The new second sign-in verification feature is opt-in at this point in time, and only available to users from the United States, Canada, India and the Philippines.

Yahoo! users can enable the second sign-in verification feature from the Yahoo! account info page. Here they are asked to enter a mobile phone number for verification purposes. This number needs to be verified via SMS before the new account verification option is enabled for the account.

Yahoo! users can enable the new security feature on this page. They can alternatively sign in on the Yahoo! homepage, hoover over their name and select Account Info from the options to open their profile preferences and select the new security option there. It is however usually easier to open the page directly.

Yahoo! users who turn on the new account verification step have the option to use their security question and mobile phone, or only their mobile phone when they are asked to verify account ownership.

Mobile phone has to be selected either way. Once you have made the selection you are asked to enter your mobile phone number and country in a form. Yahoo! sends a SMS to the phone with a verification code that you need to verify ownership of the phone (more precisely the phone number).

The second sign-in verification feature works slightly different from Google’s 2-step verification login. Yahoo! will only ask the user to verify the account in a second step if the company suspects that the account may have been hijacked. It is likely that this is an automated process that checks IP addresses, countries of origins, and maybe even header data and sign-in times.

A confirm your identity:answer security question prompt is displayed after sign-in in this case. It basically blocks the signing in by asking the user to verify the account ownership either by entering the answer to the selected security question or by entering a security code send to a verified mobile phone.

Yahoo will roll out the feature to all of its worldwide audience by March 2012. (via Techdows and Yahoo Developer Network)

If, however, security is not an issue with a particular user, than auto login is a simple way to make Ubuntu even more user-friendly than it already is. And fortunately, auto login is simple to set up. In this tutorial you will learn how to set up auto login as well as tweak your log in screen.

The tool

The tool used to configure auto login is found in the Administration menu and is called “Login Window Preferences”. When you go to launch this tool you will be required to enter your sudo password. When the window launches you will see six tabs:

• General: General configuration.
• Local: Login theme, color, welcome message.
• Remote: Remote login.
• Accessibility: Enable more GTK+ modules to be available.
• Security: Auto login, timed login, security.
• Users: Exclude users from login.

Figure 1

The tab used to set up auto login is the Security tab. Click on that to see the settings available (see Figure 1 – Click to enlarge).

To enable auto login you simply have to follow these steps:

1. Click the check box for “Enable Automatic Login”.
2. Select the user who will be automatically logged in from the drop-down list.
3. Set the “pause before logging in time”.
4. Close the window.

It’s that simple. Now of course there is much more that can be done in this tab of the preferences window. So why not take advantage while you have it open?

If you want to be able to log on as the system administrator you can do so here. First you need to check the check box labeled “Allow local system administrator login”. There is one catch. Remember that Ubuntu does not have, by default, a root user password. Because of this, even if you have this feature enabled, the administrator will not be able to log in. In order for this to work you have to give the root user a password. Understand the root user was not given a password in Ubuntu for a reason…simplicity. But if you would prefer to have an administrative user (and bypass having to use sudo) you can give the root user a password by following these steps:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo passwd root.
3. Enter your sudo password.
4. Enter a new password for the root user.
5. Enter the root password again for verification.

Now your local administrator can log in. A word of warning: I don’t recommend loggin in as root. There may be times when it seems necessary, but before you do exhaust other possibilities first. Bad things can happen when you log in as root.

Custom welcome message

When your login screen appears there is a welcome message next to the logo in the greeter. You can personalize this greeting in the Local tab of the preferences window. Click on this tab and look at the bottom of the window where you will see the “Welcome Message’ section. By default the message is simply “Welcome”. To change this click the check box for “Custom” and then enter the greeting you want to use. Once you are done click close.

Final thoughts

Enabling auto login, when used in trusted locations, can be a time saver as well as a way to make your Linux installation more user-friendly. For some users, having to log in to their computer is a real hassel. Help those users out by setting up auto login.