MS-DOS Source Code for First Time Ever

OPEN MS-DOS Source Code

Early tech fans might remember the good 'ol days of Microsoft MS-DOS, the company's first operating system from the 1980's. Now, with the help of the Computer History Museum, Microsoft is making the source code for DOS available to the public for the first time ever. Get excited, hackers.

The Computer History Museum, based in Mountain View, Calif., is making MS DOS 1.1, 2.0 and Word 1.1a available to help fans and technologists better understand the history of computing.

Microsoft announced the move in a blog post on its website and detailed the early beginnings of the iconic software.

In 1980, IBM approached Microsoft to work on a project code-named “Chess.” What followed was a significant milestone in the history of the personal computer. Microsoft, at the time, provided the BASIC language interpreter for IBM. However, they had other plans and asked Microsoft to create an operating system. Without their own on hand, Microsoft licensed an operating system from Seattle Computer Products which would become the foundation for PC-DOS and MS-DOS.

IBM and Microsoft developed a unique relationship that paved the way for advancements in the nascent personal computer industry, and subsequent advancements in personal computing.

Following the first DOS-based version of Microsoft Word in 1983, Word for Windows launched in 1989 and become a huge hit for the company. It generated over half the revenue of the worldwide word-processing market, according to Microsoft.

"Thanks to the Computer History Museum, these important pieces of source code will be preserved and made available to the community for historical and technical scholarship," a company said in a statement.

It's enough to make us want to find our old 5.25-inch floppy drives and green CRT monitors.

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March Madness Can't Miss Apps

Medium

Medium, the blogging platform created by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, launched its first mobile app this week. The app lets users browse the latest posts or follow the site’s curated topic-based collections.

Medium's app is still relatively bare-bones — users can’t look up or post new content, for example — but what it lacks in features, it makes up in design.

Medium is available on iOS.

Newsbeat

Newsbeat, the Tribune Co.’s new app, pulls in stories from hundreds of the company’s newspapers to create customized playlists of articles to be read out loud by an automated voice. It sounds gimmicky, but it’s not the first app to use this method. What's more, the robot voices sounds surprisingly un-robotic.

However, the free app is ad-supported, with brief ads playing about every 10 minutes.

Newsbeat is available on iOS and Android .

Fire Chat

Unlike other messaging apps, FireChat allows users to message people without the need of a cellphone signal or Wi-Fi connection.

The app uses Apple’s Multipeer Connectivity Framework, built into iOS 7, to connect users with those around them.

FireChat's creators say the app works best for chatting with those within a 30-foot radius if you don’t have a mobile connection. But if you do, you can participate in a massive group chat with other users from around the world.

FireChat is available on iOS.

Runtastic Six Pack

The Runtastic Six Pack app, which provides tailored workouts complete with step-by-step videos that show you how to get six-pack abs, was updated to version 2.0 this week.

The update introduced new features, including body fat-visualization tools and integration with Runtastic’s heart-rate monitor.

The app is free, although most of the workouts require in-app purchases.

Runtastic Six Pack 2.0 is available on iOS. (There’s an Android version also available, but it hasn’t gotten the 2.0 update yet.)

NCAA March Madness Live

March Madness Live, the NCAA's official app for March Madness, gives you all the tools to ensure you don’t miss a second of the tournament.

Live stream games (games broadcasted on CBS are free, but all others require a cable subscription), get real-time score alerts and keep tabs on your bracket, while receiving all the latest news and updates from your favorite teams.

The free app is available on iOS and Android.

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Now Gmail Encrypts Messages to Google Servers

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Now Gmail Encrypts Messages to Google 

Starting Thursday, Gmail will always use an encrypted HTTPS connection for sending and receiving email.

Gmail has supported HTTPS since 2004 (an option to enable HTTPS as the default setting for a particular account was added in 2008) and in 2010, Google made HTTPS connections the default user option.

Now, Gmail will only transfer data between your computer and Gmail's servers through an HTTPS connection. That means there is no chance of someone disabling the option on your account or machine in an attempt to intercept data before it hits Google's servers.

Google also announced on its Gmail blog that it will encrypt messages as they move internally through Google's systems. In the past, although information sent from your computer to Gmail was encrypted, that same data wasn't encrypted when it went to another Google server or data center.

Starting Thursday, that changes. In its post, Google says that this change is "something we made a top priority after last summer's revelations."

Of course, this won't necessarily eliminate the potential for entities such as the NSA to intercept information on Google's servers — and law enforcement agencies can still request access to data from companies such as Google — but it's a good step in increasing user privacy and security.

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VLC Player Comes to Windows 8

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VLC Player Comes to Windows 8 After much Delays

VideoLAN, the company behind the popular open source media player VLC, rolled out the long-awaited beta version of its VLC for Windows 8 app on Thursday.

The app allows users to watch videos in almost every format, including MKV, FLAC and Ogg files.

The app is the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised £40,000 ($66,704) in December 2012. Since its funding, the development of the Windows 8 app has been hampered by delays.

VLC's developer, VideoLAN, says the beta version of the Windows 8 app does have some limitations. "As this is a beta, some features are still not perfectly stable, but we are working on that," said Jean-Baptiste Kempf, VideoLAN's president, in a message to Kickstarter backers.

Other than overall stability issues, Kempf said other limitations of the beta version include slow video decoding, poor subtitles support, no support for playlists and streams in the app's user interface and audio that doesn't work in all configurations.

The company did not reveal when users might see a Surface version of the app. During the initial Kickstarter campaign, the company said a Surface version of VLC would be part of a second release.

Kempf confirmed a Windows Phone 8 version is also in the works, in an interview with Neowin. "We already have a design for WP8, and a working proof of concept," he said, adding that he would have more details after the Microsoft Build Conference in April.

VLC for Windows 8 is available in the Windows Store.

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What's Wrong With Apple's iOS 7.1

• A New Phone Interface

  

  The most striking visual change is the telephone interface. Although the circular number key pads remain, the large square "call" button has been replaced by a small circle displaying a phone icon.

• Hunt and Peck?

  

  Those phone call interface changes have been carried over to the answer/decline screens as well. Now when your receive an incoming call, the screen will display two simple red and green button icons, instead of the large "answer" and "decline" button blocks in the previous version.

  This change seems more like a designer flourish rather than a practical move, as hitting those large call/answer/decline buttons on the iPhone's touchscreen while carrying bags or multitasking is certainly easier than having to now aim for the tiny circles.

• Touch ID & Passcode

  

  In addition to boosting the accuracy of the iPhone 5S Touch ID system, iOS 7.1 now gives the feature its own set-up menu in the Settings section. Not much has changed here, but it's a welcome update and it seems a bit odd that Apple didn't give Touch ID its own menu section from the very beginning.

• Wallpapers Without the Motion Sickness

  

  When iOS 7 first debuted, one of the biggest complaints revolved around the parallax effect in Wallpaper, a dynamic that caused some prone to motion sickness to avoid the feature altogether. With iOS 7.1, Apple has included a handy "perspective on/off" option when selecting a new Wallpaper image.

  The feature also offers those who are fans of the feature a quicker way to test out how certain images will look with the effect before selecting that image as a new Wallpaper image.

• Siri Gets a Little More Human

  

  The voice of Siri for U.S. users remains the same, but some international users will notice a warmer, more human-sounding digital assistant after upgrading to iOS 7.1. In particular, the British English and the Japanese voices of Siri offer noticeably warmer, less robotic sounding version of Siri. This "more human" touch has also been applied to the Australian English and Mandarin Chinese versions of Siri.

• Weather and Calendar Enhanced

  

  Another minor tweak to iOS comes in the operating system's Calendar and Weather apps. The new Calendar features a handy option that allows you to show special events and appointments right under the calendar view.

  On the Weather app, the weather condition icons are now filled in, offering the viewer an easier image to process visually when quickly glancing at weather conditions during transit.

Potential Problems

Bluetooth Connectivity

It's still early days, but some users are reporting problems connecting to Bluetooth devices after the 7.1 update. We tested the connection on our own iPhone 5S and we were also unable to discover fully powered Bluetooth device in our vicinity.

This is a potentially huge issue — considering many iOS users rely on Bluetooth devices such as keyboards and headsets.

iBeacon

One new behavior in iBeacon, first discovered by BEEKn, is being touted by some as an enhancement. But based on that description, it could just as well be deemed a problem.

According to the report, iOS 7.1 now allows your device to continue to discover iBeacon points after you've closed an iBeacon-enabled app. This continues to work as long as Location Services are turned on — even if you restart your phone.

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Facebook Messenger on Windows Phone

Facebook's app that lets you send messages to your friends for free, Facebook Messenger, is now available for the Windows Phone platform.

Facebook Messenger on Windows Phone

Just like its iOS and Android counterparts, Facebook Messenger for Windows Phone lets you send stickers and photos as well as share your location in your messages, and group messaging is also supported. Not all features are there yet, though; for example, voice messaging is not supported in this release.

Some of these features are already built into the Windows Phone platform, but with this release, Microsoft will replace that functionality with the Facebook Messenger app. We're likely to see those changes in the upcoming Windows Phone 8.1 update, which should be arriving in April 2014.

 

 

You can download Facebook Messenger for Windows Phone here.

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CarPlay Infotainment System By Apple

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Apple Announces CarPlay Infotainment System

Apple has announced CarPlay, an in-car infotainment system that lets you connect your iOS device with your car.

The new system — actually a rebranding of Apple's "IOS in the Car" — will be shown at the Geneva Motor Show, held from Mar. 6 to 16, 2014.

CarPlay will let iPhone users make calls, access messages, listen to music or use Maps in their cars using Siri-based voice control, touch controls, or standard knobs, dials and buttons in the car. Third party apps such as Spotify, Beats Radio, Stitcher and iHeartRadio are also supported.

For this launch, Apple has partnered with Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo. Later on, the CarPlay system will also be embraced by an impressive roster of car manufacturers: BMW Group, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai Motor Company, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia Motors, Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan Motor Company, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Subaru, Suzuki and Toyota Motor Corp.

CarPlay will become available as an update to iOS 7 on lightning-enabled iPhones, which currently means the iPhone 5, iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C. We'll see the first cars supporting CarPlay on the road sometime in 2014.

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• Hello there, Welcome to our blog. How you all are, Hope you all doing great. On our blog you will find support for tech, hacking and social tweaks. We provide networking solutions for any type of problem. You can contact us through this blog. We will do whatever we can do for your problem. 

• Microsoft Working on a Free Version of Windows 8.1

• 

Windows 8 (later 8.1) has struggled to capture the interest of PC owners, but now Microsoft appears ready to make them an offer they can't refuse: a free upgrade. The company may be working on a version of Windows 8.1, which currently starts at $119.99, that costs very little or nothing to install.

There's a catch of course. This specific version of Windows, rumored to be called "Windows 8.1 With Bing," would have deeper hooks into Microsoft services than your typical Surface tablet. The details aren't known, but presumably the general idea would be akin to Amazon's Kindles With Special Offers, which display ads on the device's screensaver and sometimes at the bottom of the screen.

Does that mean a Windows 8.1 With Bing machine would display Bing ads on the Start screen? Maybe. Or perhaps the OS wouldn't let you change the default search engine in Internet Explorer. It will be a delicate balance for Microsoft to steer users strongly toward its services while also providing the degree of user-driven customization that's generally expected with a PC.

Microsoft has treaded this line before, providing Windows XP and 7 "Starter" editions — versions sold to PC manufacturers at a much lower licensing fee than full Windows. The starter editions had an extremely stripped-down set of features from Windows proper, lacking even the ability to change the desktop background.

Screenshots of Windows 8.1 With Bing leaked on Wzor.net. The images, if genuine, don't reveal much about the compromises that the supposedly low-cost OS will impose upon customers, although the system profile notes there is limited touchscreen support, for just eight touch points (full Windows 8.1 supports ten).

Are you a Windows 8/8.1 holdout? Would a zero-cost version finally persuade you to take the plunge? Or is there something more fundamental about the experience that is holding you back?

Why you should upgrade to Windows 8.1

• 

• 1. It Takes Up Less Space

  Although Windows 8.1 introduces many new features, it's actually less of a storage hog than Windows 8. Microsoft says the footprint is significantly smaller and will win you back 8-15% of the storage on your device.

  

• 2. Supercharged Search

  One of the most convenient features of Windows 8 is its ease of search: Just start typing from the Start screen and you can search for settings, content, apps or even stuff on the web. Windows 8.1 takes this to a new level with Smart Search, powered by Bing. Now if you search for a subject such as Benedict Cumberbatch, the White House or Cairo, the results are organized in a search "hero" -- a visually-driven page that will call up basic facts, photos, a map (if applicable) and relevant links -- creating an orderly buffet of information out of what used to be a slop pile.
• 

• 3. Better Multi-Tasking

  Snap -- the ability to have multiple app screens open simultaneously -- is theoretically a great idea, but it was kneecapped in Windows 8 by having only one size and limiting the ability to just two windows. Now Snap is a little more true to its name, letting you resize the smaller window to virtually any size with just a finger swipe. If you have a large, high-res monitor, you'll be able to have multiple windows, potentially having email, Skype, a web browser and the weather all open at the same time.

• 4. All Live Tiles, Great and Small

  Since Microsoft's design philosophy doesn't allow for organizing app icons into folders, it's a big improvement that Windows 8.1 brings with it two new sizes for live tiles: A small square that takes up one-fourth the size of a regular tile, and a biggie size that's the same as four regular squares. The former is great for power users who want to cram as many shortcuts into their screen real estate as they can, and the latter is great for apps with lots of "glanceable" info, like Bing Weather.

• 

  5. Automatic App Updates

  Sick of all your devices screaming at you to update two, three or a dozen apps? With Windows 8.1, all those updates will just happen in the background, and the Windows Store will stop pestering you with that ever-increasing count of what's still pending.

• 

  6. Start Screen Can Share Desktop Background

  This may seem like a minor feature, but it may have the greatest potential to make the modern UI friendlier. By having the same background image on both the Desktop and Start screen, Windows "traditionalists" may begin thinking of the modern UI as the extension of the platform that it is, not some alien world to be feared. Unfortunately, Microsoft buried this option in the Taskbar's Control Panel on the Desktop for some reason.

• 

  7. Dynamic Lock Screen

  The lock screen on a Windows 8.1 device doesn't have to be a static image anymore. There's now the option to play a slideshow, which can pull photos from various folders including whatever you've got in SkyDrive. Plus you can choose to get calendar alerts, email notifications and even take Skype calls without unlocking your device.

• 

  8. Improved Multi-Monitor Support

  External monitors are a big deal for Windows tablets, since many of them have serious computing power but screens that aren't exactly what you'd call large. Now in Windows 8.1, users will have more control over how content renders on a second display, giving tablets more flexibility.

  

• 9. Deeper SkyDrive Integration

  Cloud storage has a lot of advantages over saving things locally: you can access the files from anywhere, they're shareable and they don't take up any room on your device. In Windows 8.1, Microsoft has made SkyDrive the default place to save new documents, and improved things on the back end to ensure the system sees them as local files in every way that matters (for searches, etc.).

• 10. The Only Way to Get the Facebook App

  Chances are you're on Facebook, and chances are you interact with the social network via apps. If you upgrade to Windows 8.1, you'll be able to run the official Facebook app for Windows, which provides a native experience for PCs. There's room for improvement -- the app doesn't appear when you call up the Share charm from another app -- but the response is fast and fluid, and the interface encourages you to explore parts of the service you may have overlooked (just watch the map fly when you browse "Nearby").

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How to Check Cross-Browser Compatibility

Hello there, Welcome to our blog. How you all are, Hope you all doing great. On our blog you will find support for tech, hacking and social tweaks. We provide networking solutions for any type of problem. You can contact us through this blog. We will do whatever we can do for your problem. 

Have you checked our previous few tutorials about VLSM, Classful networking and much more. If not please check. Hope you would enjoy reading here.

Now let's talk about compatibility. May be if you have ever built any app or website if you don't make it browser compatibility then it means that if your website is running good in chrome but when you will open it in mozilla firefox, definitely your website will not be opened at all or it may display everything humble jumble you know. So you must know how to make your app or websites browser compatibility.

Below is a curated list of both free and premium cross-browser testing tools, ranging from cloud platforms to desktop applications. These tools will help you easily test everything from versions of Internet Explorer versions to more than 300 modern browser combinations.

1.Ghostlab

Ghostlab offers synchronized testing for scrolls, clicks, reloads and form input across all your connected devices, meaning you can test the entire user experience, not just a simple page. Using the superior built-in inspector, you can discover and fix problems quickly, connected to the DOM or JavaScript output on any device.

2. Browser Stack

Browser Stack provides live, web-based browser testing with instant access to every desktop and mobile browser (currently more than 300), with the ability to test local and internal servers, providing a secure setup. The cloud-based access means no installation is required, and the pre-installed developer tools (including Firebug Lite, Microsoft Script Debugger and many more) are useful for quick cross-browser testing and debugging.

3. Sauce Labs

Sauce Labs allows you to run tests in the cloud on more than 260 different browser platforms and devices, providing a comprehensive test infrastructure including Selenium, JavaScript, Mobile and Manual testing facilities. There's no VM setup or maintenance required, with access to live breakpoints while the tests are running so you can jump in and take control to investigate a problem manually.

4. Cross Browser Testing

Cross Browser Testing offers a live testing environment with access to more than 130 browsers across 25 different operating systems and mobile devices, so you can interactively verify your layout and test AJAX, HTML Forms, JavaScript and Flash.

5. Browser shots

Browser shots is a free, open-source web app providing a convenient way to test your website's browser compatibility in one place. Browser shots uniquely champions the idea of distributing the work of making screenshots among community members, who set up "factories" on their own machines, to get jobs from the server using a fully automatic unattended script.

6. Browserling

Browserling, built upon StackVM and powered entire by Canvas and JavaScript, lets you run fully interactive browser testing sessions without Flash, Applets or anything to install. Once you enter the URL you want to test, you wait until the test is ready, you then have three minutes to review your site in multiple browsers.

7. Litmus

Litmus offers one-stop email and cross-browser testing. Once you enter your URL, Litmus will show how it appears in the most popular web browsers. Link validation means you can verify all of your links and also make sure the URLs you're linking to aren't blacklisted. The flexible setup allows you to add team members, clients and partners to a testing project, without limits on users or tests and unlimited access to all the features available.

8. TestingBot

TestingBot provides easy cross-browser testing with Selenium, either manually or automated, with more than 100 browser and OS combinations. The live, manual testing allows you to control any browser in the cloud interactively from your own browser. You can run automated tests in the cloud by specifying which browsers you want to test, when the test should run and for how long.

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How Nokia Learned to Love Android

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Check out our last tutorial about: Nokia Unveils an Android Phone, the Nokia X

How Nokia Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Android

It's happened. Nokia just debuted and Android phone. And the world is still turning.

This, on the surface, doesn't make an ounce of sense. Nokia is, after all, the chief proponent of Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system, going all-in with the platform in a strategic alliancethat began in early 2011. The relationship was so close that Microsoft eventually decided to buyNokia's hardware business, a deal that should close in the next few months.

As of today, that business includes the Nokia X, a phone that runs Android, the platform operated by Microsoft arch-nemesis Google. By launching an Android phone, Nokia has invited questions about its commitment to Windows Phone and even the viability of Microsoft's platform in general. That's a very odd thing for such a close strategic partner to do.

But Nokia isn't worried about how it looks to release an Android phone because it's got something much bigger to worry about: Windows Phone hasn't been the powerful engine for its phones that it was supposed to be. The company's smartphone sales recently took a nosedive, declining 7% during the typically strong holiday buying season and 29% year-over-year.

The Long Road for Windows Phone

Despite recent signs of life, Windows Phone's market share is only at about 4% worldwide, and Nokia phones barely register on smartphone tallies. Those are tough numbers to look at for a company whose name was once synonymous with the cellphone in some countries.

And it's in exactly those countries where Nokia is struggling to convince people to go Windows Phone. And no wonder: Windows Phone's app catalog still pales in comparison to Android, and Android smartphones are available in places like India for prices as cheap as $50. By contrast the cheapest Lumia (the 520) goes for about $135. Why buy the pricey Lumia when it can't even run a proper YouTube app?

Nokia's Master Plan

Nokia is floating in a different boat, though, and it's adopting Android in a completely different way. For starters, this is a forked version of Android, similar to what Amazon has done with its Kindle Fire tablets. All Google services are replaced with Nokia and Microsoft services (Here Maps for Google Maps, Outlook for Gmail, etc.). Even the user interface looks very Windows Phone.

Another thing Nokia has going for it: brand goodwill. Although Nokia smartphones are still a rarity in most places, when all mobile phones are included, the company's market share is No. 2 overall (after Samsung), according to IDC. If you like your Nokia feature phone, and the company drops a cheap Android number in front of you with all the apps you want, there's a good chance you'll give it first pick.

Or so Nokia's logic goes. The final piece of the puzzle is actually the person's next phone, the one they buy 6 months, a year, or two years after the Nokia X. The mission of Nokia's Android double-agent is to sow the seeds of a Lumia fan into its owner through deep connections to that ecosystem's services: Bing, Here Maps, OneDrive, Outlook, Skype and others. When it comes time to upgrade, Nokia will do everything it can to steer them toward a Lumia.

Assuming lots of people buy the Nokia X, assuming Windows Phone's app catalog accelerates big time, and assuming Nokia's and Microsoft's services are good enough to win loyal fans, Windows Phone may finally get the rocket sled it needs to really be a leader in the smartphone race.

That's a lot of assumptions. If any part of that chain breaks, Lumia and Windows Phone are in trouble, and the forked flavor of Android that's in the Nokia X could end up becoming Microsoft's mobile OS of choice.

In other words, Nokia, there's still a lot to worry about.

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The Secret to Password Security

Have you check about last article 'Look Back' Videos for Deceased Users.Have you heard about, facebook has overtaken whatsapp. What you think out of it. Hello, there, facebook is using whatsapp. :) :) Check out articles at our blog.

In this tutorial i'm going to something about password. Hope you would like it. here we go:

The Secret to Password Security Could Lie in Your Social Network

it's midnight and you're soothing your insomnia by purchasing a pair of shoes on a daily deals website. You click through to the checkout page only to find you can't connect your PayPal account; you'll have to input your credit card data manually and create a new username and password for this little-known site you're not sure you'll ever use again. So you roll your eyes and type in the same password you've used for PayPal, Amazon and a host of other shopping sites.

There's a term for that feeling: password fatigue.

In a hackable world, password fatigue can have dire consequences. The difficulty of remembering dozens of unique and complex passwords leads us to make short, overly simple ones instead, or to use one password for a number of different websites. This can be devastating, if just one of these sites is hacked.

Forbes and Kickstarter are the latest high-profile websites to experience password breaches. Cyber security experts find it unsettling that, despite the sharp increase in hacking incidences, many websites have not added safeguards, such as multi-factor authentication to their login procedures.

Such behavior flies in the face of mounting evidence that passwords alone — even really good ones — cannot sufficiently protect us anymore.

The good news is that two-factor authentication can safeguard the majority of hacking targets, and soon, the precious personal data you've been sharing with your social network could help you ward off hackers, too.

In this 2002 photo, a computer screen shows a password attack in progress at the Norwich University computer security training program in Northfield, Vt. On Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2013, passwords for more than 2 million Facebook, Google and other accounts were compromised and circulated online.

"We've all been through the process of verifying ourselves to a bank on the phone or on the web, where you give your mom's mother's maiden name or the place you were born," says Stephen Ufford, founder and CEO of Vancouver-based identity-verification platform Trulioo. "That information is from public records and it's become a lot more easy to obtain these days because of the Internet."

The solution to these "secret questions" could be to leverage social data, gleaned not only from Facebook and Twitter but from other mobile apps, that would be less readily accessible to hackers.

Facebook is already employing a form of this social verification: When you log in to the platform from an unknown computer, the site will ask you to identify the names and faces of several of your friends. That kind of data is much more secure than your mother's maiden name; it would be difficult for a hacker half a world away to determine this information in the space of a few minutes.

Cyber security experts tend to agree that in the future, password security will rely on adding even more authentication factors to the mix. The methods by which multi-factor authentication will evolve, however, are disputed. Some see biometrics as a potentially secure method of password authentication (How could someone copy your heartbeat, after all?), while others advise extreme caution in moving forward with biometry.

"Biometry is uniquely personal data that cannot be changed. What happens when that fingerprint gets released out into the public?"

"Your fingerprint says a lot more about you as an individual than your GPS location," says Geoff Saunders, CEO of digital security startup LaunchKey. "Biometry is uniquely personal data that cannot be changed. What happens when that fingerprint gets released out into the public?" 

Experts propose offering a host of authentication factors, from the current standard of unique codes sent via SMS to fingerprint- or voice-identification software. From there, users can pick and choose the measures that suit them best. This would also safeguard the user in case one authentication factor is breached.

"Every user will have a choice of maybe five or six options, and they can pick the one that's comfortable or appropriate for that type of communication," predicts Neal O'Farrell, executive director of The Identity Theft Council, a California-based group that works with local law enforcement to provide counseling to identity theft victims. "So for example, if you're on a cellphone with poor reception, voice authentication might not work. A fingerprint might work there. Social verification might work there. That's the only way we're going to overcome consumer resistance to particular types of authentication."

Social networks and the data contained within smartphones and mobile apps can also help with traditional identity vetting procedures, for instance when applying for a loan or for a passport online.

"A lot of the traditional means of establishing identity don't work for every segment of the population," says Jeremy Grant of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace(NSTIC). "Picture your classic 18-year-old, who might need to be identity-proofed but doesn't have a credit card, doesn't have a cellphone in their own name — not a lot out there in terms of history to score. But they might have a Twitter or Facebook account with several hundred friends."

Grant cautions that social networks cannot be the ultimate authority in identity vetting or bolstering password security, but that they can act as one factor in a layered identity-proofing process. "There are new data points about people online that may be helpful in establishing the person is not just a made-up identity, and that they're actually the person they claim to be," he says.

In 2004, AOL Inc. became the first major online business in the U.S. to embrace a second layer of password authentication, giving subscribers a matchbook-size device with a six-digit code that was required to access their accounts.

The future of social network verification sharply diverges into two separate paths: that of total anonymity or of total immersion in your data.

On the anonymity front, LaunchKey offers passwordless, multi-factor authentication software that doesn't gather or store any of your personal data. Its authentication factors include a PIN or "combination" lock, as well as the ability to pair devices together — for example, making it impossible to log in to your work computer without also having your mobile phone nearby — and geo-fencing, which entails setting a geographical radius for logins. None of these relies on personal data beyond an individual's location.

"We firmly believe that you can authenticate an individual without knowing anything personal about them," says Saunders.

LaunchKey is also experimenting with "social vouching" as a form of authentication, particularly in business settings. Essentially, this means having other people in your immediate surroundings confirm your identity when you attempt to access a device.

"There might not be anything stronger as a factor of authentication than someone vouching for someone else," Saunders says. "Vouching can be done not just directly — meaning you ask me to vouch for you, and I do that — but can also be done passively. We can track where different devices are and have those devices communicate with each other to ensure that they maintain a proximity."

The same sort of thing could theoretically be done with friends on social networks — an entirely unexplored territory, according to Grant and Saunders — although it may require too much of a sacrifice in terms of time and convenience.

Unlike LaunchKey, however, most enterprises are not in the business of preserving your anonymity. The data that your social networks and mobile apps are already gathering (tons and tons of it) can also be leveraged as an authentication system. The type of facial recognition technology that Facebook employs could potentially be used for interactions outside of a social network.

'Where do we normally find you at 7 a.m. on Tuesdays?'

The benefit of leveraging social network data as a security measure, according to Ufford, is that security questions no longer have static, unchanging answers like your mother's maiden name — and therefore are more difficult for a hacker to learn. "If you go to the gym all the time and you have five apps on your phone tracking your locations, it's very conceivable that one of these questions would be, Where do we normally find you at 7 a.m. on Tuesdays?'" Ufford says. "That's really hard for someone in Nigeria to know.

The advantage lies in the dynamism of that information, Ufford explains. "If you move to New York from San Francisco, you might end up going to a new place, and that data can be changed."

Despite living in a post-Edward Snowden world, many social network users continue to upload highly personal tidbits readily accessible not just to Facebook but, potentially, to government organizations. It's a small concession, then, that all this data could potentially be used to protect you as well as incriminate you.

"One of the side effects [of social verification] should be that it's going to reveal just how much companies like Facebook and Google gather about you and your circle, but most consumers won't pay it a second thought," says Farrell. "You're willing to trade a little bit of privacy for a little more security. People will still make that trade-off."

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