advocates will pool their resources to focus on what matters most: ensuring that activists, journalists, other at-risk and everyday users will have access to improved digital security tools.

In late 2023, Tails approached the Tor Project with the idea of merging operations. Tails had outgrown its existing structure. Rather than expanding Tails's operational capacity on their own and putting more stress on Tails workers, merging with the Tor Project, with its larger and established operational framework, offered a solution. By joining forces, the Tails team can now focus on their core mission of maintaining and improving Tails OS, exploring more and complementary use cases while benefiting from the larger organizational structure of The Tor Project.

This solution is a natural outcome of the Tor Project and Tails' shared history of collaboration and solidarity. 15 years ago, Tails' first release was announced on a Tor mailing list, Tor and Tails developers have been collaborating closely since 2015, and more recently Tails has been a sub-grantee of Tor. For Tails, it felt obvious that if they were to approach a bigger organization with the possibility of merging, it would be the Tor Project.

"Looks like there's a storm brewing, and it's not good news," writes ancient Slashdot reader jd. "Whether or not the bugs are classically security defects or not, this is extremely bad PR for the Linux and Open Source community. It's not clear from the article whether this affects other Open Source projects, such as FreeBSD." From a report: A critical unauthenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability has been discovered, impacting all GNU/Linux systems. As per agreements with developers, the flaw, which has existed for over a decade, will be fully disclosed in less than two weeks. Despite the severity of the issue, no Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) identifiers have been assigned yet, although experts suggest there should be at least three to six. Leading Linux distributors such as Canonical and RedHat have confirmed the flaw's severity, rating it 9.9 out of 10. This indicates the potential for catastrophic damage if exploited. However, despite this acknowledgment, no working fix is still available. Developers remain embroiled in debates over whether some aspects of the vulnerability impact security.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required makers of web browsers and mobile operating systems to let consumers send opt-out preference signals that could limit businesses' use of personal information. The bill approved by the State Legislature last month would have required an opt-out signal "that communicates the consumer's choice to opt out of the sale and sharing of the consumer's personal information or to limit the use of the consumer's sensitive personal information." It would have made it illegal for a business to offer a web browser or mobile operating system without a setting that lets consumers "send an opt-out preference signal to businesses with which the consumer interacts."

In a veto message (PDF) sent to the Legislature Friday, Newsom said he would not sign the bill. Newsom wrote that he shares the "desire to enhance consumer privacy," noting that he previously signed a bill "requir[ing] the California Privacy Protection Agency to establish an accessible deletion mechanism allowing consumers to request that data brokers delete all of their personal information." But Newsom said he is opposed to the new bill's mandate on operating systems. "I am concerned, however, about placing a mandate on operating system (OS) developers at this time," the governor wrote. "No major mobile OS incorporates an option for an opt-out signal. By contrast, most Internet browsers either include such an option or, if users choose, they can download a plug-in with the same functionality. To ensure the ongoing usability of mobile devices, it's best if design questions are first addressed by developers, rather than by regulators. For this reason, I cannot sign this bill." Vetoes can be overridden with a two-thirds vote in each chamber. The bill was approved 59-12 in the Assembly and 31-7 in the Senate. But the State Legislature hasn't overridden a veto in decades. "It's troubling the power that companies such as Google appear to have over the governor's office," said Justin Kloczko, tech and privacy advocate for Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit group in California. "What the governor didn't mention is that Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Microsoft Edge don't offer a global opt-out and they make up for nearly 90 percent of the browser market share. That's what matters. And people don't want to install plug-ins. Safari, which is the default browsers on iPhones, doesn't even accept a plug-in."

Amazon, Meta, and Tesla were named by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) as some of the worst corporate underminers of democracy . These companies were accused of union busting, monopolizing media and technology, violating human rights, contributing to climate change, and fostering political movements that threaten democratic institutions. The full list of "corporate underminers of democracy for 2024" is Amazon, Blackstone Group, ExxonMobil, Glencore, Meta, Tesla and the Vanguard Group. The Register reports: The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) today published a list of seven companies it said were "emblematic" of the ways large international corporations have begun tossing their weight around to influence global affairs. Those businesses, ITUC noted, violate trade union and alleged human rights, monopolize media and technology, exacerbate the climate catastrophe and try to privatize public services in a way that "protects and expands [their] own profits by undermining democracy." "These companies deploy complex lobbying operations to undermine popular will and disrupt existing or nascent global policy that could hold them accountable," ITUC wrote. The desire for greater corporate power, the Confederation added, invariably puts corporate interests in bed with anti-democratic political movements like the modern far-right. Right-wing politicians, ITUC noted, tend to lower taxes, undercut higher wages for workers, crack down on trade unions, and the like - all things sure to please the likes of corporations like Amazon, Tesla, and Meta as evidenced by plenty of prior reporting and research. For Amazon, the ITUC criticized the company for becoming "notorious for its union busting and low wages, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissions through its AWS [datacenters], corporate tax evasion and lobbying."

Meta was accused of exploiting user data, undermining privacy laws, manipulating global information, and failing to regulate harmful content on its platforms. "Meta's algorithms can quite literally alter humanity's perceptions of reality," ITUC said. "Its revenue model exploits trillions of personalized data points to deliver highly effective advertising." Some have referred to the company as "a foreign state, populated by people without sovereignty, ruled by a leader with absolute power."

As for Tesla, it was condemned for poor labor practices, anti-union politics, unsafe working conditions, human rights violations, and environmental damage in its supply chain. "The world's most highly-valued automaker has quickly become known as one of its most belligerent employers. Tesla's rapid market success has been outpaced only by the descent of its corporate leaders into anti-democratic, anti-union politics."

Sandvine, the makers of surveillance-ware that allowed authoritarian countries to censor the internet and spy on their citizens, announced that it is leaving dozens of "non-democratic" countries as part of a major overhaul of the company. From a report: The company, which was founded in Canada, published a statement on Thursday, claiming that it now wants to be "a technology solution leader for democracies." As part of this new strategy, Sandvine said it has already left 32 countries and is in the process of leaving another 24 countries.

Sandvine did not name the 56 countries, apart from Egypt, where Sandvine promised to leave by the end of March 2025. For the remaining countries -- including non-government customers in Egypt -- the "end-of-service" date will be the end of 2025. This change in the company's direction comes after years of investigations by Bloomberg, which reported that Sandvine had sold its internet surveillance products to authoritarian regimes, including Belarus, Egypt, Eritrea, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.

Ukraine has banned use of Telegram on official devices used by state officials, military personnel and critical workers because it believes its enemy Russia can spy on both messages and users, a top security body said on Friday. Reuters: The National Security and Defence Council announced the restrictions after Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency, presented the Council with evidence of Russian special services' ability to snoop on the platform, it said in a statement. But Andriy Kovalenko, head of the security council's centre on countering disinformation, posted on Telegram that the restrictions apply only to official devices, not personal phones.

Telegram is heavily used in both Ukraine and Russia and has become a critical source of information since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But Ukrainian security officials had repeatedly voiced concerns about its use during the war. Based in Dubai, Telegram was founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his social media platform VKontakte, which he has sold.

Disney plans to transition away from using Slack as its companywide collaboration tool after a hacking group leaked over a terabyte of data from the platform. Many teams at Disney have already begun moving to other enterprise-wide tools, with the full transition expected later this year. Reuters reports: Hacking group NullBulge had published data from thousands of Slack channels at the entertainment giant, including computer code and details about unreleased projects, the Journal reported in July. The data spans more than 44 million messages from Disney's Slack workplace communications tool, WSJ reported earlier this month. The company had said in August it was investigating an unauthorized release of over a terabyte of data from one of its communication systems.

Google is updating its Password Manager to allow users to sync passkeys across multiple devices, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, with iOS and ChromeOS support coming soon. Engadget reports: Once saved, the passkey automatically syncs across other devices using Google Password Manager. The company says this data is end-to-end encrypted, so it'll be pretty tough for someone to go in and steal credentials. [...] Today's update also brings another layer of security to passkeys on Google Password Manager. The company has introduced a six-digit PIN that will be required when using passkeys on a new device. This would likely stop nefarious actors from logging into an account even if they've somehow gotten ahold of the digital credentials. Just don't leave the PIN number laying on a sheet of paper directly next to the computer.