Well finally some big time action.
“Four of the largest internet service providers (ISPs) in the US have begun legal action to crack down on spam.
AOL, EarthLink, Microsoft and Yahoo are suing around 220 individuals across four states alleging that they have broken the Can-Spam Act, which came into force on 1 January.”
BT, a major broadband ISP in the UK, has 2 million broadband customers, and is gunning for 5 million. And they’re saying content is going to be a key to achieving the goal. WHich makes sense, the whole point of broadband is being able to experience content – in all its multimedia forms – faster and better. BT’s initiative is interesting:
“The group plans to take on the pay-TV industry with a new service enabling everyone from broadcasters to local interest groups to supply broadband users with shows and films of DVD-like quality. It has developed a complete digital rights management suite that will allow video to be distributed for a fee, and will announce a number of content partners early next month. “
Well, he’s at least reading your email, or will be if the Government gets some legislation changes through.
Couple of stories about phishing in the last few days. Phishing, if you don’t know, is where naughty people send you an email, ostensibly from your bank (or some other such institution), telling you that you need to ‘reconfirm’ your user name and password for online banking, or somesuch. When you click the link, you arrive at a web site which looks exactly like the bank’s. Except it isn’t. And if you do enter in your details, the naughty people then use those to clean your account out.
Phishing was up 50% in January, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.
Virgin’s the next one in the increasingly crowded music download marketplace. They’ve announced they will offer music downloads from August. “iPod users will find no joy in the announcement as the format supported will be Windows Media Audio or WMA.”
Spam is 10 years old. Happy birthday. Yay.
I can remember back in the days when we’d receive the occasional fax at the office, sent from Nigeria, offering us shares in untold wealth. All we had to do was hand over our company bank account details. Of course this was the famous 419 scam, named after the country code for Nigeria. In more recent years the scam was moved online. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that 419 is now one of the top export earners for Nigeria, and the success is born out by this article which says:
“More than 120 Britons have been tricked out of a total of £12.6m by so-called 419 scams in the past 15 months. “
You can read more about 419 here.
Of course, we would all say we’d never be sucked in by this one – clearly it’s a too good to be true issue. But, as always, human nature is by default greedy, or at least that’s the conclusion you inevitably reach after seeing how many people have decided 419 is the real deal.
A gallery owner in the US has been charged with flogging half a million dollars worth of fake paintings via eBay and online. The works included pictures supposedly produced by Degas, Avery and de Kooning. Sure hope the National Gallery of Australia and our other august institutions are not using eBay to spend their acquisitions budget.
“federal investigators had recovered 45 pieces of art, including paintings, drawings and pastels. Investigators have confirmed so far that 36 were counterfeits and expect the rest also will be fake”
“This is just a small part of what’s out there. It’s easy to believe we are talking hundreds of victims, nationally and internationally”
Apparently they’ve been getting away with it since 1999. Makes you wonder why it took so long for someone to notice.
The Federal Government has launched a “broadband strategy to help more people access high-speed internet…which aims to coordinate all layers of government to deliver better broadband services across Australia”. Except in true government style it doesn’t appear to have any actual actions associated with it. Which is why the strategy has been condemned by the Opposition and at leastr one state government. You can read the whole thing – if you like wading through bureaucratic waffle – here.
David Eedle 