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ECP NetHappenings Password Security

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Password security in 2026 is under heavy attack, novel AI cracking, massive breaches, and phishing attempts are everywhere!

These free tools and resources keep your accounts safe:

1. Have I Been Pwned checks if your passwords have been leaked in breaches and gives essential hygiene advice:
https://haveibeenpwned.com

2. Bitwarden open-source password manager with native passkey support and a strong free plan:
https://bitwarden.com

3. KeePassXC gives you fully offline, local-only password storage with zero cloud dependency: https://keepassxc.org

4. Aegis Authenticator is the top open-source 2FA/TOTP app for Android with encrypted backups: https://getaegis.app

5. Ente Auth offers privacy-first 2FA with end-to-end encrypted cloud sync and beautiful design: https://ente.io/auth/

6. zxcvbn is an open-source password strength estimator (used by Dropbox) for generating unbreakable passwords:
https://github.com/dropbox/zxcvbn

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ECP NetHappenings Kurt Vonnegut 2006 advice to students

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice. KURT VONNEGUT (who left us 19yrs ago today) was the only one to respond. His reply was a doozy.

228 E 48 NYC 10017 212-688-2682 November 5, 2006
Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely,
Batten, Maurer and Conglusta:
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a
really old geezer (84) In his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice
any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s Inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your
lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give It to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you
if you don’t do It: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed, No fair
tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell
anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even
your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely
separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!
Kurt Vonnegut

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ECP NetHappenings Over 50% of U.S. adults read below a 6th-grade level

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AMERICAN ADULT LITERACY

TAGS: #adult functually illiterate, #reading, #literacy instruction, #Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) #CCC

Over 50% of U.S. adults read below a 6th-grade level,
with roughly 130 million people having low literacy skills.
The average American adult reads at a 7th- to 8th-grade
level, while 21% are functionally illiterate, struggling with
basic, multi-step, or complex tasks. Literacy has declined
since 2019.
National Literacy In… +5
• Low Literacy Statistics: Approximately 45 million
adults in the U.S. read below a 5th-grade level.
• Adult Literacy Levels: In 2023, 28% of adults scored
at or below Level 1, 29% at Level 2, and 44% at Level 3
or above, according to Wikipedia.
• Declining Trends: The number of adults with the
lowest literacy levels increased by 9 percentage points
between 2017 and 2023.
• Academic Impact: Only 32% of fourth-grade students
performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level in
reading in 2022, as shown on The Nation’s Report Card
(•gov).
• Economic Impact: The low literacy “silent crisis” costs
the U.S. economy an estimated $2 trillion annually.

(1933-1942) |FINANCIAL LITERACY| The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps were in operation.

In fact the CCC did a better job with literacy than the Department of Education which should have shut them down in 1945. People realized their gov’t jobs were in jeopardy so the department of education mounted a campaign to kill off the CCC and they did. Sadly for America they won the battle – we still have the incompetent department of noneducation.

ECP NetHappenings What happens when your told DMs are Private

What happens when your told DMs are Private

Peter Girnus @gothburz
I work at Slack.

We tell employees their DMs are private.

And they are.

Mostly.

Look, when we say “private” we mean private between you and the person you’re messaging.

And your admin.

And HR.

And legal.

And whatever compliance tool your company bought.

And the export logs.

And the backup systems.

And anyone with a court order.

But other than that, totally private.

We’re very clear about this in our documentation.

Page 47.

Section 12.

Subsection C.

Paragraph 8.

The part nobody reads before they trash-talk their manager at 11pm.

Here’s what employees don’t understand.

When you delete a message, you’re just deleting it from your view.

The message still exists.

In exports.

In backups.

In the retention policy.

It’s like closing your eyes and thinking you’re invisible.

The data belongs to the company, not you.

We say this right in our terms.

Workspace owners control everything.

They decide how long messages are stored.

Sometimes it’s 30 days.

Sometimes it’s forever.

Hope you didn’t say anything spicy in 2019.

Enterprise customers get extra features.

Full message exports.

Metadata tracking.

Who messaged whom.

When.

How often.

Communication patterns.

It’s for “compliance.”

It’s for “legal needs.”

It’s for “regulatory requirements.”

It’s definitely not for micromanagement.

We’re very careful to explain that admins can’t see messages in real-time.

They have to formally request an export.

Fill out some forms.

Click some buttons.

Maybe wait an hour.

Very high barrier.

Almost impossible to abuse.

The key takeaway is simple.

Treat Slack like work email.

Not like WhatsApp.

Not like Signal.

Just because it looks like a chat app doesn’t mean it works like one.

If a message could cause trouble when HR reads it, don’t send it.

This is empowering employees with knowledge.

If you wouldn’t say it in the break room with your manager behind you, don’t type it in Slack.

That’s privacy.

Informed privacy.

Enterprise-grade informed privacy.

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