Mark Jason Dominus is debunking an article he read about passwords a future self could use to prove they’re really you when communicating with you back in time.

Mark’s technique looks very secure but I don’t really understand the problem. I’d just ask my future self “what colour was the pencil and what was its significance?” and “where did you hide the curry?”. I’m pretty sure nobody knows the answer to those things apart from me. I guess I must be missing something though…

This scary looking story has just popped up on the BBC News RSS feed:

By the time I checked the BBC News site the story had turned into this:

Where did it go? Here’s the link I followed to the story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6223077.stm

Note that’s not the same result that you get if you follow a link to a non-existent story - in that case you get a normal 404.

So what happened to that scary sounding story and why?

Update: Link now returns a regular 404 Not Found.

Update: It seems the Telegraph are running the same story:

By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.

In the words of ArsTechnica it’s “bollocks”. Obviously it’s bollocks that somebody at the BBC briefly made the mistake of believing.