Don't You Understand The Square Root Of NO?

Ashton Kutcher unfurls Twitter banner at CNN
The scene was more reminiscent of a Hollywood production than an elaborate prank by the Punk'd-master himself.
Don't You Understand The Square Root Of NO?
Those who do A-level maths at school learn that the combined probability of one or other of two mutually exclusive events occurring is the sum of the individual probabilities. However, in the quantum world it ‘don’t work that way’. Probabilities have to be added according to complex arithmetic, with a phase angle thrown in to boot.
Twitter name game sets off alarms

WHAT started out as a seemingly harmless game on Twitter set off security agencies and led to warnings of a massive identity theft scam.

Anxiety over the #twitterpornnames hashtag game, in which users made their own “porn name” out of details like the name of their first pet, culminated in a warning in the US Department of Homeland Security daily report of infrastructure threats.

British Twitter user Dave Lambs (@pembsdave) started the game on May 12 with the post:

@pembsdave: OK new tag â€" #TwitterPornNames â€" Made up of 1) Your 1st pets name, 2) your 1st headteachers surname.

The game took off, with hundreds of users taking part and “#twitterpornnames” becoming the top-trending hashtag on the site.

But it soon became a veritable game of Chinese whispers as variations of the trend â€" with users posting their first pet’s name, their first teacher’s name, mother’s maiden name and street name â€" started to creep in.

Hysteria and paranoia ensued as security agencies began to suspect the trend was a massive phishing expedition, with hackers ready with rod and reels in tow to collect details that could be used in identity theft.

So-called “secret” questions like “what was the name of your first pet?” and “what is your mother’s maiden name?” are often used by websites to let users recover their passwords if they have forgotten them.

Senior security advisor for Trend Micro Rik Ferguson said the information that people were posting was gold dust for hackers.

“Giving out things like your mother’s maiden name, name of your first pet, the street you grew up on is a very bad idea,” he said.

“Giving them out online in a public forum that is indexed by search engines is Even Badderer (sic).”

But Mr Lambs insisted his nostalgic schoolyard game was far from the hoax it was thought to be:

@pembsdave: Its very very funny â€" I’m seeing “experts” in security analysing #twitterpornnames and now realising they’re over reacting.

Just in case they got bored, Mr Lambs joked he had an even better game around the corner:

@pembsdave: I’m really upset no-one has picked up on my #TwitterRobotNames â€" PIN Number + Postcode + 3 digit security code from CC.