Day: March 26, 2009

Murders of Albino Children in Burundi

Another disturbing story about the murder of albinos, this time in Burundi where police believe the albinos are murdered so their body parts can be smuggled into Tanzania where they are apparently used as part of religious/medical rituals,

An eight-year-old albino boy in Burundi was murdered and dismembered, an official said Monday, the latest victim in a string of grisly killings linked to witch-doctors’ use of body parts.

The boy was chopped up in Burundi’s northern Kayanza province, where another boy was reportedly dismembered alive last month.

. . .

The latest murder brings to at least nine the number of albinos killed in the small central Africa country in the past five months.

WTF.

Blizzard to Offer Authenticator App on Mobile Devices

World of Warcraft LogoLast year I mentioned Blizzard’s physical token authenticator, which was an effort to crack down on theft of World of Warcraft accounts. I actually ended up ordering one of these, but never actually enabled it because it would be another device I need to keep track of and I’d probably lose it the day after I enabled it.

So it’s good to hear that Blizzard has another approach planned for the authenticator — putting an authenticator on popular mobile devices such as the iPhone,

What is the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator?

The Battle.net Mobile Authenticator is an optional tool that offers Battle.net account users an additional layer of security to help prevent unauthorized account access. This includes World of Warcraft players who log in to the game using a Battle.net account.  The Authenticator application itself is a small program that you install and access on your cell phone or mobile device.

That’s a placeholder page and no app is available yet (in fact, Blizzard is still working on the transition to Battle.Net accounts for all their games), but that sounds a lot more usable than keeping track of the tiny authenticator.