Internet Changes Everything

June 29, 2004

Banks wary of Basel II costs

finextra news: Banks wary of Basel II costs

28 June 2004 - Executives at the world's top banks are growing wary of the rising costs of implementing the risk management frameworks and capital systems required to comply with the Basel II regulations, according to research by Accenture, Mercer Oliver Wyman and SAP.

Publication of the research findings coincides with offical approval of the Basel II regulations by central bank governors and regulatory heads from the G10 countries.

The survey of executives responsible for Basel II compliance at 97 of the world's 200 largest banks in April and May found that more than 70% are planning to adopt the advanced regulatory approaches on both the credit risk and operational risk sides.

But, according to the research, uncertainty about the budgetary impact of compliance is broad, with nearly a third (31%) of respondents saying they remain unsure of the total cost of their Basel II programme. The level of uncertainty cited by respondents was highest among banks in the US (59%) and Asia (54%), more than twice the rate of European banks (20%).

Of those banks providing estimates, most banks with assets under US$100bn expect price tags of EUR50m or less while nearly two thirds of larger banks project costs of more than EUR50m.

Many banks surveyed are finding ways to lower compliance costs. While nearly 60% of banks surveyed plan to implement new solutions to meet the new operational risk requirements, nearly half plan to take lower-cost routes by developing systems internally or modifying existing technology. In addition, centralising credit data storage is on the agenda of 63% of banks.

However, the majority of banks said they see significant benefits from Basel II, especially in improved capital allocation (63%), better risk-based pricing (53%) and reduced regulatory capital requirements (37%).

The survey indicates that many banks still have "significant work" remaining to comply with two of the three major elements of Basel II - setting up a risk-based supervisory structure and increasing market discipline through expanded disclosure. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of banks described their enterprise-wide risk management framework as poor or average. Just over 60% described their economic capital systems as poor or average.

Paul Cartwright, a managing director at Accenture, says the survey confirms that a quick database and reporting fix was never going to work: "Many banks now clearly see the need for combined information technology (IT), organisational and process change. Although budgeting was hurt by the last two years of worldwide cost-containment, banks are finding they face significant compliance challenges."

The results also indicate that banks in US and Asia Pacific lag behind Europe in several key areas of preparation for Basel II. Three quarters of European banks have completed strategic assessments compared with only 12% of the banks surveyed in the US and 22% in Asia-Pacific. More than 60% of European banks have progressed to implementation, compared with only 12% in the US and 15% in Asia-Pacific.

Accenture says the disparity may reflect a lack of confidence among American bankers in existing credit-risk measurement systems. When asked about rating model performance, model validation and use-test compliance, US bankers responded that they do well in these areas at less than half the rates of their European counterparts. US banker evaluations on capability related to three other credit-risk tools were also lagging.

Finextra is conducting research into the business issues involved in regulatory compliance. To participate in the survey and receive a free report, fill in the questionnaire now: Finextra Compliance Survey

June 29, 2004 at 07:39 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (56) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 28, 2004

Web is terror's tool � and trap

TheStar.com - Web is terror's tool — and trap

Internet spreads a motherlode of data for police

ANICK JESDANUN
ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK—Al-Qaida-linked terror groups and their sympathizers have in recent months made a big splash on the Internet, making it their communications channel of choice.

They're benefiting from free discussion boards, e-mail accounts and other online forums for propaganda, recruitment, fund-raising and even planning.

If law enforcement has done little to squelch these outlets, it's only in part because of the difficulty of catching moving targets. More importantly, these online soapboxes can provide investigators with crucial leads.

"It's a game of cat and mouse in which the cat is always going to be behind," said Michael Vatis, former cybersecurity director at the FBI. "It's a more effective strategy to actually use these sites for gathering intelligence rather than engaging in a futile effort to shut them down.''

Mark Rasch, a former U.S. justice department computer crimes prosecutor, said he wouldn't be surprised if law enforcement agencies set up some of these forums � much as undercover investigators create phony businesses to lure mobsters.

When such sites do get shut down, it's generally the work of hackers or the private Web hosting companies that unwittingly allow them to publish online, said Gabriel Weimann, who studies terrorism online at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

In recent weeks, sites and discussion boards carrying gruesome images and video of beheaded Americans quickly went offline. At one, a message from the kidnappers of Paul M. Johnson Jr. was replaced by a disclaimer saying the hosting company does not support terrorism and had removed the material for violating its use policies.

But it doesn't take long for word to spread through chat rooms and discussion boards about new locations. By the time an extremist venue closes, its messages have likely been duplicated at many other forums.

A discussion forum that went down shortly after the appearance of images of Johnson's beheading in Saudi Arabia re-emerged later with new links to the images as well as those of a slain Korean captive in Iraq.

FBI officials in Washington declined requests for interviews for this story, citing continuing investigations. Saudi authorities also would not talk about their efforts to monitor Internet discussions, including those connected to Johnson's kidnappers.

Separate research conducted by Weimann, Dartmouth College and The Associated Press found terrorists to be using the Internet in several ways:

Propaganda. Terrorists make demands, try to elicit sympathy, attempt to instill fear and chaos and to explain themselves. The Web lets them offer up gruesome video images that broadcasters would reject.

Recruitment. Chat rooms are monitored and questionnaires sent to prospects, though recruits must often pass many tests online and offline before they are accepted.

Fund-raising. Sites solicit donations to charities that may serve as fronts for terror groups, in many cases by providing mailing addresses and wire-transfer accounts.

Planning. Free e-mail accounts connect members around the world. Messages are often encrypted, and Dartmouth researchers say online manuals even discuss ways to avoid detection. Following a security crackdown in Saudi Arabia, one poster warned "fighters'' to avoid a certain geographical location.

"Politicians and, of course, commercial interests effectively use the Internet to convey their message, appeal for support and attract ... financial contributions," said Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. "These (terror) groups behave in the same way.''

It is difficult to tell when online extremists are active fighters or simply sympathizers but it's clear that many hitch on to free resources that anyone can sign up for and where legitimate discussions also take place.

Dia'a Rashwan, a Cairo-based expert on Islamic groups, said the mushrooming of extremist sites and forums indicates the vast pool of sympathizers that such groups have attracted, with some seeing technology as their contribution to the cause.

Rather than directly seeking to incite violence, many of the extremist postings online are general declarations that may be laced with hatred and anti-American slurs but are not in themselves illegal.

The U.S. justice department scrutinizes such sites but takes action only when one is directly linked to known terror groups or conducts money laundering or other illegal activities, said Marcus Sachs, a former White House counterterrorism official.

Jenkins said that rather than try to remove online links to fund-raising efforts by terrorist groups, law enforcement resources may be better spent trying to shut down such groups directly.

In Idaho, federal prosecutors recently went after the Webmaster of some forums, rather than individual posters. His lawyers argued that he was a Muslim volunteer who had little to do with the creation of postings, and a jury acquitted him June 10 of charges that he used his computer expertise to foster terrorism.

Allowing extremist forums to thrive may risk helping terror groups advance their goals.

"But again, there are so many ways for them to communicate,'' said Vatis, the former FBI official. "To try to shut down every Web site and e-mail address they might use is just futile. I can go to Yahoo! or Hotmail right now and create 10 new IDs in a minute.''

June 28, 2004 at 08:17 AM in Security | Permalink | TrackBack (4) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 27, 2004

Russian website spreading 'malicious' program shut down: Microsoft

Yahoo! News - Russian website spreading 'malicious' program shut down: Microsoft

Sun Jun 27, 2:18 PM ETAdd Technology - AFP to My Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Russian website that spread a "malicious" Internet (news - web sites) program has been shut down, software giant Microsoft said, adding that users of Internet Explorer are no longer at risk.

"Internet service providers and law enforcement, working together with Microsoft, identified the origination point of the attack in Russia and shut it down on Thursday," Microsoft said in a statement released late Saturday.

The Download.Ject program was not a virus or computer worm, Microsoft said, describing it as a "targeted manual attack by individuals or entities towards a specific server."

Unlike viruses that spread by e-mail, this infection was propagated simply by visiting an infected website, which can install a so-called trojan or keystroke logger that allows hackers access to the PCs, security experts said Friday.

Security (news - web sites) experts warned that the program could be used to steal financial information and e-mail passwords.

The company, owned by billionaire founder Bill Gates (news - web sites), said the program "exploited a vulnerability in Internet Explorer to deliver malicious code to visitors of an affected Web site."

"Working (news - web sites) with customers and partners worldwide, Microsoft is unaware of any widespread customer impact based on Download.Ject," said the company based in the northwestern state of Washington.

"The originating Web site of attack has been taken offline," Microsoft said.

"Internet Explorer customers are no longer at risk from that particular attack source as of Thursday evening."

Users of Microsoft's "IIS 5.0 Servers (news - web sites) that have not been updated with security update MS04-011 are susceptible to this attack," the company said.

Microsoft recommended that customers go to www.microsoft.com/protect to shield their personal computers from infection.

Microsoft said it is working with authorities and other companies to "bring those responsible for this criminal act to justice."

June 27, 2004 at 11:01 PM in Security | Permalink | TrackBack (19) | Top of page | Blog Home

Program Lets Users Share Slices of Web

Yahoo! News - Program Lets Users Share Slices of Web

Sun Jun 27, 3:05 PM ETAdd Technology - AP to My Yahoo!

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer
NEW YORK - Trolling the Internet (news - web sites) often yields cool tidbits, but they aren't easy to share. If you're planning a trip with friends, for example, and find six good hotel deals, you're probably just going to e-mail them six separate links to check out.

But what if you could send them a single Web page that had pictures and price lists for all six hotels, arranged neatly in boxes, captioned by your personal, witty commentary?

A free Web service being launched Monday by a startup called Amplify LLC lets you do precisely that. Amplify users can create their own pages, called "amps," filled entirely with content of their choosing � pictures, text, audio or video clips � and links back to the source material.

The result combines the look-what-I-found quality of Web logs with the free-form creativity of collage.

The goal is to help users overcome information overload by letting them experience the Internet as they shape it, "not just the way the Web is set up for them," said Eric Goldstein, the head of New York-based Amplify.

Users can share their amps with anyone else, even non-users, simply by sending them a link to it. The company also hopes strangers will share their amps on the Amplify Web site, turning it into a hub for collages of material on topics ranging from news to games.

The ability to share bits of content in a centralized setting will be familiar to people who have used collaborative work software programs such as Groove Networks or Lotus Notes.

But privately funded Amplify believes its service will stand out for being free and easy to use with the help of a browser toolbar. Amplify expects to derive revenue solely from advertising.

June 27, 2004 at 07:17 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (19) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 26, 2004

A Quiet Revolt Puts Costly Journals on Web

The New York Times > Books > A Quiet Revolt Puts Costly Journals on Web

By PAMELA BURDMAN
Published: June 26, 2004
When Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiologist at Duke University, decided to release a groundbreaking study in an upstart online journal, his colleagues were flabbergasted. The research, demonstrating how brain implants enabled monkeys to operate a robotic arm, was a shoo-in for acceptance in premier journals like Nature or Science.

"Usually you want to publish your best work in well-established journals to have the widest possible penetration," Dr. Nicolelis said. "My idea was the opposite. We need to open up the dissemination of scientific results." The journal Dr. Nicolelis chose � PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library of Science � aims to do just that by putting peer-reviewed scientific papers online free, at the Web site www.plosbiology.org.

The high subscription cost of prestigious peer-reviewed journals has been a running sore point with scholars, whose tenure and prominence depend on publishing in them. But since the Public Library of Science, which was started by a group of prominent scientists, began publishing last year, this new model has been gaining attention and currency within academia.

More than money and success is at stake. Free and widespread distribution of new research has the potential to redefine the way scientific and intellectual developments are recorded, circulated and preserved for years to come.

"Society pays for science," said Dr. Nicolelis, whose article in the October issue of PLoS got worldwide attention. "We have the technology, we have the expertise. Why is it that the only thing that has remained the same for 50 years is the way we publish our results? The whole system needs overhaul."

At the big-sticker end are publications like The Journal of Comparative Neurology, for which a one-year institutional subscription has a list price of $17,995. Access to Brain Research goes for $21,269, around the price of a Toyota Camry XLE.

According to the Association of Research Libraries, journal prices went up 215 percent from 1986 to 2003, while the consumer price index rose 63 percent.

Though the highest-priced journals are in the sciences, libraries have had to offset those price increases by buying fewer books, often in other disciplines like literature and the humanities, association officials and librarians at the University of California said.

For those plotting end runs around for-profit publishers, a prime target is the Amsterdam-based Elsevier, which publishes some 1,800 journals in science, medicine and technology, including Brain Research.

"Elsevier doesn't write a single article," said Dr. Lawrence H. Pitts, a neurosurgeon at the University of California at San Francisco and chairman of the faculty senate of the 10-campus system. "Faculty write the articles for them, faculty review the articles for them and faculty mostly edit the journals for them, and then we get to buy the journals back from a company that makes a very large profit."

Similar sentiments motivated the editors and entire editorial board, 27 people in all, of Elsevier's Journal of Algorithms to defect en masse recently to start a nonprofit competitor, ACM � Transactions on Algorithms � said David S. Johnson, one of the editors.

Elsevier's managing director, John Regazzi, says the problem is not Elsevier's prices, but tight university budgets that can't meet the increasing volume of research worthy of publication. "Very few of our customers pay list price across all of their collections," he said. "If you look at the full cost of what an institution pays and you look at the number of downloads by users of the system, you're basically looking at $2 to $3 articles. We have a wide range of options for how universities can decide to subscribe." The company's pretax profit for the last three years has been between 30 and 34 percent, Mr. Regazzi said.

But more and more academics are viewing traditional publishers as obstacles to wide dissemination of studies paid for by public monies. Several open access alternatives are being hotly debated in academic online discussion groups and in the mainstream science press. The criticism even extends to some nonprofit publications, like the journal Science, which nearly tripled prices for its largest subscribers over the last two years.

Late last year, two scientists at the University of California at San Francisco called for a global boycott by authors and editors of six molecular biology journals published by Elsevier. They timed the campaign to coincide with the moment that the the University of California system was renegotiating its contract with the company.

"The mission and mandate of scientific publishing is to provide a formal record of scientific discovery, not to make publishing companies rich or editors famous," said one of the organizers, Keith R. Yamamoto, a prominent microbiologist and the vice dean for research.

Since University of California professors write, vet and edit a significant portion of Elsevier's wares, a deal was struck. The public university system reduced its bulk cost for online and print access to about 1,200 journals from $10.3 million last year to just $7.7 million annually for the next five years, according to published reports confirmed by Daniel Greenstein, the librarian of the university system. Other prestigious, but smaller universities are pursuing a different strategy.

"We have been cutting Elsevier journals and other for-profit journals as their prices have risen higher than inflation," said Michael Keller, the university librarian at Stanford. "The result is a fairly limited list � 400 Elsevier subscriptions."

PLoS became a publisher last year following a failed campaign to persuade journals to open up articles within six months of publication, said Michael B. Eisen, a computational biologist at Berkeley. Mr. Eisen is a co-founder of PLoS, with the biologist Dr. Patrick O. Brown of Stanford and Dr. Harold E. Varmus, a Nobel laureate who is chief executive of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and former director of the National Institutes of Health.

The editors of PLoS follow normal peer review procedures. For revenue, they rely on author fees of up to $1,500 per article (typically drawn from research monies), voluntary university memberships, and grants. Although these voluntary university memberships can run into the thousands, Mr. Eisen said, the advantage is unlimited public access to priceless intellectual heritage.

But Mr. Keller of the Stanford libraries, who produces the online versions of Science and about 360 other nonprofit journals through Stanford's HighWire Press, argues that the voluntary memberships are just subscriptions in disguise.

Dr. Nicolelis's appearance in PloS Biology's debut issue helped vindicate this new model. PLoS has since attracted papers from leading lights in science like Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford researcher and a winner of a MacArthur "genius" award. Wired magazine also favored the founders with an award in April for "cracking the spine of the science cartel."

Traditional publishers hint that despite their new cachet, open access publications aren't sustainable in the long run. PLoS Biology and the new PLoS Medicine, due out this fall, are heavily subsidized by grants.

Dr. Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says his publication, Science, already coping with the loss of print subscribers and advertisers, would have to charge authors $10,000 an article to survive in the open access mode. He also noted that revenues from Science � which was started by Thomas Edison � support some of association's programs, including one to provide free access to scientists in the developing world.

"I agree with the motivation," Dr. Leshner said, but added, "We just can't throw away a business model developed by Thomas Edison in 1880 based on `Trust me, it will work.' "

But to others, old models are precisely the problem. "Surely the combination of uncertainty and hope associated with this unproved model is vastly superior to the certainty and hopelessness that surrounds the current and failed commercial one," Mr. Greenstein of the University of California system wrote as part of a running debate about open access publishing on nature.com.

The pressure is beginning to have an effect. More publishers have begun opening their archives 6 to 12 months after publication. Molecular Biology of the Cell, published by the American Society for Cell Biology, now opens up its archives after two months, and as its editor-in-chief, Mr. Yamamoto hopes to convert the journal to open access soon. Even Elsevier made a recent concession to university libraries that are moving into digital publishing and archiving, offering blanket permission for authors to post their journal articles on their own institutions' Web sites.

"We're watching open access very carefully," Mr. Regazzi said. "We're trying to learn from it."

June 26, 2004 at 04:00 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (57) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 25, 2004

LCBO uncorks document-sharing project

ITBusiness.ca

6/23/2004 5:00:00 PM - Real-time information exchange with Microsoft EPM speeds task completion

by Robert Smol

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario is in the process of completing trials aimed at centralizing its project management environment.

The system will comprise Microsoft Project Server 2003, Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services. Once implemented, it will significantly decrease the time and effort needed to pass project-related information between users and will allow easier tracking of project status by managers, according to the LCBO.

"We wanted greater efficiency and ease of access by centralizing our projects on a common location, a common server," said Ivor Davies systems analyst for the LCBO. "We wanted to have all our all our IT projects in one common location where everyone was using a standard template, a standard calendar."

Microsoft�s EPM (Enterprise Project Management Overview) technology will allow executives and other stakeholders access to project-specific information including real-time updates on project status.

"The executives and a lot of the people who were the stakeholders in charge of the projects weren�t really getting a lot of visibility into what was going on with the projects" said Joe Galati, product manager for Microsoft Office Project. "You might have to say, �OK, I want a report on these projects.� Then people would have to go off and running, go to their reports, have their meetings, and, after a few weeks, come back and give an update."

Such a cumbersome system made it difficult for managers to assess whether or not projects were on track.

Heather Collins, manager of end-user computing at the LCBO said that Microsoft EPM technologies provides a single point of contact for all project-related information such as timelines, documentation, status reports, communiqu�s, and group collaboration. The features within Microsoft Enterprise Project Management will allow her company to put a document up, and have all parties put their input into the document.

"Everything is in a single point so that you know exactly where you are going to get it, and for documentation, it is not being passed back and forth between people via e-mail or hard copy," she said.

"There is a very easy to use and familiar interface to actually find out what tasks you have to work on, and update your tasks," said Galati.

Collins said the LCBO will be able to dispense with the long, laborious meetings where participants are required to go through a document section by section ensuring everyone has their input.

A 50-person pilot project will be completed by the end of this month. The LCBO plans to begin a full implementation in July.

June 25, 2004 at 09:54 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (18) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 24, 2004

Poorer people closing PC gap

By TERRY WEBER
Globe and Mail Update Four out of five Canadian households now have a personal computer, and while a disparity still exists, those with lower incomes are closing the ownership gap, a new survey suggested Wednesday.

The study, conducted by research firm ACNielsen, said 81 per cent of Canadian households now own at least one computer, up from 78 per cent in 2003.

The biggest gains, the survey said, were made by low-income and older households.

According to the findings, households with annual incomes below $20,000 saw a 5-per-cent increase in computer ownership from last year. Sixty-three of households in that bracket now have PCs, compared with 58 per cent year earlier.

On the other end of the spectrum, 93 per cent of households with incomes over $70,000 had computers, up from 91 per cent in 2003.

�While disparities in PC ownership still exist, decreasing prices are making computers much more affordable for those at even the lowest end of the income spectrum,� Sharon Skurnac, senior director of consumer marketing for ACNielsen Canada, said in the report.

By age, the biggest increase was seen in households headed by someone in the 5- to-64 bracket, with ownership rising 6 per cent to 81 per cent in 2004.

The highest overall ownership percentage, however, was in the 35-to-44 group. Eight-seven per cent of households headed by a person in that age range had a PC.

The findings were based on a survey of 10,000 households, conducted in the first quarter of this year.

The study also found that computer upgrades accounted for much of the PC purchase activity. About half of the households that own a computer said the PC they most recently purchased was a replacement for an older model.

Fifteen per cent said it was an additional PC for the home, and 25 per cent said it was a first-time purchase.

About 69 per cent of households also reported spending more time on the computer than they did a year earlier. More than three-quarters of PC-owning households use their computers mostly for e-mail.

June 24, 2004 at 01:49 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (17) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 22, 2004

IT safety report warns of major meltdown within five years

ITBusiness.ca

6/22/2004 5:00:00 PM - The way public sector technology is currently being handled could result in the equivalent of another summer blackout. The Gowlings lawyer that authored the study provides a three-part remedy. Also: the SeaBoard Group and Q9 Networks on open source and disaster recovery

Faulty IT products and premature software releases, coupled with a lack of accountability on the part of the IT industry, put Canada�s critical information infrastructure (CII) at risk of a major meltdown within five years, says a recent report.

The report, which was commissioned by Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, has not yet been published. Through a Freedom of Information request the report was provided to the National Post and shared with Technology in Government.

It suggests increasing the adoption rate of alternative (non-Microsoft) software such as open source, licensing or certifying software professionals, and giving software product liability laws more teeth as ways to reduce the risk of CII disasters.

Donald Johnston, national technology industry group leader at Toronto-based law firm Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP, and the lead author of the report, said while the report doesn�t say a major CII failure is inevitable, it is probable.

"We have been told by some people in the industry there will be one or more cascade failures as we had the other summer with the electrical situation," said Johnston in reference to last summer�s blackout. "I�m not necessarily saying it�s true; I�m just reporting it."

Johnston said the report was commissioned because PSEPC -- which will not yet comment on it -- is in the process of looking at ways to protect Canada�s CII in the telecommunications arena.

"PSEPC is using it as an aide to current initiatives," said Johnston. "We actually don�t offer any recommendations. It�s really taking a snapshot, looking at risk factors and trying to show those who will look more closely into it the length and breadth of the problem."

According to the study, software vendors have long been allowed to get away with a sales model that gives them from immunity from the liability applied to most other industries.

The study also points to Microsoft�s dominance in the software market as increasing the risk of CII failure.

What that implies for public sector networks, said Johnston, is that "it would be healthy to have a lot of variety so they don�t all share the same DNA as far as their operating platforms are concerned. It said you need a judicious mix of different systems that are capable of talking to each other so you can get the best result with maximum functionality."

That, he said, "could be an endorsement of any open source type of approach."

But while telecommunications consultant Brian Sharwood, a principal with the Toronto-based SeaBoard Group, agrees that diversity of platforms increases the reliability and stability of the CII, he�s not advising everyone to rush out and adopt Linux.

Instead, he said, CII networks should use a number of alternate operating systems, including Apple and Unix.

"You have to remember that a lot of the core networks are not running the Microsoft operating system," he said. "A lot of the core networks are running on Unix, Linux and Cisco�s own hardware and software, so a lot of it�s not reliant on Microsoft. If it was we�d have a lot more trouble."

Sharwood, pointing to the recent vandalism that left thousands of residents in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland without phone and Internet services for a night, said he�s divided on whether the greatest dangers posed to Canada�s CII come from accidental or intentional harm.

But he disagrees that trying to hold the software industry more accountable would reduce the risk.

"The whole software industry is really a best efforts industry," he said. "You know when you buy a piece of software it�s not going to work all the time, and it�s not going to work in every situation, and to try to regulate that it has to work really forces an undue burden on the software industry that will end up stifling innovation rather than creating it and it costs a lot more."

According to Osama Arafat, CEO of Toronto-based Q9 Networks, which provides outsourced Internet infrastructure and managed hosting services, there might be many conditions that contribute to the risk to Canada�s information infrastructure, but a major meltdown is not inevitable � if the right steps are taken now.

"If people don�t put the right infrastructure in place this becomes more and more possible as we rely more and more on technology, but we�re hoping through .. proper planning this would not happen," he said.

First, he said, organizations that provide critical pieces of the infrastructure have to have the basics in place, such as fire suppression on their primary systems and backup power systems. But having a bullet-proof disaster recovery and business continuity plan is essential.

Arafat said more organizations are adopting a DR approach in which systems in one geographic area are replicated in another, providing seamless failover.

June 22, 2004 at 07:17 PM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (4) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 21, 2004

PKI Practices Are Maturing Says Study

PKI Practices Are Maturing Says Study

ComputerWire Staff
Some signs of improved security practices are to be found in the results of a latest survey of Public Key Infrastructure deployment across Europe.

More organizations say they are issuing certificates to business partners and slightly more than two-thirds of organizations polled for the study were found to be using separate signing and encryption keys, a 20% rise against the situation back in 2002.

The status report stems from an annual audit of sentiment towards PKI carried out by the European Electronic Messaging Association, a group that includes businesses like AIB Bank, Cargill and Unilever, government bodies such as the European Commission and the UK Ministry of Defence, and a number of IT vendors including HP, MessageLabs, Siemens, and Utimaco.

Management attention for PKI has increased, the study suggests, with the number of organizations viewing PKI as a strategic requirement increasing from 74% to 92% during 2003. Of those organizations upgrading their own Certification Authority, most expect to move to the use of an external trust contractor. CA technology helps in the deployment of a PKI that will scale by automating and centralizing the management of cryptographic keys and digital certificates.

June 21, 2004 at 08:55 PM in Security | Permalink | TrackBack (4) | Top of page | Blog Home

Search Rivals Gun Their Engines

Yahoo! News - Search Rivals Gun Their Engines

By Cynthia L. Webb, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
With Google's public stock offering just about ready to roll, rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo are doing whatever they can to keep the customers they have and pilfer the ones they don't. But Google also is upping the ante with new features of its own.

"Google has unleashed two new features that are aimed at smaller Web sites and could change the search habits of millions of people," The San Jose Mercury News wrote on Saturday. On tap? The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has a new search engine tool that yields search hits based on the content of a particular Web site. "For instance, the owner of a computer Web site can place a Google search box on the site that returns only computer-hardware-related results. A search for the word 'mouse' would get results related to the computer device, not the animal," the Merc reported. Reuters wrote that "an astrology site could customize its results so that when searchers enter the query 'stars' they are more likely to see results about celestial bodies than Hollywood celebrities." Google's "Site-Flavored Google Search" service "is still an experiment at Google Labs, the company's research and development unit. It allows specialty publishers to customize Google search to reflect their own content," CNET's News.com reported.
� The San Jose Mercury News: Google Rolls Out Two New Features (Registration required)
� Reuters: Google Launches Tools To Boost Online Search, Ads
� CNET's News.com: Google To Publishers: Some Butter For Your Bread

Google's other new feature "lets owners of smaller Web sites put a Google search box on their site in return for a cut of advertising proceeds. Each time users click on ads running beside the search results from the box, the site operator gets a few cents. Until now, both Google and Yahoo have only allowed much larger Web sites to use this feature," the Mercury News reported. eWeek mentioned that "Google already was offering a similar program to large Web sites and portals from companies such as America Online Inc., EarthLink Inc. and BellSouth Corp. But the latest program extends the offering to the mass market."

"Both features aim to do the same thing -- give incentives to Web-site publishers to funnel traffic to Google. And by doing so, Google can make more money -- and users get easier searches," the Merc reported. "This is Google going out and leveraging the smaller network of sites...by saying, 'Help us get more searches, and we'll share in the revenue,'" Danny Sullivan, editor of the Search Engine Watch newsletter, told CNET's News.com. "The move comes as Google, Yahoo, MSN and others are in a vigorous race to capture the hearts--and clicks--of Web surfers worldwide. Because search is a popular activity for visitors, these companies are racing to be the most useful to surfers and inspire their loyalty. Search is also tied to the fast-growing sector of online advertising: search engine marketing--with an expected worth of US$2 billion to US$4 billion this year. To capitalize on the market, all of the major search providers are seeking to expand search-related advertising to various nooks and crannies across the Web," the news service reported.

"This is where the future of search is going to be fought," Forrester analyst Charlene Li told USA Today. It's about "who has the freshest information and presents it in a way that helps me find what I'm looking for."
� eWeek: Google Ad Program Gives Web Publishers Their Share
� USA Today: Search Engines' New Tools Hasten Info Hunt

As part of the search engine race, Yahoo is expanding its services in China, something Google has done too. The company has launched a Web site tailored for Internet Web searches in China. The move comes "less than a week after archrival Google Inc made its maiden investment in the country's biggest search engine firm. The new site called 'Yisou,', which translates into 'No. 1 search' in English, would differ from its Chinese-language portal in that it would focus solely on Web searches, a spokesman for Yahoo said," Reuters reported. "U.S.-based Google, which has no physical presence in China, dipped its toe into the market last week by buying a minority stake in Baidu.com Inc -- which calls itself China's top search engine and plans to list in New York. ... Google is most popular with wealthier, English-literate users in China, while Baidu does well among middle-class users." The Associated Press picked up on this factoid too. "Yahoo! China, a unit of Yahoo! Inc (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)., already has a Chinese search company, 3721, which it acquired last year for $120 million. Its Chinese Web site also offers a search function, though it appears to yield fewer results. Google has offered Chinese-language searches since 2000 and is hugely popular among China's more than 80 million Internet users - the world's second biggest Internet market after the United States."
� Reuters: Yahoo Unveils 'Yisou' Search Engine For China
� The Associated Press via The Washington Post: Yahoo Launches Chinese Language Site (Registration required)

And then there's MSN. Yusuf Mehdi, the Microsoft vice president who heads MSN, talked to The Los Angeles Times about the company's search initiatives. "Nearly a decade after the Netscape browser threatened Microsoft Corp.'s dominant Windows operating system, Google Inc. did the same with its search engine, which processes hundreds of millions of queries a day and helped the company generate $105.6 million in profit last year. But Microsoft has responded, spending some of its $56-billion cash hoard to build its own search engine, which it plans to release by the end of the year and incorporate in the next version of Windows, expected in 2006," the paper reported in an interview with Mehdi.

Here's Mehdi's thought on what's missing from Internet search: "Eighty percent of what's available out there you can't get. There's data behind private databases like Lexis-Nexis or Factiva. If you're a subscriber to a newspaper and you want to get the premium content, you can't even get that in your search results." And his thoughts on Yahoo's controversial plan to let companies pay to have their Web sites included in search results more often?: "We're looking at that model and trying to see if that works. But we think there's actually an incentive for people to want to give you all their content. The problem with that is it's hard to do." Despite Microsoft's plans to incorporate search into its next Windows operating system, this is not a move to dominate all other search engines, Mehdi insisted: "Windows is an open platform, from our perspective. For a long time, we've allowed people to choose the search engine they want, and we're going to continue to do that. If people have a great search engine, they can use it on Windows. We won't do anything to prevent it."
� The Los Angeles Times: Microsoft Building Search Power to Challenge Google (Registration required)

E-mail Battleground

Not all of the moves to gain pole position involve just search. E-mail storage has become a hot area to attract customers. "The Web mailbox wars escalated last week when Yahoo expanded its free e-mail accounts from 4 megabytes to 100 MB, and Microsoft confirmed that it, too, will raise storage limits soon on its free Hotmail accounts," Washington Post tech columnist Leslie Walker noted yesterday in her Web Watch column. "Both are reacting to Google's plan to offer 1 gigabyte of free storage with its new Gmail service, which is still in trial form with a limited number of users. 'What we are trying to do is take storage off the table as an issue,' said Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo vice president."
� The Washington Post: Hotmail, Yahoo Step Up The Mailbox Rivalry (Registration required)

Google's Gmail service is getting fresh press today from The New York Times, which wrote about the service's ad matching technology that offers up ads based on a computer analysis of an e-mail's contents. Those ads are what lets the company offer users a whole gigabyte of storage space for free. The New York Times said today "the service turns out to have some interesting self-imposed constraints. Google has created what is the electronic equivalent of a television network's standards and practices department to determine which e-mail messages are suitable for ads and which are not. Google will not display ads on e-mail messages with words related to sex, guns, drugs and other topics it considers off limits. 'We want the ads to be family friendly,' said Susan Wojcicki, Google's director of product management. 'There are some topics for ads we have decided that are not appropriate to be shown on e-mail.' Google will not show any ads on Gmail for dating sites, one of the most lucrative categories for other Web-based e-mail services. And it will not even show ads related to squirt guns. It also tries not to display ads next to messages that contain disparaging language about the products of its advertisers. So if your mother complains that her digital camera is a dud, the recipient is not likely to see a camera ad on that message."
� The New York Times: The Internet Ad You Are About to See Has Already Read Your E-Mail (Registration required)

IM Free!

Yahoo is ditching its paid business instant messaging service, which includes online meeting software and other tools not available in Yahoo's free IM service. The company said it "would instead focus on boosting the number of individuals who use its free IM service," The Associated Press reported, noting the program cost about $30 per person. "Research firm IDC estimated that as many as 255 million people will use IM at work in 2005, up from 65 million in 2002. But the vast majority of workers use free systems available from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! or rivals, including America Online Inc. and Microsoft Corp."
� The Associated Press via The Washington Post: Yahoo Scraps Business Instant Messenger (Registration required)

A Package Deal

Cablevision Systems Corp. has upped the ante in the telecommunication industry's efforts to attract customers with bundled phone and Internet service. The company "will announce today that it will offer unlimited local and long-distance phone calls, plus digital cable television and high-speed Internet access for $90 a month. Many consumers already pay $90 a month just for their cable television and high-speed Internet access bills, meaning Cablevision is effectively giving away phone service," The Wall Street Journal reported. "That can only be a headache for the regional Bell companies, which are already seeing demand for their traditional phone lines decline, in part, because Internet telephone services such as Cablevision's that charge far less. Goldman Sachs estimates that cable companies could take 7% of residential phone lines from the Bell companies by 2006 and nearly 20% over 10 years. Cable companies including Comcast Corp. and Cox Communications Inc. are planning big rollouts of phone service."
� The Wall Street Journal: Cablevision To Offer Internet Phone-Call Bundle (Subscription required)

Web Access, Not Always for the Masses

Spam is proving to be a bogeyman for disabled computer users, many of whom use voice-activated software to read e-mail and other Web content. The problem is just one of a slew of obstacles for blind or visually impaired computer users, The San Jose Mercury News reported today. "It's been more than five years since the federal government brought the issue to a forefront when it mandated that government Web sites and those of its suppliers must be accessible by people with disabilities. But many report the online world is still rife with digital roadblocks. The answer, activists say, is to universally implement consistent Web standards that ensure accessibility and usability." the article said. "There's a house full of good intent," Kenneth Frasse, executive director of Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, told the paper. "But progress hasn't been made."
� The San Jose Mercury News: Surfing In the Dark (Registration required)

A Great Wall to Keep out Information

Doing business in China often means playing by more stringent rules -- and here's the latest one. "The Chinese government is calling on Internet service providers to sign a 'self-discipline pact' meant to stop the spread of information that could harm national security as defined by Beijing," The Associated Press reported. "The country already requires Internet firms to police their online content and weed out any criticism of the central government. It also tries to block sites it deems politically sensitive or otherwise unacceptable. The new pact was initiated by the China Internet Association, a government-run industry group, the official Xinhua News Agency said over the weekend." From Xinhua: "Surveys have shown unhealthy online information has contributed to rising crime rate of China's youngsters. Many people, especially parents, have made appeals to the government to curb the spread of unhealthy information online."
� The Associated Press via The North County Times: China Urges Internet Firms To Sign Pact Promoting 'Patriotism'
� Xinhua: China Strives To Purify Internet Content

Consulting the Blogging Oracle

This might not make traditional bloggers happy, but it's a sign that Web logs are becoming powerful tools in corporate America too. Silicon Valley attorney Gary Reback, who represents Oracle rival (and takeover target) PeopleSoft, is attending Oracle's trial where the company is defending itself against antitrust charges brought by the Justice Department (news - web sites), and is writing a blog about the case. Just how much of a PR stunt is this? Well, the blog is on PeopleSoft's Web site. "The case Reback is chronicling will decide whether Oracle can go forward with its proposed hostile takeover of PeopleSoft, which is based in Pleasanton. Reback watches the Department of Justice (news - web sites) attorneys litigate the case and Oracle's defense, and then publishes his perspective online," The San Francisco Chronicle reported. (See my Filter column from last Thursday with more details on the trial). "What makes Reback's blog different is that he is an attorney representing a party with peripheral ties to the case. While not directly litigating the trial, his client has a lot riding on the outcome. Reback is also one of Silicon Valley's most well-regarded attorneys, having gained a national reputation in the 1990s during a variety of clashes with Microsoft Corp. His new role as a blogger is an unusual situation that some believe may become more common. 'I'm sure there will be more like the PeopleSoft (blog) in the future,' said Ernest Svenson, a corporate law attorney in New Orleans who writes the legal blog Ernie the Attorney."

San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor mentioned Reback's blog in his own blog last week. "This is a smart PR move for PeopleSoft. Reback is a well-known antitrust lawyer (he was one of the major instigators of the original government action against Microsoft's monopoly abuses). This is his client's perspective, of course, but it's a fascinating one," Gillmor said.
� The San Francisco Chronicle: Legal Eagle's Blog View of Oracle Case

Filter is designed for hard-core techies, news junkies and technology professionals alike. Have suggestions, cool links or interesting tales to share? Send your tips and feedback to cindyDOTwebbATwashingtonpost.com. (Yes, those spammers have been having a lot of fun with my e-mail address lately.)

June 21, 2004 at 08:54 PM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 20, 2004

Of the Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth

Of note, the following:
Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state.

Adam Smith - An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations - The Adam Smith Institute

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.

CHAPTER II

Of the Sources of the General or Public Revenue of the Society

PART 2

Of Taxes

THE private revenue of individuals, it has been shown in the first book of this Inquiry, arises ultimately from three different sources: Rent, Profit, and Wages. Every tax must finally be paid from some one or other of those three different sorts of revenue, or from all of them indifferently. I shall endeavour to give the best account I can, first, of those taxes which, it is intended, should fall upon rent; secondly, of those which, it is intended, should fall upon profit; thirdly, of those which, it is intended, should fall upon wages; and, fourthly, of those which, it is intended, should fall indifferently upon all those three different sources of private revenue. The particular consideration of each of these four different sorts of taxes will divide the second part of the present chapter into four articles, three of which will require several other subdivisions. Many of those taxes, it will appear from the following review, are not finally paid from the fund, or source of revenue, upon which it was intended they should fall.

Before I enter upon the examination of particular taxes, it is necessary to premise the four following maxims with regard to taxes in general.

I. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. The expense of government to the individuals of a great nation is like the expense of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate. In the observation or neglect of this maxim consists what is called the equality or inequality of taxation. Every tax, it must be observed once for all, which falls finally upon one only of the three sorts of revenue above mentioned, is necessarily unequal in so far as it does not affect the other two. In the following examination of different taxes I shall seldom take much further notice of this sort of inequality, but shall, in most cases, confine my observations to that inequality which is occasioned by a particular tax falling unequally even upon that particular sort of private revenue which is affected by it.

II. The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other person. Where it is otherwise, every person subject to the tax is put more or less in the power of the tax-gathered, who can either aggravate the tax upon any obnoxious contributor, or extort, by the terror of such aggravation, some present or perquisite to himself. The uncertainty of taxation encourages the insolence and favours the corruption of an order of men who are naturally unpopular, even where they are neither insolent nor corrupt. The certainty of what each individual ought to pay is, in taxation, a matter of so great importance that a very considerable degree of inequality, it appears, I believe, from the experience of all nations, is not near so great an evil as a very small degree of uncertainty.

III. Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it. A tax upon the rent of land or of houses, payable at the same term at which such rents are usually paid, is levied at the time when it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay; or, when he is most likely to have wherewithal to pay. Taxes upon such consumable goods as are articles of luxury are all finally paid by the consumer, and generally in a manner that is very convenient for him. He pays them by little and little, as he has occasion to buy the goods. As he is at liberty, too, either to buy, or not to buy, as he pleases, it must be his own fault if he ever suffers any considerable inconveniency from such taxes.

IV. Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state. A tax may either take out or keep out of the pockets of the people a great deal more than it brings into the public treasury, in the four following ways. First, the levying of it may require a great number of officers, whose salaries may eat up the greater part of the produce of the tax, and whose perquisites may impose another additional tax upon the people. Secondly, it may obstruct the industry the people, and discourage them from applying to certain branches of business which might give maintenance and unemployment to great multitudes. While it obliges the people to pay, it may thus diminish, or perhaps destroy, some of the funds which might enable them more easily to do so. Thirdly, by the forfeitures and other penalties which those unfortunate individuals incur who attempt unsuccessfully to evade the tax, it may frequently ruin them, and thereby put an end to the benefit which the community might have received from the employment of their capitals. An injudicious tax offers a great temptation to smuggling. But the penalties of smuggling must rise in proportion to the temptation. The law, contrary to all the ordinary principles of justice, first creates the temptation, and then punishes those who yield to it; and it commonly enhances the punishment, too, in proportion to the very circumstance which ought certainly to alleviate it, the temptation to commit the crime. Fourthly, by subjecting the people to the frequent visits and the odious examination of the tax-gatherers, it may expose them to much unnecessary trouble, vexation, and oppression; and though vexation is not, strictly speaking, expense, it is certainly equivalent to the expense at which every man would be willing to redeem himself from it. It is in some one or other of these four different ways that taxes are frequently so much more burdensome to the people than they are beneficial to the sovereign.

The evident justice and utility of the foregoing maxims have recommended them more or less to the attention of all nations. All nations have endeavoured, to the best of their judgment, to render their taxes as equal as they could contrive; as certain, as convenient to the contributor, both in the time and in the mode of payment, and, in proportion to the revenue which they brought to the prince, as little burdensome to the people. The following short review of some of the principal taxes which have taken place in different ages and countries will show that the endeavours of all nations have not in this respect been equally successful.

June 20, 2004 at 05:04 PM in eCommerce | Permalink | TrackBack (16) | Top of page | Blog Home

Britain is light years ahead in fighting child porn

TheStar.com - Britain is light years ahead in fighting child porn

JENNIFER WELLS

A bilious sensation rises in the throat. Representatives of the business caste known as "Internet service providers" meet the media and say, well, hey, we're not the Internet police

Not much we can do about them there child porn pictures of the execrable type scrutinized by Michael Briere, say the ISPs. We are the "innocent carriers." The repulsive, illegal cargo? Not really our problem.

Next question.

All right, here's one. How is that the United Kingdom is light years ahead of Canada on this issue?

How is it that the U.K.'s Internet Watch Foundation has been in the business of cracking down on Internet crap for more than seven years and we have yet to establish its comparator?

How is it that the same foundation is funded, in part, by proactive ISPs who loudly and publicly proclaim their desire to help stamp out kiddie porn on the Net?

The Internet Watch Foundation was established in 1996. The following year it reported that 18 per cent of potentially illegal Internet content was "hosted" by U.K. Internet service providers. Today the federation claims that the figure has been reduced to 1 per cent.

How did that happen?

The fast answer is a broad coalition of co-operation and a shared determination to stop the Net-fed sexual exploitation of children.

The specific tools include an Internet hot line of the type advocated recently by Ontario Attorney-General Michael Bryant. In its most recent annual report, released in March, the IWF says that in 2003 it processed 20,000 reports of potentially illegal content. It also reported the grim statistic that of the 99 per cent of child abuse images traced to outside the U.K., 55 per cent were sourced in the United States, where, it notes, "very few" Internet service providers have registered with the U.S. equivalent of the IWF.

Lucky for the Brits, the IWF's hotline works closely with a national high tech crime unit, created in 2001, trained specifically to shut down illegal Net activities, including the dissemination of criminally racist material.

Greater luck: a "receptive and amendable" ISP community offers swift response via an effective notice and "take-down" system.

The IWF is highly visible, and posts the names of newly joined funding members. A company called Telewest Communications joined in April. Those who fail to join will become notable by their absence. An astute public can now choose a service provider based on whether they're in or they're out.

Movements such as these grow organically. Earlier this month, British Telecom announced the pilot launch of its so-called Cleanfeed project. The IWF reports illegal sites to the communications giant, which in turn blocks users from accessing the blacklisted sites.

The test has further drawn the battle lines between the "freedom first" Net believers and the "safety first" proponents who believe in the greater good of working to keep our children safe.

It's not web censorship. For web censorship, see, oh, Iran, where Internet service providers block web sites that purvey material critical of that country's human rights record and/or its political agenda. To repeat, Cleanfeed blocks illegal sites.

In May, British Telecom released a report prepared for it by London-based Futerra, a communications firm that works with the largest U.K. companies on issues of sustainable development. A key recommendation of the report was that ISPs take a commanding role in fighting the spread of child pornography on the Internet.

There have been repeated government proclamations here at home to do, well, something about this cancer. Most recently, the speech from the throne in February made a pledge to implement a strategy to counter sexual exploitation on the Internet.

The template is already there in the form of the U.K. initiative. And there are localized initiatives here that could fit into a broad national strategy. Cybertip.ca is one such. Established by Child Find Manitoba, Cybertip.ca is a tip line for individuals reporting the online sexual exploitation of children.

An aggressive national strategy has to come next. And who better to lend their support to such a project than powerful national communications companies? Come on down, Bell Canada.

There is, by the way, an answer as to why the U.K. is light-years ahead on this issue. The Brits have done exceedingly well in setting the pace for corporate social responsibility. Sadly, Canadian companies too often take their cue from the American counterparts who, and let's be exceedingly polite here, have been laggards. Sadly, this issue has not proved the exception.

June 20, 2004 at 04:28 PM in Online crime | Permalink | TrackBack (64) | Top of page | Blog Home

Canadian Consumers Lack Confidence In Security

ePaynews.com - the payment news and resource Center

Jul 25 2003 : Exactly half (50 per cent) of Canadian consumers using debit and credit cards are concerned that their financial information will be intercepted while in transit, according to a survey by Ipsos-Reid. Significantly, 52 per cent of respondents, had fears that credit card data could be intercepted at the POS, while 58 per cent were concerned about the storage of this data in a database. Fifty-four per cent had some concern about the presence of their debit card details in a database, but in general, the respondents had confidence in the security of the financial services industry.

In terms of identity theft and fraudulent use of payment cards, �Canadians are more likely to have issues with companies accepting cards rather than companies issuing the cards�, according to Ipsos-Reid. Sixty-five per cent of consumers with Internet access, are �very�, or �somewhat� confident in the ability of Canadian financial institutions to secure their information. By contrast, retailers and service providers offering credit or debit card payments �may not have the complete confidence of customers when it comes to financial transaction security�, Ipsos-Reid advises.

With 35 per cent of Canadian consumers having had personal information violated online, up from 21 per cent in June 2001, and 18 per cent in December 2000, an Ipsos-Reid SVP, Steve Mossop, believes perceptions of online security have dropped since the dot-com peak in 2000. Security concerns had deterred 49 per cent of prospective online consumers from eCommerce, while just 43 per cent of respondents were confident in retailers� abilities to ensure the security of payments and personal data, and 33 per cent believed responsibility for security lay with retailers.

June 20, 2004 at 11:17 AM in Smart Cards | Permalink | TrackBack (10) | Top of page | Blog Home

Visa Canada Moving To Chip Within Seven Years

ePaynews.com Newsletter | June 27, 2003 | Issue 220 |

Jun 25 2003 : Over the next seven years, Visa Canada will convert most Visa-branded cards to chip, and adapt POS terminals to accept chip-based payments, but will not set a deadline due to the current low fraud rate. Cards and terminals will be upgraded as part of the normal replacement cycle, said Visa Canada’s Derek Fry, who confirms, “Canada is going to [migrate to chip and PIN], … but we’re going to take our time and figure out how to do it smoothly”. Canadian consumers already use PINs to verify debit card payments on Interac, the national network, so the change to PIN-based payments is not insurmountable.

June 20, 2004 at 11:16 AM in Smart Cards | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

Phishers reel in money

Phishers reel in money / E-mail scammers get victims' checking account information

John Shinal, Chronicle Staff Writer
A growing number of Internet users have fallen prey to unauthorized checking account withdrawals, a new report says, costing upward of $2.4 billion during a recent 12-month period.

The report, published by the Internet research firm Gartner Inc., estimates that 1 in 5 Internet users has been defrauded online. Almost 2 million Americans may have experienced unauthorized transfers from their checking accounts, the report says.

The fastest-growing method of bilking unwary Internet users is called phishing -- scammers sending legitimate-looking e-mails asking users to verify their account information. If the recipient answers the e-mail -- Gartner found that 3 percent of targeted people do respond -- the senders can access online accounts.

"This is a wake-up call for consumers," said Avivah Litan, the Gartner analyst who wrote the report. "You can't get lazy."

The average loss from online checking account fraud was $1,200, and nearly half of the incidents found by the survey occurred during the 12 months ending in April. A Gartner report last month said the phishing problem has become so widespread that more than 50 million Americans have received such e- mails.

With that kind of volume, online checking account fraud is a growing problem for banks, which nearly always reimburse their account holders for such losses.

More than two-thirds of the victims of unauthorized account transfers were not aware how they occurred, said Litan, who has tracked online fraud for six years.

To protect themselves, consumers should check and balance their accounts frequently and refrain from giving out any personal account information.

Users of EBay Inc.'s PayPal service have been some of the most frequent targets of phishing e-mails.

The Gartner survey suggests that while phishing and checking account invasion are growing problems, overall online fraud has stabilized.

The research firm surveyed 5,000 Internet users earlier this year and asked if they had ever been victimized by any of five types of fraud: check forgery, fraudulent cash advances, illegal credit card purchases, new account fraud and unauthorized checking account access.

The survey found that 19 percent had been victimized by unauthorized account access. Given that 141 million Americans are online, that translates into 1.98 million likely victims, Gartner's Litan said.

Unauthorized checking account transfers, which weren't tracked in the last survey, are the fastest-growing type of fraud. Nearly half of the victims said they were victimized during the survey period, Litan said.

The numbers suggest that overall online fraud has stabilized. The number of people victimized by credit card theft fell to 5.7 million from 7 million a year earlier, according to the report.

June 20, 2004 at 11:11 AM in Phishing & identity theft | Permalink | TrackBack (1) | Top of page | Blog Home

Feds, Private Groups to Educate Consumers About 'Phishing' Scams

Yahoo! News - Feds, Private Groups to Educate Consumers About 'Phishing' Scams

Thu Jun 17, 5:42 PM
By David McGuire, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
The federal government and some of the nation's leading consumer organizations and financial institutions today kicked off a campaign to educate consumers about the growing threat posed by "phishing," a sophisticated form of identity theft conducted via e-mail and conterfeit Web sites.

Visa USA, the Federal Trade Commission, the Better Business Bureau and the other coalition members said they plan to work together to teach consumers how to avoid phishing scams and to report suspicious e-mail to authorities.

Phishing scams are designed to trick computer users into divulging sensitive personal and financial information. The Anti-Phishing Working Group reported recently that the number of unique phishing scams making their way around the Internet rose 180 percent from March to April of this year.

A typical phishing scam starts with an e-mail disguised to look like it's coming from a respected bank, credit card provider or online retailer. The message often warns the recipient that certain account information has lapsed and provides a link to an official-looking Web site where a user can "update" such information as Social Security (news - web sites) numbers, birth dates, and credit card accounts.

"The advice to consumers is simple: Don't click on the link. If you do, you may be the catch of the day," said Howard Beales, director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection. Beales joined other coalition members today at a press conference in Washington.

The FTC today also announced that it had settled cases against a pair of identity thieves -- Zachary Hill, 20, of Houston and an unnamed minor from New York -- who had colluded to send phishing spam. Hill also faces a possible 46 months in prison under criminal charges brought by the Justice Department (news - web sites).

The combination of law enforcement and public outreach is needed to tackle phishing, said Wayne Abernathy, the assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury Department (news - web sites). "We cannot solve this problem with education alone, but we cannot fight this problem without education."

As part of the new campaign, Visa will be providing brochures about phishing and other forms of identity theft to the banks that issue its cards and recommend that the banks include the information in monthly bills sent to their customers. All of the members of the coalition will also provide links to anti-phishing information on their Web sites. Call for Action, an international clearinghouse for consumer information, is also providing a free identity theft hotline (1-866-ID-HOTLINE) partially funded by a grant from Visa.

Beales encouraged Americans to forward any suspicious e-mail messages to the FTC at uce@ftc.gov. Such information is valuable, he said, because it helps investigators track scam artists, many of whom change their Web site locations and e-mail addresses frequently in an effort to frustrate law enforcement officials. Consumers can also send suspicious mail relating to their visa cards to phishing@visa.com.

Neither the FTC nor Visa keep statistics on how much money consumers have lost to phishing scams, but identity theft topped the list of consumer complaints to the FTC in 2003 and Internet scams accounted for more than half of all fraud complaints. In a 2003 study, the FTC found that 9.9 million Americans had fallen victim to identity theft in 2002 at a collective cost of nearly $53 million.

Visa USA Executive Vice President Doug Michelman said the company spends more than $100 million a year on anti-fraud efforts, with the anti-phishing campaign representing only a small fraction of that amount. He would not say how much the company had invested in the program.

Beales stressed that legitimate companies rarely if ever send e-mail asking customers for sensitive data. Customers who have any question about such a request should go directly to the company's Web site by typing the company's Internet address into a browser window, rather than by clicking on a link in a suspicious e-mail.

Earlier this week, a number of private-sector firms announced the formation of a new group -- the Trusted Electronic Communications Forum -- that will work to design technical solutions to the growing phishing problem.

June 20, 2004 at 11:00 AM in Phishing & identity theft | Permalink | TrackBack (4) | Top of page | Blog Home

Hotmail, Yahoo Step Up The Mailbox Rivalry

Yahoo! News - Hotmail, Yahoo Step Up The Mailbox Rivalry

Sun Jun 20, 2:08 AM
By Leslie Walker, The Washington Post
The Web mailbox wars escalated last week when Yahoo expanded its free e-mail accounts from 4 megabytes to 100 MB, and Microsoft confirmed that it, too, will raise storage limits soon on its free Hotmail accounts.

Both are reacting to Google's plan to offer 1 gigabyte of free storage with its new Gmail service, which is still in trial form with a limited number of users.

"What we are trying to do is take storage off the table as an issue," said Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo vice president.

Just a few months ago, Yahoo charged $60 a year for 100 MB of storage. Starting last Tuesday, that much storage comes free with every account (and the maximum size of any one attached file is now 10 MB instead of 3 MB). The company also consolidated its various extra-cost mail services into one $20-per-year plan, with no graphical ads and with a hefty 2 GB of mail storage.

That's twice what Google is planning. Yahoo said its paid version contains more features than Gmail, including tighter spam filtering and the ability to download messages with standard e-mail programs.

Yahoo also streamlined its mail service's interface and search features.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has quietly been expanding the storage it offers to at least some users of its free Hotmail service to 25 megabytes, up from the 2 that were available before. Users of these expanded accounts can buy still more room with two new "extra storage" plans: a $40-per-year service that includes 50 MB, and a $60-per-year option that allows 100 MB.

But other users continue to get only 2 MB of storage, and an "All About Hotmail" page at the site shows the old amount as well. A new account opened on Friday afternoon also was limited to 2 MB.

Microsoft spokeswoman Kathleen Callaghan said she had not heard of any free accounts getting more storage.

But she did confirm that the company has plans in the works to beef up Hotmail: "Part of that will ensure that storage won't be an issue," she said. And a Microsoft vice president, Yusuf Mehdi, said last week that users will see a ton of innovation from Hotmail and Microsoft's other communication services over the next year.

June 20, 2004 at 10:49 AM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 18, 2004

comScore Analysis Reveals Usage of Online Banking and Bill Payment Have Grown Dramatically in the Past Year

comScore Analysis Reveals Usage of Online Banking and Bill Payment Have Grown Dramatically in the Past Year

Study Ranks Nation’s Top Banks by Online Adoption, Engagement and Loyalty


RESTON, Va., June 17, 2004 – comScore Networks, industry leader in the measurement and analysis of consumer behavior and attitudes, today released an analysis of the state of online banking in the U.S. comScore found that more than 22 million users logged into accounts at the nation’s top ten banks in the first quarter of 2004, representing growth of 29 percent versus Q1 2003. During this same period, usage of online bank bill payment services has grown by 37 percent.

�Online banking and bill payment continue to be among the fastest growing applications on the Internet,� said Jim Larrison, vice president of comScore Financial Services Solutions. �The continued proliferation of broadband access, coupled with heavy online and offline promotion, have helped the nation�s largest banks bring more than 5 million customers online in the past year.�

More than 4.6 million consumers, or about 20 percent of the online banking population, actively used online bill payment services offered by the top ten banks. These consumers paid an average of 14 bills online during the quarter, with an average value of approximately $250. The total value of bills paid by consumers though the top ten banks in Q1 alone was nearly $17 billion.

�Previous comScore research has shown that consumer use of online bill payment is correlated with greater loyalty to a bank and higher account balances,� continued Mr. Larrison. �These benefits, along with the significant cost savings that come with processing transactions online instead of on paper, have led top banks to offer their customers compelling incentives to use such services.�

�Offering our customers free and innovative online bill payment services continues to be an important area of focus for Bank of America," said Sanjay Gupta, e-Commerce executive for Bank of America. "The adoption rate among our customer base is a clear indication that consumers value the convenience and security of online bill payment."

In addition to its assessment of online banking, bill payment and customer acquisition growth in the past year, comScore�s Q1 2004 Online Banking Report also includes an analysis of the competitive landscape. With the Q1 report, comScore launched the Online Banking Development IndexTM (BDI) to serve as a composite benchmark of a bank�s performance in engaging its customers online. The Index is comprised of ten components across three major categories: Adoption, Engagement and Loyalty.

In Q1 2004, Bank of America led the top ten banks with a BDI of 118, followed by Citibank (115) and Fleet (114). While Bank of America is strong across the board, its greatest strengths were in the Adoption and Engagement categories. Bank of America continues to grow its online customer base at impressive rates, despite an already large foundation of users. Moreover, Bank of America is second only to Citibank in the percentage of its online customers who use bill pay services.

comScore Online Banking Development Index (BDI)
Source: comScore Networks

Q1 2004

BDI

Bank of America**
118

Citibank*
115

Fleet
114

Washington Mutual
97

Bank One
97

Wachovia***
96

Wells Fargo
93

Chase
92

Sun Trust
91

USBank
89

*Leader in Adoption category

**Leader in Engagement category

***Leader in Loyalty category

comScore�s Q1 2004 Online Banking Report includes:

� Quarterly online banking growth statistics

� Online banking usage profile (top activities, average number of logins, time spent, etc.)

� Demographic analysis of online banking users

� Quarterly online bill payment statistics

� New account acquisition statistics

� Online Banking Development Index rankings

Banking industry professionals and members of the media may request the comScore Networks Online Banking Report by sending an e-mail to banking@comscore.com.

About comScore Networks

comScore Networks provides unparalleled insight into consumer behavior and attitudes. This capability is based on a massive, global cross-section of more than 1.5 million consumers who have given comScore explicit permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing. comScore panelists also participate in survey research that captures and integrates their attitudes and intentions. Through its patent-pending technology comScore measures what matters across a broad spectrum of behavior and attitudes. comScore consultants apply this deep knowledge of customers and competitors to help clients design powerful marketing strategies and tactics that deliver superior ROI. comScore services are used by global leaders such as Microsoft, Verizon, Best Buy, The Newspaper Association of America, Knight Ridder Digital, Nestl�, Wells Fargo & Company, GlaxoSmithKline, and Orbitz. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com.

Contact:
Graham Mudd
comScore Networks
(312) 775-6539
press@comscore.com

June 18, 2004 at 11:12 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (2) | Top of page | Blog Home

Yahoo scraps enterprise IM

Yahoo scraps enterprise IM | CNET News.com

Yahoo confirmed on Thursday that it is no longer selling a version of its popular instant-messaging service for corporations, ending the Web portal's attempt to sell IM as a software package.

The dropping of Yahoo Messenger Enterprise Edition marks the end of the Web portal's now-defunct enterprise software division. The unit was created in 2000 to sell customized Web portals and video conferencing services for internal use in corporations. But in October 2003, Yahoo scrapped the division and melded its businesses with their consumer counterparts.

In an informal interview earlier this week, Yahoo's Chief Information Officer Lars Rabbe said the enterprise instant messenger was shelved, because Yahoo is largely a consumer company and not structured to take on the kind of support tasks and other responsibilities that come with selling corporate software.

The move will consolidate Yahoo's consumer and enterprise products into one product package.

"We have reorganized our instant-messaging business to optimize our ability to leverage the Yahoo network, whether our customers are at work or at home," Lisa Pollock Mann, senior director of Yahoo Messenger, said in a statement.

A Yahoo representative declined to comment Thursday on when the company had stopped selling the service.

To the Big Three Web portals--Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and America Online--selling IM to companies has sounded like a good idea. The companies all offer popular, free IM clients that millions of Internet users have downloaded. IM technology lets people exchange messages in real time, and it has evolved features that let users play games, make phone calls and hold video conferences.

Instant messaging has made its way into companies as well. Some 85 percent of all enterprises in North America use a form of IM in their networks, according to a survey by research firm The Radicati Group. This penetration was mainly spurred by employees downloading Yahoo, AOL or MSN software to keep in touch with personal and professional contacts.

However, IM flourished in businesses without the oversight of corporate information technology departments, leaving many system administrators concerned about IM's safety against viruses. Some industries regulated by the federal government, such as the financial services and health care industries, are concerned that the use of IM in their offices might violate compliance or privacy laws.

The Big Three saw in this an opportunity to sell adapted versions of their free service to companies. The revamped software included features such as conversation logging, authentication and identity management. The companies also partnered with third parties such as IMLogic and Facetime Communications to add these applications to their IM products.

But consumer Web companies often have a hard time becoming enterprise software vendors, some industry watchers have noted.

"The market has shown that you cannot bring continuity from the consumer market to the enterprise market," said David Gurle, an executive vice president of Reuters Messaging. "You need to think about the enterprise market very differently than the consumer market, which doesn't pay you directly."

In addition, experienced vendors such as IBM and Sun Microsystems have begun offering their own IM products through their established sales channels.

Like Yahoo, AOL has retrenched its enterprise IM division. It has opted instead to sell add-ons such as video conferencing for a fee. Microsoft has focused less on MSN Messenger and more on its Live Communications Server--which combines IM, Net phone calling and video conferencing--as its enterprise communications product.

CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos contributed to this report.

June 18, 2004 at 11:04 AM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (16) | Top of page | Blog Home

Fledgling Gmail hits the geek spot

TheStar.com - Fledgling Gmail hits the geek spot

Enthusiasts barter to get in now
Pilot offers flight over CN Tower

DANA FLAVELLE
BUSINESS REPORTER

Some people will do anything to be among the first on their block with a Gmail account.

The new Internet e-mail service from Google Inc. is so popular people are paying to get in on the limited test version now of what will be a free, unlimited service later this year.

Since Google, an Internet search engine specialist, announced April 1 it was expanding into the e-mail business, some people have paid as much as $70 U.S. through the Internet auction site eBay to buy Gmail accounts from people who got them for free from the company.

Others are offering to swap an intriguing mix of products and services in exchange for a Gmail account, from personally re-enacting an episode from Star Trek to a first edition copy of the sci-fi novel Dune.

Toronto's Stephen Thomson, a student pilot and accomplished pianist, made one of the most valuable pitches: A free flight over the CN Tower (or landmark of your choice) plus a musical performance at your wedding (or any other occasion), a combination worth $300, in his estimation.

Within five hours of posting his bid on gmailswap.com, a free swap site not affiliated with Google, Thomson had received a Gmail invite from "an incredibly trusting person" named Lisa. It was unclear when or if Lisa planned to collect from him, Thomson said in a telephone interview yesterday.

But why the frantic rush to join a potentially "buggy" test version of a service that will be easier to access � and presumably smoother to use � after the public version launches later this year?

Thomson said he was motivated by the desire to beat out his buddy, a committed computer user who'd let him in on the cool factor attached to owning an early Gmail account.

Plus, he wanted an e-mail address free of the underscores, backslashes and numbers later adopters get stuck with because the good names have all been taken by then.

Sean Michaels, a 22-year-old university student who created gmailswap.com, says there are two other factors at work. Google has a cult-like following in the tech community, where it's seen as the anti-monopolist, and a lot of devotees want to support its efforts to dethrone Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail as the leading e-mail service.

"People think Gmail is going to be the e-mail standard of the future, that it's going to become what Hotmail is now, and they want to have a good address, one that shows they got in early," Michaels said.

Plus, Gmail comes with a staggering 1 gigabyte of storage space, more than 100 times what other free e-mail services offer. So much the average user would never have to delete another e-mail in a lifetime.

Michaels created gmailswap.com, where people can trade anything they want for a Gmail account, after noticing that limited access to the test version of the service was creating a black market for the accounts.

As is common in computer industry circles, Google was ironing out the remaining bugs in its new service by inviting a select group of users to test it out.

Michaels wasn't among them but says he received a Gmail invitation from a reader.

Since mid-May, when he created the site, more than 20,000 people have posted requests for Gmail accounts, he says. He doesn't know how many have actually succeeded in getting one.

But he is seeing signs that Google, already the Web's leading search engine company, knows another good thing when it sees one. The company has lately been issuing many more Gmail invitations through existing account holders.

Michaels has seen the impact on the value of Gmail accounts available for sale on eBay, he said. They've dropped to about $10 this week from $70 three weeks ago.

June 18, 2004 at 08:48 AM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

NTT DoCoMo to pilot mobile shopping and payment service

finextra news: NTT DoCoMo to pilot mobile shopping and payment service

03 June 2003 - Japanese wireless operator NTT DoCoMo is to begin live trials of a mobile shopping portal which presents users with bills for purchases alongside their monthly handset rental charges.

The six-month trial of the service, which is available to customers using Mova 2G and Foma 3G handsets, is scheduled to commence at the end of the month.

Initially, three virtual shops will be offering GPS services, such as tracking and emergency-related services, with an additional five stores joining from September. In total, about 20 virtual shops selling such items as fashion goods, groceries and flowers will be participating in the trial.

Users are required to register in advance via the official i-mode portal site. The service is free and users are only required to pay packet transmission charges. During the trial, purchases between a minimum Y1000 and Y10,000 per month will be accepted.

NTT DoCoMo expects the new system, available to over 38 million i-mode users, to help stimulate mobile e-commerce growth.

A similar scheme, dubbed Premium EZ Payment, is to be launched in July by KDDI and Okinawa Cellular Telephone over the 'au de okaimo' on-line shopping portal. Thirty-three companies, including Rakuten Inc., and a wide variety of retailers, content providers, and ASPs, are planning to participate in this new service.

KDDI has also sealed agreements with eCash Corporation and Yamato System Development to provide e-commerce and logistics packages for merchants moving to the portal.

June 18, 2004 at 08:24 AM in eCommerce | Permalink | TrackBack (19) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 17, 2004

Blogger（Winer) Criticized for Pulling Service

Yahoo! News - Blogger Criticized for Pulling Service

Thu Jun 17, 8:57 AM ETAdd Technology - AP to My Yahoo!

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer
NEW YORK - Dave Winer, a pioneer of an online journal format known as Web logs, thought he was doing people a favor by hosting 3,000 of such blogs for free.

So he was taken aback this week when he endured a barrage of criticism for deciding to stop the free service � an episode that reveals deep passions about blogging.

Winer launched his first Web log in 1997 and began hosting other people's blogs in 2000, when he headed UserLand Software, a Web publishing company.

After UserLand dropped the service to focus on selling blogging-related tools, Winer bought some servers and offered free hosting on Weblogs.com, a site that also tracks blogs hosted elsewhere, making it an important blogging hub.

Eventually Winer, now a research fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, found that running the free service took too much time and energy, especially because he has health problems that he declined to discuss. He closed the free blogs Sunday.

"I can't have 3,000 people who depend on me for free stuff yelling and screaming at me, saying, `I need this now,'" he said Wednesday. "I gave and I gave, and I paid a great price."

Winer says bloggers who want their archived material can have it in a few weeks. He also hopes to connect them with other volunteers who will host blogs for free.

Still, bloggers who relied on Weblogs.com were furious, saying they should have been warned about the cutoff. Their anger spread to other bloggers, too, including Elisabeth Riba of Melrose, Mass., who called Winer "an egomaniacal blowhard with his head in the clouds. So much for his vision of blogtopia."

Such slams had Winer shaking his head.

"This thing has been blown so far out of proportion," he said. "It's just unbelievable to me."

June 17, 2004 at 10:08 PM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | TrackBack (15) | Top of page | Blog Home

Programs: ChoiceMail Puts a Stranglehold on Spam

Yahoo! News - Programs: ChoiceMail Puts a Stranglehold on Spam

By Gene Emery
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Reuters) - I don't need Viagra, my credit is fine, and somehow I doubt the PhD offered via e-mail with "no required tests, classes, books, or interviews!" is going to be worth much. If you're inundated and infuriated by spam, the newly released free version of DigiPortal Software's ChoiceMail may prevent you from going postal.

I've found it does a wonderful job of mopping up the insidious e-mail that gets past most spam filters.

I receive, on average, about 33 pieces of junk mail per day. The spam blocker offered by my Internet provider screens out 75 percent of the messages, but one in four still get through, partly because spammers keep finding ingenious and insidious new ways to get past the filters. One way is by spelling Viagra "V!(at)gra."

ChoiceMail takes a different approach. It uses all the names in your electronic address book to create a "whitelist" of people you probably want to hear from. Messages from them will get through automatically, unless you decide otherwise. If you send e-mail to someone, ChoiceMail automatically adds that address to your whitelist -- another feature that can be turned off, if you wish.

When someone who is not on the whitelist sends an e-mail, the message is moved, as if by an occult hand, into an "Unknown senders" folder. Senders then get an e-mail reply announcing that their message won't be delivered until they go to a Web page and fill out a short challenge form, which, as it turns out, isn't particularly challenging. It simply requests the sender's name, asks that individual to write a brief message, and type in a number that appears on the screen, which prevents an automated response.

DigiPortal says it's akin to your asking "Who's there?" when you hear a knock on the door.

The sender has four days to respond, otherwise their message is sent to the Junk Box, where it is held for a few more days before being automatically deleted. The program allows you to change the holding time.

If the sender has filled out the form, an on-screen message alerts you. A simple click will send you to the "Senders waiting for your approval" screen.

At that point, you can decide to accept that one piece of e-mail, accept all future e-mails from that sender, or put them on a "blacklist" that automatically deletes all their correspondence. If you choose to blacklist someone, the program gives you the option to e-mail an explanation.

ChoiceMail also allows you to accept all mail from a particular domain, such as Reuters.com, regardless of who is sending it to you.

The system isn't foolproof.

Newsletters, for example, are often sent from e-mail addresses that are incapable of receiving mail, so they might get lost.

In my case, ChoiceMail held up newsletters from quackwatch.org, which tracks the often-nefarious doings of people who hawk untested medical treatments; snopes.com, which checks the truthfulness of stories you hear via the Internet, and a newsletter for curmudgeonly journalists called the Burned-Out Newspapercreatures Guild (BONG) Bulletin, which tries to encourage ink-stained wretches like moi to work the phrase "occult hand" into their stories.

This is why it pays to periodically go through the "Unknown senders" folder or the Junk Box to see if you're missing anything important.

Once again, if you find something that should not have been blocked, you have the option of instantly adding senders or their company/organization to your whitelist.

The program also lets you create rules for blocking or allowing messages. For example: I've set up my program so that any message that mentions "Reuters" gets through.

ChoiceMail has a great system for previewing questionable messages. Rolling the cursor over a message reveals the first few words. If you double-click on the message, you can read the text without having to worry about viruses.

One problem I found: Some senders may not see the reply inviting them to fill out the challenge form.

When a friend with a Yahoo account tried to send me a message, the reply from ChoiceMail was treated as spam and sent to the Yahoo "Bulk Mail" folder, where it was missed.

The free version of ChoiceMail lacks some features included in the paid version, which costs $40. With the paid version, called ChoiceMail One, you can customize the reply that senders receive, protect an unlimited number of e-mail accounts, and use the program on Webmail from Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Hotmail.

For most consumers, "ChoiceMail Free" should work just fine. It can be downloaded from http://www.DigiPortal.com.

June 17, 2004 at 10:04 PM in Spam | Permalink | TrackBack (20) | Top of page | Blog Home

Alliance and Leicester to shut 46 branches as customers move to direct channels

finextra news: Alliance and Leicester to shut 46 branches as customers move to direct channels

16 June 2004 - UK bank Alliance and Leicester is closing 46 branches in October - 15% of its total branch network - because customers are choosing to use direct banking channels such as the telephone and the Internet.

The branch closures will affect 310 employees, including 111 full-time staff.

Alliance and Leicester announced in April that it was redefining itself as a "direct bank with a high street presence" because customers were increasing using its ATM, Internet and telephone banking services. The bank is also investing �10 million in Web-based marketing and advertising in 2004 in a bid to increase online sales.

Around 80% of the transactions conducted by the bank in the past year were processed through self-service channels. Alliance and Leicester says branches are increasingly used for sales and for more complex transactions that require face-to-face service.

Although the 46 branches represent 15% of Alliance and Leicester's total network they account for less than three per cent of total sales and are used by only one per cent of retail banking customers each month.

In a statement, Richard Pym, group chief executive, Alliance and Leicester, says: "Times are changing, British banking customers are not visiting their branches every week or even every month. They are finding it more convenient to use the telephone, the Internet and cash machines for regular transactions and are increasingly looking at branches as places for more complex issues."

The closures will save the bank about �5m a year. The move will cost just under �10m in the first half of this financial year and leave the bank with 254 branches.

The bank says it will continue to develop its remaining branches and will invest around �35m in improving the network over the next three years.

June 17, 2004 at 10:01 PM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (9) | Top of page | Blog Home

Over 50s lead the way with Internet banking

finextra news: Over 50s lead the way with Internet banking

17 June 2004 - Two thirds of over-50s who use the Internet are now managing their finances online, placing 'silver surfers' among the fastest growing Web banking users in Britain, according to a survey by market research firm BMRB International for NatWest OnLine Banking.

Furthermore, the survey of 1000 Web users over 50 found that 64% of over 70 year old Internet users are logging on to check account balances once a week.

Commenting on the research, David Head, head of NatWest OnLine Banking, says: "Silver surfers are clearly embracing Internet banking as we have seen a 58% increase in the number of over 50s choosing to manage their finances online in the last year alone."

According the research 10% of respondents log on to check their balance every day while over 75% check in once a week.

On average, silver surfers use the Internet to check bank balances eight times a month, pay bills twice a month and review statements six times a month. The majority of activity tends to be once a month when 37% pay bills and nearly a third move money between accounts. The research also found 24% of respondents are also checking their shares online.

Three quarters of respondents said convenience was the main reason for banking online, while 21% cited better interest rates as the motivation for logging on.

June 17, 2004 at 09:59 PM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (2) | Top of page | Blog Home

NTT DoCoMo to launch e-wallet enabled handsets

finextra news: NTT DoCoMo to launch e-wallet enabled handsets

17 June 2004 - Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo is to release four new handset models embedded with contactless chip cards that can be used as train passes, electronic wallets and ID cards.

NTT DoCoMo says its will launch the i-mode FeliCa Service for mobile wallet applications next month in combination with the company's first four i-mode smart-card handsets � three 2G mova 506iC series handsets and the 3G FOMA F900iC handset.

The handsets are equipped to use Sony's Edy e-money system for purchases at 9,000 participating shops in Japan. Current balances and payment records can be viewed using the mobile screen.

Initially, 39 companies have signed up to offer m-wallet functions over the handsets, including McDonalds, airline ANA, JCB and the Japanese Railway. Subscribers must first visit the providers' Web sites and download applications to their mobiles.

June 17, 2004 at 09:54 PM in Smart Cards | Permalink | TrackBack (18) | Top of page | Blog Home

HSBC to lose 3,500 jobs

HSBC to lose 2,500 jobs

LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC will cut about 3,500 UK jobs to reduce costs, including a further wave of moves to low-cost Asian countries, but it also intends to recruit 1,000 jobs in local branches.

The cuts will mainly be at the bank's head office, in processing and regional management and will happen over two years, HSBC said. The bank will transfer the work of about 825 jobs to low-cost centres including India, it added.

The bank on Thursday said the cuts included 800 branch administrative jobs with the 1,000 new posts aimed at serving customers.

HSBC has announced about 9,000 British job cuts in less than a year, including 4,000 previously announced moving to Asian countries and 1,400 head office and regional cuts.

The latest reductions were ordered by Michael Geoghegan, who took over as head of the UK bank in January after running HSBC's Brazil business.

HSBC's UK bank employs about 41,000 people, a spokesman said. The cuts include shutting three transaction processing centres in 2006 in Frimley, south England, the northern city of Leeds, and Avon in central England, with the loss of a total 525 jobs that will all go to Asia.

"The redeployment and removal of some roles will simplify our management structure and strip away costs that are no longer sustainable for financial retailers today," Geoghegan said in a statement.

The UK bank provides 25 percent of the bank's annual profit but 33 percent of its costs, HSBC said.

"These latest plans to cut jobs are coming from the top down in order to slash costs and are certainly not a measured look at the business needs and the staff required to deliver a good service to customers," Rob O'Neill, national secretary of finance trade union UNIFI, said in a statement.

The union said HSBC workers might strike in protest.

Financial services companies attracted by the huge labour cost advantage and skilled English-speaking workers have been moving work to India, China and other Asian countries. General Electric and Citigroup have shifted work there, as have UK banks Lloyds TSB and Abbey National.

HSBC said it would try to find the affected workers new jobs in the company and would spend 2.0 million pounds to help people change career and find new jobs.

Rival UK bank Alliance & Leicester said on Wednesday it would cut 310 jobs and shut 46 of its 300 branches.

June 17, 2004 at 09:53 PM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (198) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 16, 2004

Online Banking Surges, Still Room to Grow

Yahoo! News - Online Banking Surges, Still Room to Grow

By EILEEN ALT POWELL, AP Business Writer
NEW YORK - Millions of Americans are doing their banking online, and their ranks are expected to grow rapidly in coming years as more e-services become available and Internet connections get faster.

A study released Wednesday of online banking at the nation's 10 largest financial institutions found that 22 million consumers logged in to their accounts in March, a nearly 30 percent increase from a year earlier.

Most went online to view their checking or savings account balances, the study showed. But many were monitoring their credit cards, paying bills, managing credit lines or paying mortgages.

"The banks are doing a lot of promotion of their services," said Jim Larrison, head of the banking practice division at comScore Networks, which conducted the study. "The (online banking) leaders are also spending a lot of time and technology resources creating applications that are really user-friendly."

One of the main attractions of online banking is the 24-hour convenience.

"I was traveling quite a bit and often away for quite a while, and I worried about keeping current," said Diana Nichols, 73, a retiree who lives in San Francisco.

Nichols, who described herself as "not particularly computer literate," said she set up her Bank of America online account so her bills would be paid automatically.

ComScore said that Bank of America, based in Charlotte, N.C., remains the leader in attracting online banking customers while New York-based Citibank has seen the strongest growth in the adoption of online bill paying.

Both banks "have focused internally, on their existing customers," luring them from brick-and-mortar branches to the Internet, Larrison said.

Stand-alone Internet banks have not been as successful, he added, with the exception of ING Direct, which is based in Wilmington, Del.

"They offer great savings products and pay great interest rates," Larrison said, adding that the site makes it easy for consumers to transfer money among a variety of accounts at different institutions.

Online banking use expanded more than tenfold from 1996 to 2003, TowerGroup Research, based in Needham, Mass., said in a report last month. TowerGroup expects close to 37 percent of all U.S. households to be registered to bank online by 2007 � a total of 42.5 million households.

Bank of America already has 10.9 million active online banking customers, 4.3 million of whom pay bills online, said Sanjay Gupta, an e-commerce executive at the company.

Gupta said that to encourage Internet use, the bank eliminated all fees for online bill paying activities and provided a "zero liability guarantee" to assuage security concerns.

"We find that as customers use of online banking and bill pay grows, they become much more loyal customers," he said. "They also have higher balances and higher loan balances."

Arkadi Kuhlmann, chairman and chief executive of ING Direct, said the online bank's customer base has grown to 2 million since it was launched in the United States in 2000.

"Our approach is very simple, straightforward commodity products ... so we can keep our sales and service very focused," Kuhlmann said. The bank specializes in savings accounts and mortgages.

Allyson Mediano, a 25-year-old nursing student, opened an ING Direct account three years ago that she uses to deposit money and earn interest until she needs it for school or living expenses.

"I can go online at work or at school," she said. "It's easier to keep track of your finances because it's all right at your fingertips."

ComScore's study found that online bill paying has grown rapidly, but that there still is room for expansion.

More than 4.6 million Americans paid at least one bill via a bank online payment service in the first quarter this year, up from 1.9 million two years earlier, the study said. The average customer, it said, "pays more than 14 bills per quarter with a total value of more than $3,500."

Still, the results found that most consumers � 84 percent � still prefer to pay bills through a utility or merchant's site rather than through a bank site.

Larrison believes consumers feel they have more control that way.

"And there's a perceived timing issue," Larrison said. "If you're on deadline, it's easier to go to the direct site and pay them because the account gets credited immediately. With a bank, it can be a question of how long it takes."

Larrison also said the growing adoption of high-speed Internet access should spur further online banking growth.

"As broadband penetration approaches 50 percent, this dynamic will likely translate to both increased acceptance of online banking and more effective cross-selling opportunities for banks," he said.

___

On the Net:

www.comscore.com

www.towergroup.com

www.bankofamerica.com

www.ingdirect.com

June 16, 2004 at 11:10 PM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (30) | Top of page | Blog Home

Justice Dept. Worries About Internet Calls

Yahoo! News - Justice Dept. Worries About Internet Calls

By Christopher Stern, Washington Post Staff Writer
A Justice Department (news - web sites) official told a Senate panel yesterday that law enforcement officers might lack the authority to monitor the phone conversations of terrorists and criminals under a proposed law governing calls that travel over the Internet.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Laura H. Parsky, testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee, said the growing popularity of Internet-based telephone services presents a new threat to law enforcement officials who are already struggling to keep up with an increasingly complex world of wired, wireless and Internet communications.

Parsky testified at a hearing on a Senate bill sponsored by Sen. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) aimed at ensuring that Internet-based phone services are not subject to the same regulations that govern traditional telephone networks.

Parsky said the deregulatory approach of the bill could undermine the legal authority of law enforcement officials seeking to investigate criminal activity. She also said that the Internet-based phone technology could provide a haven for criminals seeking to avoid the kind of surveillance allowed on regular telephone systems.

"While I obviously cannot go into detail on this point, suffice it to say that criminals do not want to be caught, and they are quick to take advantage of any gap in our ability to detect and disrupt their criminal activities," Parsky said.

Parsky's testimony prompted sharp questions from both Democrats and Republicans.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Parsky if investigators had ever been hampered in their efforts to track the Internet communications of criminals. Parsky offered no specific examples.

"You are now looking for a solution for a problem that has not been documented," Wyden said.

Wyden also asked Parsky if companies the provide Internet telephone services are cooperating with federal investigators.

"Some are cooperating, some are not," Parsky said.

Internet-based phone technology allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet. The technology makes it more difficult, but not impossible, for law enforcement officials to listen to conversations.

Internet phone calls are still a tiny percentage of all telephone traffic, but the technology is growing rapidly. The service is available to anyone with high-speed Internet access and is generally cheaper than a regular phone connection. Relatively unknown companies such as Vonage Holdings Corp., helped popularize the technology, but it also is being adopted by industry giants such as AT&T Corp.

The debate over Sununu's bill mirrors tensions between law enforcement officials and Internet phone companies at the Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites). The Justice Department has asked the FCC (news - web sites) to require Internet phone companies to design electronic conduits in their networks that would make it easier to tap conversations.

James X. Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the authority to eavesdrop would not guarantee that law enforcement officials would be able to do it. Technology evolves so quickly that it's virtually impossible for companies to keep up with the detailed demands of law enforcement, Dempsey said.

Dempsey suggested that rather than imposing strict requirements on companies, investigators would be better off working cooperatively with Internet phone providers.

June 16, 2004 at 11:08 PM in Telecommunications | Permalink | TrackBack (4) | Top of page | Blog Home

Web Inventor Finally Earns a Profit

Yahoo! News - Web Inventor Finally Earns a Profit

By MANS HULDEN, Associated Press Writer
HELSINKI, Finland - Tim Berners-Lee, who received a $1.2 million cash prize Tuesday for creating the World Wide Web, says he would never have succeeded if he had charged money for his inventions.

"If I had tried to demand fees ... there would be no World Wide Web," Berners-Lee, 49, said at a ceremony for winning the first Millennium Technology Prize. "There would be lots of small webs."

The prize committee agreed, citing the importance of Berners-Lee's decision never to commercialize or patent his contributions to the Internet technologies he had developed, and recognizing his revolutionary contribution to humanity's ability to communicate.

Berners-Lee, who is originally from Britain and was knighted last December, has mostly avoided both the fame and the fortune won by many of his Internet colleagues. Despite his prize, he remained modest about his achievements.

"I was just taking lots of things that already existed and added a little little bit," said Berners-Lee, who now runs the standard-setting World Wide Web Consortium from an office at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news - web sites).

"Building the Web, I didn't do it all myself," he said. "The really exciting thing about it is that it was done by lots and lots of people, connected with this tremendous spirit."

Berners-Lee indeed took concepts that were well known to engineers since the 1960s, but it was he who saw the value of marrying them.

Pekka Tarjanne, chairman of the prize committee, said "no one doubts who the father of the World Wide Web is, except Berners-Lee himself."

Finish President Tarja Halonen presented the biennial award, subsidized by the government. The cash prize is among the largest of its kind, and Berners-Lee is the first recipient.

The prize committee outlined the award to be given for "an outstanding innovation that directly promotes people's quality of life, is based on humane values and encourages sustainable economic development."

"Isn't this like a definition of the World Wide Web?" Tarjanne asked.

Berners-Lee first proposed the Web in 1989 while developing ways to control computers remotely at CERN (news - web sites), the European nuclear research lab near Geneva. He never got the project formally approved, but his boss suggested he quietly tinker with it anyway.

He fleshed out the core communication protocols needed for transmitting Web pages: the HTTP, or hypertext transfer protocol, and the so-called markup language used to create them, HTML. By Christmas Day 1990, he finished the first browser, called simply "WorldWideWeb."

Although his inventions have undergone rapid changes since then, the underlying technology is precisely the same.

His recent project � which experts say is potentially as revolutionary as the World Wide Web itself � is called the Semantic Web. The project is an attempt to standardize how information is stored on the Internet and to organize automatically the jungle of data found today on the Net into a "web" of concepts. By attaching meaning to data behind the scenes, computers can do a better job of searching for information.

"It is an exciting new development that we're making," he said.

In his acceptance speech, Berners-Lee focused on technology as an evolving process that was just in the beginning.

"All sorts of things, too long for me to list here, are still out there waiting to be done. ... There are so many new things to make, limited only by our imagination. And I think it's important for anybody who's going through school or college wondering what to do, to remember that now," he said.

___

On the Net:

Millennium Technology Prize: http://www.technologyawards.org

Tim Berners-Lee: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

June 16, 2004 at 08:17 AM in Internet evolution | Permalink | TrackBack (41) | Top of page | Blog Home

Attack Knocks Major Web Sites Offline

Yahoo! News - Attack Knocks Major Web Sites Offline

By Brian Krebs, Special to The Washington Post
A widespread electronic attack on a company that handles traffic for some of the world's most-visited Web sites knocked several prominent sites offline for at least 45 minutes early yesterday.

The attack targeted Internet servers run by Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai Technologies Inc., which distributes and manages Web data for companies such as Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Federal Express Corp. and Xerox Corp. It also handles traffic for the FBI (news - web sites) and washingtonpost.com.

Akamai spokesman Jeff Young said the attack interrupted service to the Web sites around 9 a.m. and lasted for just under an hour.

Young said the attack was targeted at Internet networks on a broad scale, adding that "we have no reason to believe that the attack was directed solely at Akamai."

Amit Yoran, chief cybersecurity officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said federal authorities are working with Akamai and the companies that operate the Internet's underlying infrastructure to determine the source of the attack.

Akamai manages high-traffic Web sites by storing its 1,100 customers' Web content on thousands of Internet servers around the world. It manages approximately 15 percent of the traffic on the Internet.

Young said that most of the sites that were affected are search engines that use Akamai's services.

The company's role makes it an attractive target for hackers who attempt to overwhelm computers and Web sites by flooding them with huge bursts of data. Often, such attacks originate from computers that have been infected with a worm or virus designed to launch an assault at a set time.

Security experts have been warning about the growing number of computers infected with such programs. One of the most aggressive and powerful such programs, called Phatbot, has already spread to millions of machines over the past several months.

Russ Cooper, chief scientist at TruSecure Corp. in Herndon, said the attack probably involved "at least tens of thousands of systems that would be needed to busy Akamai's network so much."

Cooper said the attackers also might have targeted a previously unknown design flaw in Akamai's software.

Young said the attack seemed to have been designed to interfere with the company's domain-name system (DNS) servers, machines that convert numerical Internet addresses into more recognizable names such as "www.microsoft.com."

The company said that a similar incident last month was caused by a software flaw in one of its Web-site management programs.

Computer security experts and law enforcement authorities said it is often extremely difficult to find out who is responsible for denial-of-service attacks.

In October 2002, a denial-of-service attack disabled most of the 13 root servers that provide the primary road map for almost all Internet communications. The Department of Homeland Security is still trying to find out who launched that attack, Yoran said.

Krebs is a staff writer for washingtonpost.com.

June 16, 2004 at 08:14 AM in Security | Permalink | TrackBack (93) | Top of page | Blog Home

World's First Mobile Virus Is Not Lethal, Yet

Yahoo! News - World's First Mobile Virus Is Not Lethal, Yet

By Lucas van Grinsven, European Technology Correspondent
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A group of underground virus writers has showed off what is believed to be the world's first worm that can spread on advanced mobile phones, but security software companies say the virus had no malicious code attached.

The worm, named Cabir, was sent to security software firms Kapersky Lab of Russia and U.S.-based Symantec by a member of 29a, a group of virus writers from the Czech Republic and Slovakia who pride themselves in creating "proof of concept malicious viruses," Kapersky Labs spokesman Denis Zenkin said.

"This is the very first version of a network worm which propagates via mobile phones," he said on Wednesday.

The worm is designed to work in smartphones running on Symbian and Series 60 software, Symantec said on its Web site.

This software is used to power millions of Nokia (news - web sites) phones, such as the popular 6600 model.

Nokia was not immediately available to comment.

The worm is not regarded as dangerous because even if it spreads it carries no code that destroys files or executes other damaging operations, the security software firms said. The virus attempts to jump from phone to phone by using the handset's wireless short-range Bluetooth connection. It scans the environment for other Bluetooth-enabled devices.

Once it has found one, it sends itself disguised as a security file. The file must be accepted by the mobile phone owner and then installed before it can propagate.

Mobile viruses will become more dangerous when they can spread without human intervention, said Matias Impivaara, business manager for mobile security services at Finnish security software firm F-Secure.

"The main (turning) point will be when the virus-writing community knows the software well enough... to find holes," he said.

"The information about the (Symbian) operating system is very close to the hands of the virus writers.... (Cabir) could be a trigger to start developing these ideas earlier."

A spokesman at London-based technology firm Symbian said that, unlike personal computers, it was not possible to penetrate the software of its smartphones without approval.

"But we can never say it's not going to be possible. Smartphones have been designed... as open, programmable networked devices," he said, adding that users should be careful before accepting to install new software. (Additional reporting by Brett Young in Helsinki)

June 16, 2004 at 08:13 AM in Virus | Permalink | TrackBack (10) | Top of page | Blog Home

Major Internet sites attacked

This story smacks of "keeping things quiet". My home page "my yahoo" was down longer than indicated here. I suspect this was a very big deal.

TheStar.com - Major Internet sites attacked

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Several major Web sites, including Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, were inaccessible at times early yesterday due to what the company that distributes them online called an attack.

The problem began about 9 a.m. Eastern and lasted less than two hours, said Jeff Young, a spokesperson for Akamai Technologies Inc., whose network of servers mirror some of the Web's top destinations to improve their performance.

Young called it a "large scale, international attack on Internet infrastructure." However, there was no evidence that non-Akamai infrastructure was affected.

Amit Yoran, head of the U.S. department of homeland security's cyber security division, declined to comment on the alleged attack and its scope, deferring questions to Akamai. The government-funded CERT network emergency response team did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Keynote Systems Inc., a Web performance measurement service, said the only sites where it saw trouble yesterday were those served by Akamai.

Young said he had no immediate information on the nature of the alleged attack, nor did he know where it originated or other Internet infrastructure companies that might have been targeted. Keynote said the availability of the top 40 sites it monitors dropped from 100 per cent to just over 80 per cent during the outage.

associated press

June 16, 2004 at 07:56 AM in @ My Views @, Security | Permalink | TrackBack (13) | Top of page | Blog Home

Linux seen as secure option as banks replace mainframes with PC servers

finextra news: Linux seen as secure option as banks replace mainframes with PC servers

15 June 2004 - Banks are increasingly using PC servers instead of mainframe computers to handle data management functions, despite concerns about security, according to research by UK market data technology vendor CMS Webview.

Of the 50 financial data managers surveyed for the research, 61% reported that their banks had already moved from mainframes to PC servers in certain key areas.

However 73% felt that over-reliance on Windows-based systems could leave banks vulnerable to security breaches and, because of this, 86% would consider using an alternative operating system such as Linux (65%) which is also seen as more cost-effective.

Furthermore, nearly two-thirds of respondents (65%) were concerned about the dominance of Windows-based systems and the lack of competition in the marketplace (33%), as well as about costs and lack of quality assurance.

According to the survey the move towards PC servers is a recent trend in investment banking - more than half of those surveyed (54%) say it's only in the last three years that PC servers have started to replace mainframes.

CMS says the move is driven partly by cost, but also by PC servers offering scalability as well as flexibility, which was cited by 74% of data managers as the most compelling reason for replacing mainframes.

A large majority of respondents (89%) said PC servers provided enough flexibility to enable them to react to changing patterns in user demand, while 87% felt functions such as data warehousing could be run on PC servers.

Commenting on the research, Bob Antell, chief executive, CMS, says: "Modern PC servers can handle comfortably the vast amounts of data in real time that global banks must process, store and analyse 24 hours a day, every day of the week.

"The results of this survey correlate strongly with our day-to-day experience of financial institutions increasingly being prepared to consider PC server based products."

June 16, 2004 at 07:33 AM in Security | Permalink | TrackBack (10) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 15, 2004

Yahoo Raises Stakes in E-Mail War with Google

Internet News Article | Reuters.com

By Lisa Baertlein
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc. plans to give its paying e-mail customers 2 gigabytes of storage and boost the size limits on free accounts, raising the stakes in the e-mail war with Web search rival Google Inc.

Yahoo (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) -- making good on an earlier vow to boost the storage it provides users of its e-mail services -- said late on Monday it had begun giving paying customers 2 gigabytes of storage and removing the graphical advertisements, such as banner ads, they once received.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company, which had offered several different premium e-mail services priced from $29.99 a year for 25 megabytes of storage to $59.99 for 100 megabytes of storage, said it also has moved to a single premium e-mail service priced at $19.99.

Google earlier announced plans for its Gmail service that gives users 1 gigabyte of free storage, far more than offered by Yahoo or Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Hotmail.

On free e-mail accounts, Yahoo is expanding storage to 100 megabytes from 4 megabytes and upping the message size limit to 10 megabytes from 3 megabytes.

"Storage is a commodity. We're focused on making it a nonissue for users," said Brad Garlinghouse, vice president of communications products at Yahoo.

"It's a smart counteroffer. Expect to see a lot of this in the future," said American Technology Research analyst Mark Mahaney, who predicted that consumers will be the winners in the e-mail wars.

Google, the No. 1 Web search provider that is now readying an initial public offering, made storage an issue with its March 31 Gmail announcement.

While some consumers embraced Google's plans to shake up the staid e-mail market by providing 1 gigabyte of free storage, privacy advocates have taken aim at the company's plans to make money from Gmail by serving targeted ads based on the words in e-mail messages.

On other fronts, Yahoo said it has made the e-mail search function speedier and that it is opening "tens of millions" of name spaces by re-releasing Yahoo addresses that have been dormant for several years.

� Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

June 15, 2004 at 09:57 AM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (22) | Top of page | Blog Home

Online News Registration May Not Deliver

Yahoo! News - Online News Registration May Not Deliver

Sun Jun 13, 5:10 PM ETAdd Technology - AP to My Yahoo!

By JOANN LOVIGLIO, Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA - Many online readers must complete registration forms with various kinds of personal data before seeing their virtual newspaper. The requirement has irked some readers and privacy advocates, led to the creation of Web sites to foil the system, and could be failing to provide the solid demographic information the system was intended to capture.

Despite these concerns, a growing number of newspapers � including The Philadelphia Inquirer in March and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in April � have moved to online registration in the past year.

Industry representatives argue that because their Web readers get the same content as the paper-and-ink edition without paying for it, it's fair to ask them for personal information in exchange for access. They also say that collecting such data is becoming essential as the news business evolves.

"One of the things newspapers are trying to do is get a grasp on who's using their Web site and how much, whether they're people who already subscribe (to the print edition), people who live outside the area," said Scott Bosley, executive director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

"The other thing is that down the road, newspapers are trying to figure out when and where they can charge," he said. "Ultimately, they want to see what people will pay for news. I don't think anybody's comfortable enough to say they know the answer yet."

The industry has not tracked the shift in detail, but news organizations and marketing groups say an increasing number of newspapers have begun requiring online registration, particularly in the last 12 months or so.

Some forms require the most basic information, like gender and year of birth. Others ask for what amounts to a personal profile that can include name, birth date, job title, income range, e-mail and home addresses, home phone numbers, and interests and hobbies.

The data can then be used to help publications better know their online readers, and make themselves more attractive to advertisers.

However, some privacy groups are crying foul. Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. says sites will be pushing for even more invasive disclosures as demographic data becomes muddied by peeved users who practice "self-defense" by registering themselves as 110-year-old surgeons from Bulgaria named Mickey Mouse.

"The marketing is becoming less effective, so the marketers are pushing for more invasive registrations," he said. "They know specifically what articles I'm reading, they know all about me, and I know very little about them. It's a complete imbalance of power."

When The Atlanta Journal-Constitution implemented online registration on April 12, a flurry of e-mails and calls from angry readers followed, ombudsman Mike King said.

"The prevailing story line on the complaints was that people thought it was unbecoming of a newspaper to ask for (personal) information and that it came as a shock because we provided (online content) for free for so long," King said.

He said travel Web sites, cell phone services, catalogs and other online entities typically ask for more probing information than newspapers do.

The Philadelphia Inquirer started online registration in March, asking readers for e-mail, home address, gender and birth date. About 10 percent to 15 percent of the 300,000 registrations to date have bad e-mail addresses, said Fred Mann, general manager of Philly.com.

Mann said in an e-mail that the complaints generally fell into three categories: People who had technical problems, those who objected to giving out personal information, and those who "railed that we were pigs and were 'ruining the Internet!'"

"We helped the first group through it. We reassured most all of the second group with a strong privacy policy. The third group still doesn't like it and I presume many of them did not register with us," he said.

BugMeNot.com is one Web site created to allow users access sites without registering. The site provides "communal" logins and passwords for sites including registration-required sites like those for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times and now The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

BugMeNot's home page states that more than 3,000 Web sites have been "liberated" since its inception in November. The site calls compulsory registrations intrusive, irritating, spam-promoting, and counter to the Internet's free spirit.

King said that as newspapers adapt to an online world, continually updating stories in real time on their Web sites, it will become more costly to do business and new revenue sources must be found.

"Our view is that we need help from you: We've got to pay for what we do, we've got to convince advertisers into looking at us and tell them that these are the demographics we now know about our readers," he said. "The old standard � advertising geared to people who live in the areas we cover � doesn't work anymore."

Newspapers haven't reported large amounts of falsified data. However, forced registration sites as a whole have a 10 percent to 20 percent "bounce-back rate" � e-mails sent to abandoned, falsified or otherwise nonworking addresses, said analyst Eric Peterson of JupiterResearch, in Darien, Conn.

"You'll always lose people when you put up a barrier for them to get information," he said. "We'll eventually see companies get smarter about what they can ask and how to ask, or see their customers go elsewhere."

June 15, 2004 at 12:53 AM in Journalism | Permalink | TrackBack (8) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 14, 2004

Nokia launches flip phones

Nokia launches flip phones

By Jennifer Tan and Brett Young
SINGAPORE/HELSINKI (Reuters) - World-leading mobile phone maker Nokia has launched five new models, including flip phones that were lacking in its range, and says it is confident it can claw back market share in a booming sector.

The company, which has been losing out to rivals which have designed more advanced phones, showcased its first mass-market flip phones, plus a new handset which it claims is the world's smallest model for fast networks.

"We have now sharpened our product portfolio in key areas, bringing to the market new phones in the mid-range, and adding more clamshells to our offering," Chief Executive Jorma Ollila said in a statement.

The Finnish company, whose brand name and smart designs had given it a commanding lead of more than 35 percent world market share, said in April that it had started to lose out because of a lack of attractive phones in the middle part of its portfolio.

Ollila told journalists at a company event in Helsinki that he would continue to chase a global market share of 40 percent, despite having drifted off to 32 percent in the first quarter.

Market researchers like Gartner say that Nokia's share has dropped even further, to 28.9 percent -- still almost twice as much as nearest rival Motorola of the United States.

Among Nokia's latest models are a 6260 smartphone with a flip that could swivel, and a 6630 third-generation (3G) phone, which Nokia says is the world's smallest camera phone for fast 3G networks, equipped with wireless email, Web browsing, video calling and other smartphone features.

It unveiled more clamshell camera-phones with the 6170, and a cheaper model, the 2650. Its new line-up also includes the 2600, a traditional low-budget phone for first-time customers.

Analysts had blamed the absence of flip phones as one of the main reasons for its falling market share. Nokia's first models will compete with a broader line-up of clamshells from its rivals.

"It's a step in the right direction but still a couple of paces behind the competition," said Gartner analyst Ben Wood.

RIVALS FASTER

"I wasn't that enthusiastic about the new clamshells, even though the 6260 looked okay. I'm not really sure it can match the competition," said Erkki Vesola at Mandatum Stockbrokers.

He expressed concern that Nokia had cut the number of new product launches in 2004 to 35 from 40, while much smaller rivals plan equal or more new products this year.

Other analysts were more upbeat about Nokia's chances.

"The clamshell phones are exactly what's needed so they're filling the right gaps." said Jussi Hyoty, FIM Securities, who rates the shares "neutral". Nokia shares were off two percent at 11.68 euros at 12:45 p.m. on Monday, underperforming a 1.5 percent lower Eurotech index. The stock has lost almost a third of its value since the company said its market share was eroding.

Motorola and third-ranked South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd boosted their market shares in the first quarter to 16.4 percent and 12.5 percent respectively.

FOCUS ON ASIA

Nokia first showed its new models at a company event in Singapore, underlining its focus on the region. Flip phones are the gold standard in Singapore.

Simon Beresford-Wylie, Nokia senior vice president for Asia-Pacific, said he expected "dynamic" growth in regional mobile subscribers, estimating that by 2007 for every fixed line user there would be more than two mobile phone users.

In the three years to 2007, the number of mobile subscribers globally will have climbed by some 700 million to two billion and Nokia expects about 300 million of the new subscribers to come from growth markets in the Asia-Pacific region.

"Clearly the industry is thriving. Throughout 2004, around 800,000 new subscribers have joined the mobile world every day," said Nokia board member Matti Alahuhta.

Nokia said it expects mobile phone sales for the industry to reach 600 million units this year, up from 520 million in 2003 -- a forecast that is in line with industry estimates. Camera phones are expected to make up one third of total sales.

Nokia officials estimated that more than 60 operators will have launched commercial wideband-CDMA 3G services by the end of 2004, up from a previous estimate of 50, and that currently there are close to six million W-CDMA 3G subscribers worldwide.

Nokia is generating 20 percent of total network sales with 3G systems, Nokia Networks chief Sari Baldauf told Reuters in an interview.

June 14, 2004 at 03:08 PM in Telecommunications | Permalink | TrackBack (6) | Top of page | Blog Home

What Is RSS?

About MSDN: RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) provides a convienent way to syndicate information from a variety of sources, including news stories, updates to a web site or even source code check-ins for a development project. Regardless of the purpose for which the RSS file is being used, by watching this XML file, you can quickly and easily see whenever an update has occurred. Of course, viewing the RSS feed in Internet Explorer and hitting F5 every few minutes is not the most efficient use of your time, so most people take advantage of some form of client software to read and monitor RSS feeds.

There are many different RSS clients available, but here are a selected few that we tested our feeds with and that you may find useful:

SharpReader,
FeedReader
AmphetaDesk,
NewsGator, and
RSS Bandit, which you can build yourself based on this article in the MSDN Library.

If you're using Microsoft SharePoint, you can get the MSDN Headlines feed delivered to your SharePoint site using Tim Heuer's RSS Reader Web Part.

Whenever you see this
(or most often
) it should link to an RSS feed that you can subscribe to via your RSS client.

June 14, 2004 at 12:29 PM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

Internet security shouldn't cost extra

TheStar.com - Internet security shouldn't cost extra

TYLER HAMILTON

If you subscribe to Bell Sympatico High Speed, you probably know by now that Sympatico.ca has merged with MSN.ca to become a "super" portal, the result of a year-long alliance between Bell Canada and Microsoft Corp.

Anybody with Internet access can surf the new Sympatico.MSN.ca portal. It's part of a new content war with Rogers Cable, which has partnered up with Web giant Yahoo Inc. to launch its own co-branded, high-speed portal later this year.

If you're an existing Sympatico high-speed customer, you can choose to pay an additional $4.95 monthly for a "premium" version of the MSN service that offers enhanced security, as well as better e-mail and digital photo management.

When Bell launched the new portal last week, what caught my attention most were the security promises. While the basic free version of Sympatico.MSN.ca, the one anybody can access, will scan incoming e-mail for spam and viruses � nothing new, here � the premium version goes a step further, promising "persistent protection" of desktop computers.

In other words, the service includes a firewall that can stop intruders from accessing your PC or laptop, as well as desktop anti-virus software that is regularly updated. Montreal-based Zero Knowledge Systems Inc. is supplying the software for the security features, as it also does for Telus Corp. out west, Vid�otron Lt�e. in Quebec, and Aliant Inc. in the east.

Spam and virus attacks over the past year have clearly shown that it's in Bell's best interest to make sure customer computers are protected against viruses. It's also important for the computers to have a way to get rid of viruses � worms, Trojan horses and other malicious programs � that have managed to permeate outer defences.

The reasons are many. Recent Internet worm outbreaks have left Trojan horses on Sympatico-connected PCs, allowing outsiders to remotely take control of the computers and turn them into spam machines. When activated, these machines quietly send out millions of junk e-mails across the Sympatico network, as well as the general Internet, ultimately jamming up the e-mail servers of other ISPs and corporations.

This makes other ISPs unhappy, not to mention Bell's corporate customers, who want a network that isn't periodically gummed up by spam and other e-mail containing damaging viruses.

It's why, according to feedback from some Star readers, AOL has started to bounce back some e-mail messages that originate from Sympatico accounts.

It's also why Bell has been forced to suspend the e-mail accounts of hundreds of Sympatico customers so far this year, all customers who have had their computers compromised and turned into silent spam machines. Of course, none of this is without cost. Bell spends millions of dollars each year trying to protect and clean up its network, educate customers and handle security-related complaints.

This isn't isolated to Bell. A frequently quoted study released earlier this year by Waterloo-based Sandvine Inc. found that worm attacks on residential broadband subscribers alone cost North American service providers $245 million annually.

But Bell is the largest target in Canada, and to restore confidence to residential and business customers, it needs to put a bigger effort into online security. Computer vulnerability to viruses is often blamed on Microsoft, but it's Bell, not the software giant, that must handle customer complaints and deal with chaos on its network.

So why charge $4.95 for a premium service that touts security as its biggest feature when it's in Bell's larger interest that people be secure? Why, in general, do Internet service providers continue to view security as a cost that should be passed along to customers, when they know many customers simply won't pay?

Put another way, when are ISPs going to start seeing security � on the network and on network-connected PCs � as a cost of doing business that's built into the price of a monthly subscription and where use of freely provided anti-virus and firewall software is a condition of service?

"It's something that is being considered right now," admitted Pierre Blouin, group president of consumer markets for Bell Canada.

It's encouraging to know that they're at least thinking about it.

It's no secret that the personal firewall and anti-virus market � dominated by Symantec Corp. and Network Associates Inc. � is going to eventually disappear. Microsoft has already hinted that these plain vanilla security features will over time become absorbed into that big sponge called the Windows operating system, and Symantec and Network Associates are preparing for that day by looking upstream to the corporate security market.

In the meantime, security continues to be sold as a voluntary service separate from the cost of basic high-speed access. My advice: Bell, Telus and Aliant, which already promote the Zero Knowledge security software, should split the cost of buying and funding the operation of Zero Knowledge.

A larger North American telco alliance could even be formed, splitting the costs even further. A good candidate for recruitment is the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, a coalition of two-dozen ISPs � including Bell and Telus � formed last year to combat spam and viruses.

In return for what would be a relatively minuscule investment for these Internet giants � less, anyway, than the annual cost of putting out security fires � all alliance members would be able to integrate Zero Knowledge's security software into their high-speed offerings at no additional cost to residential and small business customers.

If customers already have or prefer to use a competing security provider, they would have to prove they have it and agree to maintain such security as a condition of high-speed activation.

Call it a crazy idea. Maybe it is. But something has to be done, and sometimes crazy fits the bill. Whatever the approach, the tendency of large Internet service providers to shift the security burden and cost on to customers won't fly when you need virtually 100 per cent participation.

It's time for the industry to be more proactive, and to take a small financial hit for a substantial long-term gain.

June 14, 2004 at 07:58 AM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (29) | Top of page | Blog Home

Trapping spam

TheStar.com - Trapping spam

Internet service providers are casting their nets to catch the rising tide of unwanted e-mail messages

RACHEL ROSS

Cast a big net and you'll catch a lot of fish.

Cast a better net and you'll save the dolphins.

For years, Internet service providers have struggled to keep unsolicited e-mail, or spam, out of our inboxes. Incoming spam frustrates their customers and outgoing spam can use up a lot of bandwidth. All that adds up to money lost.

So they've cast their nets far and wide, in an attempt to catch the spam while the legitimate e-mail flows through. Many of the spam filters used today rely on a rules-based review of the e-mail's content. Not all legitimate e-mail follows the rules, however. Sometimes important messages get caught in the process, never to be seen by the intended recipient.

But that's all about to change. Some of the biggest names on the Internet are already building better nets. America Online Inc. (AOL), Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and IronPort Systems Inc. are all developing new ways to secure e-mail so messages can be traced back to their roots. Some systems simply seek to eliminate unwanted messages, others are designed to make the spammers pay by putting a dollar value on bad behaviour.

"The spam problem is worse than ever, in terms of the number of messages sent," said Sean Sundwall, corporate public relations manager for Microsoft Corp.

He said that, as of May, 64 per cent of mail sent to people who use Microsoft's Hotmail service was considered spam.

At the same time, Sundwall said Hotmail users are likely seeing less spam in their inboxes lately because Microsoft's filtering system keeps a lot of the junk out. Such filtering systems generally work by scanning incoming e-mail messages for words and phrases commonly used in unsolicited e-mail advertisements.

Unfortunately, filtering systems sometimes accidentally stop legitimate e-mail from reaching their intended recipients.

ThinData Inc. of Toronto helps companies reach their customers via e-mail by carefully crafting their messages so they aren't caught in the net intended to trap spam. Unlike spammers who e-mail ads indiscriminately to any e-mail address they can find, ThinData's clients only send e-mail to people who have actually asked to receive more information about their company.

However, some filters aren't very good at discriminating between spam and ads that people sign up to receive.

One filter called SpamAssassin looks for words such as "Free" or "Click Here" and large, bold, coloured fonts. A subject line that starts with the word "Buy" or "Buying" would also increase the likelihood that the e-mail will be blocked. The more spam-like qualities an e-mail has, the more likely it will be blocked.

"Certain filters are very aggressive," said ThinData's vice-president of client strategy, Wayne Carrigan.

He suggests his clients run their marketing messages through SpamAssassin, to see how "spammy" they appear and then change the wording or formatting as necessary.

But it's not a foolproof solution. Despite their best efforts, many legitimate marketers still have a hard time reaching everyone on their mailing list because of overzealous filters.

"Companies wouldn't necessarily know if their e-mail got through," Carrigan said.

Moreover, once spammers get wise to the rules behind Spam-Assassin they will likely adjust their content so it appears less spammy too. Then it becomes a game of cat and mouse, where the spammers try to stay one step ahead of the filters.

Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo believe content filters are valuable. But they believe new kinds of filters are also needed to stop the rising tide of spam. All are essentially designed to do the same thing: check whether the e-mail really came from its stated origin.

Given our reliance on e-mail, it's a surprisingly insecure form of communication. The current e-mail system never questions the validity of a sender's address.

"Right now in the Internet world you can't know for certain whether an e-mail that claims to be sent from Microsoft, for example, is really from Microsoft," said Sundwall.

This has led to a relatively new phenomenon called phishing, where an evildoer sends out e-mail posing as a company representative and requests personal data. Last week, the Royal Bank of Canada was caught up in such a scam. Someone was sending out e-mail that appeared to be from the bank and asking people for their banking passwords. Bank spokesperson Judi Levita said the sender's address was listed as support@royalbank .com but the mail wasn't sent by the bank. It was sent by a scammer looking to steal some cash.

If e-mail addresses could be verified, scams like this wouldn't be a problem. Sundwall said spammers would also take a hit.

Most of the spam we receive is also from parts unknown. That's why it's so easy for spammers to escape the law: Their real identity is usually hidden behind a phony e-mail address.

Microsoft's spam solution is called Caller ID for E-mail. This system takes advantage of the one thing on an e-mail that cannot be forged: the Internet Protocol (IP) address. All over the Internet are special machines dedicated to sending and receiving e-mail. Each of those machines gets an IP address. It's sort of like a street address for computers.

There is already a global listing of IP address for the machines that accept e-mail. Under the Caller ID plan, a new list would be created for all of the machines that send mail so that, before an e-mail is transmitted, it would be stamped with the IP address of the machine that sends the e-mail on its way. Each IP address would be listed in the directory along with all the domain names that are authorized to send mail from that machine.

The IP address 203.170.241.26 might be responsible for mail from the domain names banana.com and rutabaga.com. (One IP address is often responsible for many domains.) An e-mail that was purportedly from peel@banana.com, for example, would only be accepted if the IP address on the e-mail was 203.170.241.26. Even then, the e-mail might be rejected. It all depends on the sender's reputation. If a verifiable sender has gotten a lot of complaints for spamming, the message might get turned away.

AOL is backing a very similar strategy known as the Sender Policy Framework (SPF). It also involves checking domain names against public directory of IP addresses for outbound e-mail servers. SPF just goes about it in a different way.

Alex Lesley, AOL Canada's vice-president of technology, said AOL implemented SPF in December and today some 14,000 Web domains are on board.

The technical differences between SPF and Caller ID will soon be moot, however. AOL and Microsoft recently announced that they will work together to develop one solid protocol for double-checking domain names against IP addresses.

Sundwall said he'd like to call the new merged strategy Sender ID, but nothing has been decided yet. It will likely be months, in fact, before a new merged strategy is ready to be put to use.

Yahoo's strategy, known as Domain Keys, is decidedly different. Its plan involves authenticating the entire e-mail, not just the address. Miles Libbey, anti-spam product manager for Yahoo Mail, said the Domain Key strategy offers a lot more than either SPF or Caller ID because it ensures the integrity of the whole message.

"With the Domain Keys solution it allows us to say the entire message was in fact created by the author," Libbey said.

The keys in such a system aren't the little metal pieces you shove into your door at home. They are actually composed of a series of text characters that can be processed much like numbers. There's a lot of math involved in this approach, but basically the keys are used to identify whether an e-mail really came from the purported sender and whether the contents of the message have been altered.

If the e-mail is validated and the sender isn't a known spammer, then the message goes through.

AOL's Lesley said he believes the Domain Key strategy would be harder to implement, but said it isn't necessarily incompatible with Caller ID or SPF. Ultimately, a multi-pronged approach could evolve.

IronPort Systems, Inc. of San Bruno, Calif., would like to add its own prong to that fork: the Bonded Sender system. With Bonded Sender, companies pay for bad behaviour. Participating companies would reveal their IP addresses and also put up money in the form of a bond. If enough people tell IronPort the company is sending spam, their bond is debited.

"It's an incentive for the company to never send spam," said IronPort's senior director of product management, Peter Schlampp.

He said the bond ranges from hundreds to thousands of dollars depending upon the amount of e-mail the company typically sends. Debited funds will go to various charities.

Microsoft backs the Bonded Sender strategy. Sundwall said he thinks it's a good addition to the Caller ID and SPR ideas.

"What (traditional) filtering does is trying to catch the bad guy," Sundwall said. "We want to shift the model to trying to identify the good guy."

Bonded Sender, he said, would achieve that goal so that mail from the "good guys" would have a better chance of making it to the intended recipient.

Bonded Sender is somewhat controversial, however. Some in the industry worry the system could shut out small business, for example.

Sundwall said companies that can't afford to put up a bond could still participate in the Bonded Sender program. Instead of money, these businesses would pay in speed. Special software on the sender's machine would force the machine to solve "computational puzzles" in the background, ultimately slowing the rate at which mail could be sent.

All the mail sent using this slower method would be specially flagged as legitimate mail, instead of spam.

"It basically limits the amount of mail a computer can send before it crashes," Sundwall said.

(Individual users wouldn't have to pay to send e-mail under such a scheme. As with the other proposals mentioned, those who choose not to participate would have their e-mail screened using more traditional filters, such as the content filters that are so common today, which search for words and phrases commonly used by spammers.)

All of the new proposals still need work, however. A recent study by the E-mail Service Provider's Coalition (ESPC) found significant problems with the Bonded Sender plan.

According to Direct Marketing News, the ESPC felt that the system was far too stringent. It would only take one complaint in a million to warrant a debit.

Schlampp said he wasn't aware of the complaint threshold issue, but he admitted that sometimes people complain about mail that isn't really spam at all.

"There are lots of false reports," he said.

Sometimes people just get confused or forget they have actually subscribed to a mailing list.

As with all these ideas, marketers say it's important that there's a proper feedback loop so that they can complain if they are improperly blacklisted.

These new filters will need to be more widely implemented before end users see a real reduction in the amount of spam they receive.

But Sundwall said we could see a big difference by the end of the year if enough companies adopt the free protocols that Microsoft is backing.

Sundwall said he hopes that these protocols, along with existing filtering systems, can all be used together to provide an accurate way to identify and isolate spam.

Content filtering alone is not enough. It's just too prone to error and easy for spammers to thwart. But if we can assess e-mail on the basis of its content and the sender's reputation we might be able to haul in the perfect catch.

June 14, 2004 at 07:57 AM in Spam | Permalink | TrackBack (23) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 12, 2004

Reagan Casts Giant Shadow Online

Yahoo! News - Reagan Casts Giant Shadow Online

Fri Jun 11,10:19 PM ETAdd Technology - washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo!

By Robert MacMillan, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) was a giant on the American political landscape, so it's no surprise to find the late president standing just as tall on the Internet, casting a formidable shadow, virtually speaking, across cyberspace.

The last time a former U.S. president passed away -- Richard M. Nixon on April 22, 1994 -- the World Wide Web was just a toddler. But this is the first time that the United States has lost a president -- especially one who inspired equal amounts of love and loathing -- in the full swing of the digital age.

It would be easy to gauge the "Reagan effect" on the Internet by plugging in the number of Google search results from typing in "Ronald Reagan" (1.45 million) or those of Yahoo (2.35 million). But those numbers lie in more than one way. At the very least, they reveal an unprecedented outpouring of sadness, praise, scorn and historical chronicles of varying degrees of accuracy.

Following is a tiny cross-section of the Internet that highlights some of the major and most interesting online sources of information on Reagan. It is by no means comprehensive, but it attempts to use the Internet to assemble the most basic mosaic out of the bottomless well of information that people have posted online about the 40th president.

The Straight Story

There are several "official" sources of information on Reagan. The White House gives a brief biographical sketch with links to a biography of former First Lady Nancy Reagan, portraits of the Reagans and similar entries on every other president. Also see Reagan's biography as produced by the state of California.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library has an enormous photo gallery and a trove of other information such as videotapes of his speeches that can be ordered from the site. Reaganlibrary.com is a separate site but also is an official part of the presidential library. It includes interesting links to a list of gifts the Reagans received (it is partially finished at this time) and handwritten letters to Soviet premiers Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev. The site also features an exhaustive list of books chronicling Reagan's life and times.

In a similar vein, 2,800 pages of Reagan's archives are available for purchase at Paperless Archives. One of the best excerpts is a letter from Nixon to Reagan dated Aug. 13, 1987: "You gave the lie to the crap about your being over-the-hill, discouraged, etc... Don't ever comment on the Iran-Contra [sic] matter again... The committee labored for nine months and produced a stillborn midget. Let it rest in peace!"

The U.S. Army, Military District of Washington provides information on the military's involvement in Reagan's funeral arrangements and a biography of Maj. Gen. Galen B. Jackman, Nancy Reagan's military escort during the viewing and funeral process.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation includes a condolence book and a lengthy tributes list from heads of state such as U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and former President Jimmy Carter, as well as an uncharacteristically perfunctory e-mail from National Review founder and Editor-at-Large William F. Buckley.

Reagan's life in Hollywood gets thorough treatment from the Internet Movie Database, which notes that Reagan, among his many other performances, was the chief victim of a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in 1973. If you're curious about what films the Reagans watched on their weekend jaunts to Camp David, a full list is here.

The Medical Dossier

The George Washington University Medical Center in Washington is home to the Ronald Reagan Institute of Emergency Medicine. Reagan was treated at the hospital in 1981 after surviving an assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr.

But Reagan's legacy leaves its greatest impact on medicine in the form of Alzheimer's research. Reagan informed the nation in 1994 that he was suffering from the incurable disease, leading to more attention and research funding to understand its causes and to seek a cure. The Alzheimer's Association has a special section on its Web site dedicated to the late president. Among them: a page asking users to donate money toward Alzheimer's research in Reagan's name, and information on grants handed out by the Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute for studying Alzheimer's.

They Praised Him...

Many sites eulogize Reagan, elevating him with the sort of adulation that few other American notables have ever managed to claim. Americans for Tax Reform chief Grover Norquist -- himself a not-so-behind-the-scenes architect of the 1994 Republican Revolution in the U.S. Congress -- runs the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project. Its most ambitious goal at this time seems to be an effort to replace Alexander Hamilton's face on the $10 bill with Reagan's. Publius press also features "comprehensive" roundups on Reagan at Reagan2020.com.

Presidentreagan.info, run by a group called Kottmann Consulting, presents a glowing tribute to Reagan. The site contains defenses of his presidential policies, a biography, a blog and links to sites like the Franklin Mint that offer Reagan-themed gifts.

Ronaldreagan.com offers similar information. Its gift shop (also available in German and Spanish) features a $149 presidential bomber jacket, a photograph of Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in matching jeans, blue buttoned-down shirts and cowboy hats. It also offers a Reagan "quote of the day." (Today it's: "Excellence demands competition. Without a race there can be no champion, no records broken, no excellence--in education or in any other walk of life.")

Young America's Foundation hosts Reaganranch.org, which provides visitors with a map and virtual tour of the Reagans's Rancho del Cielo. The foundation bills itself as a site where young people can learn about Reagan and "his ideals of individual freedom, limited government, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and traditional values."

So what did they name after Reagan, anyway? There's a good list (and here's another), but a sampling includes: an aircraft carrier, a high school in San Antonio, Texas, elementary schools in Bakersfield, Calif., and Nampa, Idaho, the Ronald Reagan Middle School in hometown Dixon, Ill., the Reagan building in Washington, D.C., Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana, Calif., and even the Reagan suite at the Westin Century Plaza in Los Angeles.

And speaking of what you can buy, eBay and Amazon.com feature a number of auctions but relatively small numbers of buyers. One popular item on eBay is a sketch of a horse that Reagan, a prodigious doodler, once drew (his inscription reads: "Told you I could not draw"). Forty bids were placed for this item, with the winner paying $2001.89. Also see the "Bowl one for the Gipper" T-shirt and the action figure.

And They Skewered Him...
The Onion handled Reagan with its usual questionable taste -- a brief item on George W. Bush turning the Reagan funeral into a $5,000-a-plate fundraiser and a note that Nancy Reagan is "available at 82."

Liberal satire site Whitehouse.org lets visitors play the Ronald Reagan Memory Game, a variation on whack-a-mole featuring the Reagans, Oliver North and Michael Jackson among others. Also featured are several vintage posters showing how the Gipper used to hawk Chesterfields. The site, aiming for a balance of whimsy and clumsy humor, concludes that Reagan was "an affably senile zombie propped up by a Nixon-groomed cabal of brilliantly nefarious underlings." Damnation by faint praise?

Quickchange.com labeled Reagan's two-term presidency the "Bonzo years" and posted a selection of as many as Reagan's real and reported gaffes that they could find. Deoxy.org pointed out that one anagram of "Ronald Wilson Reagan" is "Insane Anglo Warlord." Other reported quotations are available here.

Reagan and the Press
Online news sites have devoted thousands of words and photos, audio and video, to Ronald Reagan. In Dixon, where Reagan attended high school, the local paper links to an outside group's tribute site and offers a host of locally focused articles.

MSN's Slate site includes several years' worth of articles, including Christopher Hitchens's "Not Even a Hedgehog: The Stupidity of Ronald Reagan" and "Ron and Mikhail's Excellent Adventure: How Reagan Won the Cold War" by Fred Kaplan.

CNN.com features a package full of galleries, stories, video and audio clips. The "in his own words" gallery is a nice touch, offering pictures of the former president next to some of his more memorable quotations.

The New York Times has a slick flash presentation that offers five short videos on different aspects of Reagan's life including an interesting segment about his early days in Hollywood. The Times's Steven Weisman narrates all of the segments.

Oliver North reminisces about the "greatest president of my lifetime" in a three-part series on Fox News. The site also offers Fox fans an opportunity to pay tribute Reagan in a segment called Mourning the Gipper.

ABC News offers a couple of interesting pieces on Alzheimer's -- one on Reagan's battle with the disease -- and another focusing on ways to stop the disease.

CBS News resuscitates a 1989 poll claiming that Reagan had a 68 percent approval rating when he left office.

MSNBC is chockablock with Reagan special features, including a useful interactive "where are they now" guide to some Gipper-era luminaries (about three-quarters of the way down this article), both famous and infamous, including Alexander Haig, Caspar Weinberger, Margaret Thatcher and John Hinckley Jr. Also see the BBC's story on the special relationship between Thatcher and Reagan, as well as interesting insights on Reagan's international stature.

--washingtonpost.com Staff Writer David McGuire contributed to this article.

June 12, 2004 at 11:19 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (10) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 11, 2004

Five Short-Range Wireless Standards Seen Combining

Yahoo! News - Five Short-Range Wireless Standards Seen Combining

By Lucas van Grinsven, European Technology Correspondent
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Five short-range wireless connection technologies are fighting for the industry limelight, but sector specialists said on Friday that companies would eventually combine the five to make life easier.

Automatic wireless connections between electronic devices are the Holy Grail of the computer and consumer electronics industry.

Companies hope consumers will buy new devices once they are able to listen to their music collections anywhere in the house or on the road, see DVDs and photo albums on any screen, or program their hard disk recorders from a Web site.

This brave new world, in which a car's lights, speakers and cell phone are all connected to the dashboard with wireless chips, may be here in a few years, or in some cases sooner.

"We haven't even scratched the surface," Paul Marino, manager of connectivity at Philips semiconductors unit, told Reuters at a Wireless Connectivity industry show.

In many cases, consumers will not be aware of the connection, said Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee alliance, a group of companies promoting a ultra-low-power connection that can be built into lamps, fire alarms or heating systems.

"We're trying to submerge the wireless part of it. Consumers are not supposed to think wireless, just functionality," he told Reuters. They should be able to buy two smoke detectors and connect them by pressing one button, he added.

The ZigBee technology, backed by Motorola, Honeywell, Samsung Electronics, ABB, Invensys and Mitsubishi Electric, will also be used in lighting and energy systems in new buildings in two to three years, he said.

NETWORKS NEEDED

ZigBee already brings benefits when used in a single location in just a few devices. Other wireless technologies rely on the "network effect," which makes them useful only when plenty of other devices have the same built-in technology.

Wireless LAN, or Wi-Fi, is an example of a short-range wireless technology that has gained sufficient popularity. Most new portable computers have it built in, which reinforces its future as the standard wireless connection to the Internet.

Many consumers are hooking a $100 Wi-Fi base station to their broadband Internet modem. Electronics companies in the Home Working Group will build Wi-Fi into their products so consumers can stream Internet video and music to their televisions and music systems.

Electronics makers are pushing two more short-range wireless technologies, Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband.

Ultra Wideband is a year away from launch and, unlike Bluetooth, can transfer vast amounts of data between devices, which is needed to stream video from a DVD player or transfer pictures from a digital camera to a computer.

The devices have to be a few meters apart, which means it will not compete with Wi-Fi, which covers a 100 meter radius.

Bluetooth is an energy-efficient replacement of wire connections for modest amounts of information. It is used between cell phones and peripherals such as microphones, for hands-free calling in cars and to control industrial equipment, among other connections.

PROBLEMS

Bluetooth has been around the longest, but problems with interoperability between devices have showed it is not enough to sell millions of Bluetooth-enabled products. Consumers and wholesale buyers such as car makers are frustrated that some microphones fail to work with certain phones. Also, it is hardly intuitive how to pair devices so that they can work together.

Wi-Fi home networks can suffer from similar problems. Hooking one computer to a broadband modem is something many consumers manage, but adding more boxes requires the computer network skills of the technologically savvy.

Coming to the rescue is yet another wireless technology, called Near Field Communications (NFC). It is backed by Sony, Nokia (news - web sites) and Philips, while Visa is keen to use it for secure wireless payment systems.

Holding two devices a few centimeters from each other allows NFC chips to connect and automatically execute all the procedures that consumers find so hard to do, such as pairing Bluetooth devices, initiating payment protocols between a phone and a shop till or adding a new product to a home network. "There are strong signs that the first commercial products will be available in the latter part of this year," said Christophe Duverne, marketing manager for identification products at Philips Semiconductors.

It will take a while before all these technologies work seamlessly together. In any case, the forest of wireless standards needs no new additions.

Said Marino: "We have to stop inventing new technologies, and now innovate with what we have."

June 11, 2004 at 09:19 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink | TrackBack (19) | Top of page | Blog Home

Company secrets for sale

Company secrets for sale

Just buy old laptops

By Nick Farrell: Thursday 10 June 2004, 09:05

CORPORATE SPIES interested in lifting company information should not bother with trying to hack systems, they should just wait until their target sells off its old laptops.
According to Reuters, Stockholm-based Pointsec Mobile Technologies said that shed-loads of sensitive data had fallen into its paws after it bought more than 100 laptops from internet and public auctions in the past two months.

Pointsec is a security company and it bought up the laptops as a publicity stunt to show how insecure data was on ancient laptops.

The Pointsec spinsters said that the little exercise demonstrated that lost or stolen laptops that wind up at auction every day have hard drives with little security, giving identity thieves and fraudsters easy access.

Apparently the company techies found sensitive details from 70 of the 100 machines it bought. An eBay auction netted it data that apparently once belonged to one of Europe's largest insurance companies.

It included customers' pension plans, payroll records, personnel details, login codes and administration passwords for the company's Intranet. On other laptops were found excel spreadsheets and lots of personal data.

Some companies thought they had wiped the hard drives, but in most cases the data was completely recoverable.

A Pointsec spokesman said that unclaimed laptops which were lost on the train or at the airport, proved to be the biggest goldmine. Such a sale at Gatwick Airport netted one laptop which could be opened using a fairly basic password recovery program.

June 11, 2004 at 09:28 AM in Online crime | Permalink | TrackBack (13) | Top of page | Blog Home

TD Waterhouse signs for URU identity checking service from GB Group and BT

finextra news: TD Waterhouse signs for URU identity checking service from GB Group and BT

02 June 2004 - TD Waterhouse, the UK's second largest execution-only broker, is to use the URU system from GB Group and BT to verify the identity of new subscribers and comply with money laundering rules.

URU works by asking a series of questions and checking the individual's answers against national reference databases such as mortality, electricity, telephone and financial industry data sets, and passport and driving licence details.

TD Waterhouse says it will employ the system in its account opening process.

GB Group's chief executive, Richard Law says this contract and other recent deals in the finance and telecoms sector provide "a strong indication of URU's effectiveness in tackling money laundering and fraud and of its potential to generate future revenues for the group".

June 11, 2004 at 07:48 AM in Phishing & identity theft | Permalink | TrackBack (18) | Top of page | Blog Home

Danish banks develop net-ID scheme

finextra news: Danish banks develop net-ID scheme

10 June 2004 - Denmark's commercial banks are rolling out an online ID scheme for customers to use when transacting with other organisations on the Internet.

Under the scheme, the two million Danes who are regular net bank users can use their net bank access codes to give unambiguous proof of their identity to an organisation offering services via the Internet.

Net-ID is based on the security system behind the net banking scheme and was developed by Danish payments body PBS in conjunction with the Danish banking sector.

Health insurance provider Sygesikringen "danmark", has already tested the system and will be the first organisation to offer members direct logon to their own member data using net-ID.

Kirsten �lgaard, VP, Sygeforsikringen "danmark, says: "With two million net bank users, we give a substantial number of our members fast and easy access to their own member data by offering net ID. We know that many members want to have this ease of access - and I'm sure an increasing number of users will opt for net-ID as it gains ground."

June 11, 2004 at 07:46 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (1) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 10, 2004

IE flaws open back door to adware

IE flaws open back door to adware

By Robert Lemos, CNET News.com
A toolbar that triggers pop-up ads is being planted on victims' PCs through two new security holes in Internet Explorer

An adware purveyor has apparently used two previously unknown security flaws in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to install a toolbar on victims' computers that triggers pop-up ads, researchers said this week.

One flaw lets an attacker run a program on a victim's machine, while the other enables malicious code to "cross zones," or run with privileges higher than normal. Together, the two issues allow for the creation of a Web site that, when visited by victims, can upload and install programs to the victim's computer, according to two analyses of the security holes.

The possibility that a group or company has apparently used the vulnerabilities as a way to sneak unwanted advertising software, or adware, onto a user's computer could be grounds for criminal charges, said Stephen Toulouse, security program manager for Microsoft.

"We consider that any use of an exploit to run a program is a criminal use," he said. "We are going to work aggressively with law enforcement to prosecute individuals or companies that do so."

Microsoft learned of the issue when a security researcher posted an analysis of the problem to the Full Disclosure security mailing list on Monday. The software giant has already contacted the FBI and is in the "early stages" of building the case, Toulouse said. The company is considering creating a patch quickly and releasing it as soon as possible, rather than waiting for its usual monthly update.

The flaws are apparently being used to install the I-Lookup search bar, an adware toolbar that is added to IE's other toolbars. The adware changes the Internet Explorer home page, connects to one of six advertising sites and frequently displays pop-ups -- mainly pornographic ads, according to an adware advisory on antivirus company Symantec's Web site.

On Tuesday, security information group Secunia released an advisory about the problem, rating the two flaws "extremely critical."

"Secunia has confirmed the vulnerabilities in a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0," the group wrote. "It has been reported that the preliminary SP2 (a major security update being developed by Microsoft) prevents exploitation by denying access."

The flaws could let any attacker with a Web site send an email message or an instant message with a link that, when clicked on by an Internet Explorer user, would cause a program to run on that victim's computer.

The original analysis, written by a Netherland student researcher, Jelmer Kuperus, who found that the type of programming needed to take advantage of at least one of the flaws required sophisticated knowledge of the Windows operating system.

"While sophisticated, it's so easy to use, anyone with basic computer science can set up such a page, now that the code is out there in the open," Kuperus wrote in an email interview with ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com. "It's just a matter of changing two or three (Internet addresses) and uploading another" executable file.

Kuperus, who used an email account based in the Netherlands, wrote in an email on Monday that he had been tipped off to the adware Trojan horse by an unnamed individual.

"Being rather sceptical, I carelessly clicked on the link only to witness how it automatically installed adware on my PC!" he wrote.

The Internet address from which the adware Trojan horse was downloaded resolves to I-Lookup.com, a search engine registered in Costa Rica that antivirus firms Symantec and PestPatrol have linked to aggressive advertising software. Two of the top three searches on the site relate to removing such programs, according to I-Lookup.com's own statistics.

A domain name search shows i-Lookup.com's parent company to be Aztec Marketing, but Pest Patrol links the site with iClicks Internet. Emails sent to both companies for comment were not immediately answered.

Kuperus believes that i-Lookup.com's parent company may not be directly responsible for the adware-installing Trojan horse program, but that it could be rewarding the creator through an affiliate program.

"It does pass along a referrer code when downloading," he said. "Whomever created this probably is getting money for every install, so if the folks at (i-Lookup.com) would be willing, they would be able to track down the perpetrators."

Microsoft's Toulouse said Internet Explorer users could harden the software against such attacks by following instructions on the company's site. Other browsers available on Windows, such as Opera and Mozilla, do not contain the flaws.

June 10, 2004 at 11:00 PM in Microsoft | Permalink | TrackBack (37) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 09, 2004

High-speed Internet growth picks up in US: FCC

High-speed Internet growth picks up in US: FCC

WASHINGTON (AFP) - High-speed Internet service gathered pace in the last six months of 2003, with phone companies making headway against their cable rivals, a government report showed.

In its twice-yearly survey, the Federal Communications Commission found that so-called broadband connections grew at a 20 percent rate from July 1 to December 31, 2003.

The number of homes and small businesses connected to the Internet via high-speed service climbed to 28.2 million. That was up from 23.5 million in the first six months of 2003. There are some 107 million households in the United States, according to the Census Bureau.

Cable carriers added 2.7 million customers in the latest period, boosting their market-leading total to 16.4 million high-speed lines in service.

Phone companies, meanwhile, captured 1.8 million new digitial subscriber line (DSL) customers to end at 9.5 million. Their market share rose slightly, up to 33.7 percent from 32.7 percent.

The gains mostly came at the expense of satellite, wireless and other alternative high-speed suppliers.

The cable industry maintained roughly 58 percent of the market -- the same as in the first six months of 2003 -- even though phone companies cut prices to attract more subscribers.

Yet recent signs point to greater gains by phone companies in the first half of 2004, owing largely to even more aggressive price cuts.

In the first quarter, for example, DSL providers signed up a record 1.17 million customers, matching the cable industry, according to Leichtman Research Group.

June 9, 2004 at 02:12 PM in Internet evolution | Permalink | TrackBack (5) | Top of page | Blog Home

Google Leads Web Search But Challenges Loom -S&P

Yahoo! News - Google Leads Web Search But Challenges Loom -S&P

Mon Jun 7, 7:38 PM ETAdd Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - While nearly half of all Web search engine users prefer industry leader Google Inc. over its rivals, the soon-to-be public company faces challenges as it expands into new businesses, Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services said on Monday.

Forty-eight percent of search engine users say they use Google most overall, compared with 20 percent for Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), 14 percent for Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) MSN and 7 percent for AOL (NYSE:TWX - news), according to a nationwide survey commissioned by Standard & Poor's and conducted by online market research firm InsightExpress.

The survey showed that users favor Google for the relevance and accuracy of its results. Nevertheless, more than 6 of 10 Google users said they would switch search engines if a better service was introduced.

On other fronts, fewer than one-quarter of search engine users would be very likely, 8 percent, or somewhat likely, 15 percent, to sign up for and regularly use a new personal e-mail service if it offered -- as is promised by Google's test e-mail service Gmail -- unlimited storage, e-mail search and targeted advertising.

Google, which is marching toward its much-anticipated initial public offering, also is testing a new comparison shopping service called Froogle and is affiliated with an upstart social networking service called Orkut.

"We believe Google and its shares will also face risks relating to commoditization of the company's offerings, difficulties related to its introduction of new products and services, and competition from the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft," said Scott Kessler, S&P's Internet software and services equity analyst.

S&P's preliminary estimate for Google's market value is $33 billion to $40 billion.

June 9, 2004 at 02:10 PM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (17) | Top of page | Blog Home

Google mulls RSS support

Google mulls RSS support | CNET News.com

By Stefanie Olsen and Evan Hansen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Google is considering renewing support for the popular RSS Web publishing format in some of its services, CNET News.com has learned, marking the latest twist in a burgeoning standards war over technology that could change how people read the news.

RSS, or Rich Site Summary, lets online publishers automatically send Web content to subscribers, giving readers a powerful tool to compile news headlines on the fly from several sources at once. Next to Atom, which launched as a challenger last year, RSS has become a leading candidate to form the basis of an industry standard for an entirely new style of Web publishing.

In April, Google seemingly chose sides, dropping RSS support for new--but not old--subscribers of its Blogger publishing tool in favor of rival Atom. But now there are signs that Google may be poised for a change of heart, as support has grown inside the company to restore equal footing to both formats.

According to an internal Google e-mail seen by CNET News.com, the company has been considering the change and last month assigned at least one staffer to write a memo summarizing technical details relating to RSS. The request came amid a broader discussion touching on extending RSS support for new Blogger subscribers and Google Groups, which supports Atom but not RSS in a test version of the service.

"I did ask (a Google product manager) to develop a summary...about RSS feeds, including the ways they are produced and consumed, which platforms/devices they run on, and information on the various formats (RSS 1.0, 2.0, Atom)," Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's vice president of product management, wrote on May 22. The message was part of a thread addressed to Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, CEO Eric Schmidt and others.

As of June 4, it appeared no decision had yet been made on the issue. A Google representative declined to comment.

Were Google to support both RSS and Atom equally, it might help ease growing pains for a swiftly rising movement of Web publishing. It would also restore Google to the status of a neutral party in the midst of a bitter fight between backers of RSS and Atom, who have been divided since last summer when critics of RSS banded together to create the alternative format. Since then, many blog sites and individuals have rallied behind Atom.

Google is central to the debate because of its mounting influence in the online community and within Web publishing circles as the owner of Blogger. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, which is gearing up for a $2.7 billion initial public offering later this year, recently redesigned Blogger with simplified features to help newbie Web surfers publish regular accounts of their lives online, a move to appeal to wider audiences. Google also has plans to introduce a raft of community services, including e-mail discussion groups (Google Groups 2), free Web-based e-mail and search personalization tools, which could eventually tap the syndication format.

Feeds meet needs?
A slew of feed readers or news aggregators has emerged to take advantage of the technology and spur consumer demand. Newsgator, for example, lets people subscribe to various Web logs and news sites and have the feeds delivered to their e-mail via a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook, at a cost of $29. Topix.net lets people parse news into 150,000 different categories, even down to a ZIP code, and create their own information site. Pluck recently released a set of browser add-ons for Microsoft's Internet Explorer with an RSS reader. Many news readers support both RSS and Atom, although some support only one or the other.

Despite the fissure, RSS has been gaining allegiance among many computer makers and online publishers. In recent weeks, Time magazine, Reuters, Variety.com and Smartmoney.com have started supporting the format, syndicating their headlines to news aggregators and individuals. In January, Yahoo started testing RSS feeds, allowing visitors for the first time to create personalized MyYahoo pages with automatic news feeds from third parties of their choice. Yahoo also supports Atom feeds. Computer companies including Microsoft, Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems also support RSS.

The technology is becoming more important because it essentially allows Web surfers to get information how and when they want it, without surfing to Web sites. People can set up a Web page and aggregate headlines from multiple sites, and click only on those that interest them. Publishers are embracing the technology to drive more traffic to their sites, amidst media overdrive on the Web. Many publishers and advertisers are even evaluating ways to make money from syndicating news feeds with ads or sponsorships. For example, publishers could seed advertisements into RSS and Atom news feeds.

Yet without interoperability between the news readers, consumers could eventually hit a brick wall. If a publisher's syndicated news feeds are available only in one format, then the consumer using another would have to install an updated news reader.

"From a layman's perspective, if this is going to move out of the geek space, these two warring parties need to come together and realize it's the applications that will determine the standard," said Charlene Li, principal analyst for Forrester Research. "It shouldn't be polarized into a Betamax vs. VHS discussion."

RSS was developed as a Web scripting format in the late '90s by a team of Netscape engineers and eventually came under the domain of Dave Winer's blog software company, Userland, when Netscape's RSS team disbanded. Last year, Winer transferred the format to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, where he is a fellow. RSS is also now available for use under a "creative commons" license, which frees it from commercial copyright claims.

Sam Ruby, an IBM software engineer, launched Atom last summer as a way of bypassing what he and other critics called Winer's de facto control over RSS. Industry watchers say the format is more robust than RSS, with more tagging capabilities in syndication, and is more promising because it's on a fast track to becoming an open standard. Atom backers have proceeded with plans to bring their technology under the auspices of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Detractors of RSS argue that the format is closed because it is essentially governed by one man, Winer.

In May, the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) announced a proposal for a new IETF Atom publishing format and working group under the IETF. Ruby and others have said that the working group would draw on the experience of RSS to help create a single, interoperable format. Ruby could not immediately be reached for comment.

Winer himself has lobbied for a merger of the rival formats, in part because of concern that Google's dominance would influence a greater split in the Web publishing industry. In a worst-case scenario, Winer described how in the future, people might need to download two different news reader applications to compile headlines from publications supporting competing formats.

Winer said that he's asked the company repeatedly to get behind RSS and quell confusion over competing formats, with no answer.

The "RSS 2.0 format is by far the most widely used format. There was a time when it looked like things would coalesce, but then things started to fragment, largely due to Google," Winer said. "RSS deserves Google's respect, and it's not getting it."

CNET News.com's Paul Festa contributed to this report.

June 9, 2004 at 01:25 PM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | TrackBack (15) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 07, 2004

Microsoft Discloses Talks with SAP

Yahoo! News - Microsoft Discloses Talks with SAP

By Reed Stevenson
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. and German business software company SAP held discussions last year about a potential merger but broke off talks a few months ago, the world's largest software maker said on Monday.

Such talks are usually kept under wraps, but Microsoft said it disclosed the talks with SAP because it expected the information to come out in pretrial discovery of the U.S. Justice Department (news - web sites)'s lawsuit to block Oracle Corp.'s hostile takeover bid for rival PeopleSoft Inc.

Analysts expressed little surprise that the talks had taken place, but said that it was difficult to tell how the information could help or hinder arguments in the government antitrust trial against Oracle, which began in federal court in San Francisco on Monday.

"Companies in the software industry, they all talk to each other all the time," said Nathan Schneiderman, analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities.

Analysts said Oracle might argue that it needs to buy PeopleSoft in order to compete more effectively against a potentially larger rival in Microsoft.

But they said the Justice Department could point to talks between Microsoft and SAP -- Germany's largest software maker and major provider of business software for accounting, inventory, payroll, production and other functions -- as a sign industry consolidation could eliminate competition.

"Oracle's side is going to say this shows Microsoft is going to be a force to reckoned with," Schneiderman said.

Oracle is arguing that its proposed bid for its rival will not dominate the market, given competition from larger software companies.

Microsoft said of the talks with SAP: "A few months ago, Microsoft ended these discussions due to the complexity of the potential transaction and subsequent integration. There are no intentions to resume these talks."

Analysts added that Microsoft's decision to drop merger talks reflected the huge difficulties the companies would face in combining their software businesses.

"For SAP it would have made little sense," Torsten Schellscheidt, software analyst with WestLB Securities, "Integrating the technology would have been very complicated."

Last month, Microsoft and SAP said they would work more closely to make it easier and cheaper for customers to run SAP on Microsoft software and make it easier for data to be exchanged the two systems.

(Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in Frankfurt)

June 7, 2004 at 09:18 PM in Microsoft | Permalink | TrackBack (5) | Top of page | Blog Home

Broadband options improve for country dwellers

TheStar.com - Broadband options improve for country dwellers

ELLEN ROSEMAN

Laura and Tom Byrne are lawyers in Columbus, Ohio. Each summer, they pack up their kids and head to a cottage they own on an island in Lake Temagami, an hour's drive north of North Bay.
"We have a phone, but no electricity," says Laura Byrne. "We use a generator for the computer and we have propane lights and fridge. We're roughing it with all the modern conveniences."

They had no reliable Internet service until they installed a satellite system earlier this year. The cost was $1,650 for the dish, plus $130 for monthly service.

With a wireless router, both husband and wife can be on the Internet at the same time.

"The connection is as fast as from my office," Byrne says. "This opens a lot of doors. When we're gone, it will make it easier to handle the business."

If you want to work from a remote location, a good Internet connection is essential. But high-speed service by telephone or cable is not always available.

That's where a satellite-based connection comes in. More expensive than a dial-up Internet connection, it can pay for itself with the extra business revenue you generate.

"For anyone who wants high-speed Internet in a rural area, this is the only alternative," said a reader, who moved from a downtown Toronto condo to a country house near Stratford last year.

"Cost should not be an issue if you need it to operate a business from a rural setting. Besides, you can write off the cost as part of your expenses."

Hughes Electronics Corp., a large U.S. company, makes the Direcway satellite dish. It's sold in Canada by a number of licenced distributors, including Bell ExpressVu.

"High-speed Internet by telephone covers almost 80 per cent of our territories in Ontario and Quebec," says Yannick Boutin, a Bell spokesperson.

"But with the satellite solution, called DirecPC, almost anyone can get it."

Keep in mind that the dish must have a clear line of sight to the sky where the satellite is located.

The Byrnes worried about having to cut down trees on their two-acre property. But the company that installed their satellite, Galaxy Broadband Communications Inc. in Oakville, managed to work around the trees.

"If there's no clear line of sight, you can always put up a dish in your neighbour's yard and run a long cable to your house," says president Rick Hodgkinson.

Galaxy launched the satellite modem for people working in remote areas last October. It has close to 1,000 customers, including a woman who lives on a mountain top without electricity or telephone.

"She's a documentation writer for a large software company," Hodgkinson says. "With our service, she can send and receive large files ... instead of making a treacherous weekly commute to town."

Hughes has introduced a system with improved upload speeds, he says. That's important since the service uses a phone line to request information from, or send files to, the Web.

The upload is about twice as fast as a dial-up connection � "at best," says Hodgkinson � while the download of information through the satellite is about 10 times as fast.

(For more information on high-speed Internet by satellite, go to http://www.bell.ca and search for DirecPC. You can also go to http://www.galaxybroadband.ca or http://www.lincsat.com.)

Another choice for remote users is the accelerated Internet service offered by Netscape Online. Using technology created and manufactured by Slipstream Data of Waterloo, it can improve the speed of a regular dial-up connection without any additional hardware.

Internet access is made faster by compressing images and text on Web pages before they are sent to your phone line. The data travels over phone lines faster because there is less of it.

(For more information, go to http://join.netscape.ca.)

Ian Sanderson lives on a farm near Durham, northwest of Toronto. He recently switched to Netscape Online for a monthly cost of $18.95, less than what he used to pay for his Internet service.

"I can load pages in the blink of an eye," he says. "It's a lot faster than the dial-up I had before."

Sanderson works as a police officer in Durham. He uses the Internet to play online games and get e-mail, not for business.

"I'm as rural as you can get, definitely the middle of nowhere," he says. "I live off a major highway, way down a dirt road."

Accelerated dial-up is a new category of Internet service. There are many regional providers, but Netscape is the only national service.

"It's more mature in the United States, where high-speed Internet is more expensive than in Canada," says Steven Koles, general manager of Netscape.

According to his research, 35 per cent of Canadian households do not have access to high-speed Internet by telephone or cable. As for satellite, it's expensive to install and may have performance issues (because of the slow upload).

Launched last November, the accelerated Internet from Netscape is available in 1,000 locations from Victoria, B.C. to St. John's, Nfld. You can check the Web site to see if it's offered where you live.

"There's nothing to install, no hardware, unlike high-speed Internet," says Koles. "It's all done with software."

Next week, we'll continue our series on moving to the country. How can you buy a plot of land for under $20,000 and pay for it with a credit card?

June 7, 2004 at 08:05 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (24) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 06, 2004

Human Responses to Technology Scrutinized

Yahoo! News - Human Responses to Technology Scrutinized

By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post Staff Writer
Not long ago, a British poll found that three quarters of people have hit their computers in frustration.

A German carmaker recalled an automobile with a computerized female voice issuing navigation information -- because many men refused to take directions from "a woman."

A study found that people try to be nice to their own computers: They are more likely to report problems with the machine when asked about it while working on a different computer.

Psychologists, marketers and computer scientists are coming to realize that people respond to technology in intensely emotional ways. At a conscious level, people know their computers and cars are inanimate, but some part of the human brain seems to respond to machines as if they were human.

"The way people interact with technology is the way they interact with each other," said Rosalind Picard, director of Affective Computing Research at the MIT Media Lab, during a recent lecture in Washington organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (news - web sites).

The tech world is slowly catching up to this insight as well. From automated voice systems that greet callers by saying, "Hi, this is Amtrak. I'm Julie!" to sophisticated programs that can register human emotions, applications of "affective computing" are growing rapidly.

Marketers see a gold mine in this research, which holds the promise of increasing sales in the same way that cheerful and helpful salespeople at a store are more likely to sell mechandise than are clerks who are surly.

At the same time, the work raises troubling ethical questions. They range from whether it is deceitful to encourage people to interact with technology as if it were human to deeper concerns about what it would mean if computers could really form emotional "relationships" with people.

Today, such concerns seem remote, because most technologies are almost deliberately antisocial -- computers do not respond to emotional cues such as frustration, anger or anything else -- and regularly act "inappropriately." (What person, other than one of Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites)'s movie characters, would ever say, "You have performed an illegal operation"?)

In one familiar example, cited by Picard: You're on deadline. A character barges in when you are very busy. It offers useless advice and does not notice when you get annoyed. It is impervious to hints. You explicitly tell the character to go away and, in response, it winks and dances a jig.

Picard flashed a slide of the ubiquitous Microsoft Office Assistant, the paperclip icon with the sly smile -- an example of a program oblivious to a computer user's emotions. Picard's research has shown that as annoyance with a computer grows, people grip the mouse more tightly and tense up in their chairs. Other studies have found that large numbers of people have kicked their computers or hurled abuse at them.

Scientists are responding in two ways to demands for "emotionally intelligent" computing. The first involves designing ways for a computer to read a person's emotions. Special sensors on seats can deduce from a person's posture whether she is interested or bored. Other sensors measure heart rate to tell when someone is stressed; a camera can determine whether a brow is furrowed. Through complex computer processing, explained Karen Liu, a graduate student in Picard's lab, these signals are registered as signals of confusion or frustration.

"In a way," Liu said, "we are giving machines eyes and ears."

Other software can then respond appropriately. At the MIT Media Lab, which studies how electronic information overlaps with the everyday world, robots are being programmed to help people recognize when they are stressed and to remind them to relax and avoid repetitive-strain injuries.

Similar techniques are being used to enhance teaching software -- by detecting when a student's interest is flagging.

The second, cruder approach involves encouraging people to believe that machines respond in social ways. The automated reservation systems used by Amtrak and many airlines fall into this category. When done right, said Clifford Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford University and a pioneer in understanding the ways people relate to machines, users go along with the deception. Done wrong -- when "Julie" cannot respond to a simple question, for instance -- people get even more frustrated than they would be with a machine that makes no pretense at being human.

"It turns out if 'Julie' speaks in that machine-like speech, people hate it when it says, 'I,' " Nass said. "They think it's clear you are not an 'I.' When it is recorded speech, people are more comfortable with the 'I' -- up to the point it fails them."

The second approach also plays on people's vanity. People usually prefer a spellchecker program that occasionally compliments them on getting a tough word right, Nass said.

Matching a person's personality with advertising messages might radically increase sales, Nass said. For instance, Amazon.com might sell more books if it found out whether a customer is an introvert or an extrovert by asking whether he prefers going to a party or reading a good book -- and then tailoring descriptions of products accordingly. Introverts tend to like factual messages; they distrust flowery language. Extroverts are the opposite, Nass said.

The researcher said that software can help students learn better when a virtual "teacher" is accompanied by a virtual "student." That way, Nass said, the "teacher" can occasionally direct questions to the virtual student, and the real student does not feel picked on all the time. And the virtual student creates an illusion of a classroom setting, in which the real student can receive praise from both the "teacher" and a virtual peer.

Such techniques, Nass said, are really no different than the routine deceptions in human interactions. "We spend enormous amounts of time teaching children to deceive -- it's called being polite or social. The history of all advertising is about deceiving. In education, it's often important to deceive people -- sometimes you say, 'Boy you are really doing good,' not because you meant it but because you thought it would be helpful," Nass said.

"When I go into Nordstroms, I am treated fabulously. Do those people really like me?"

June 6, 2004 at 11:30 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (5) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 04, 2004

Power to go: mobiles that do it all

Times Online - World

By Leo Lewis
The British can only watch in wonder as Japan turns the simple handset into a technological marvel

IN A narrow shopping street in the Mita district of Tokyo, the owner of the three-storey Red Frog karaoke box is preparing to go out of business.
Hideo Hotaka does not blame his misfortune on deflation, recession or even the elaborate roadworks on the street outside. The problem, he says, is mobile phones. His former customers, especially the teenagers, used to come to karaoke to listen to the latest pop songs in a big group. Now they download the week�s top ten directly on to their phones.

If they want to sing along, the latest mobile phones have that covered, too: Toshiba has introduced a device that turns the phone handset into a microphone and allows downloaded songs to be streamed through a normal television � complete with the words and the bouncing ball telling you what to sing next.

Mr Hotaka is not alone in his plight. Two shops down, Emiko Takeda�s magazine shop has run into difficulties because of a rising tide of state-of-the-art �shoplifting�.

The picture definition on Japanese camera-phones is now so high that people can stand in a shop, surreptitiously photograph the pages of a magazine and then later read their ill-gotten literature from the screens of their mobile phones.

Japan�s booksellers have risen as one to demand that the Government criminalises this practice. Until legislation is passed they will have to rely on polite but ineffective signs in their shops.

�The problem is that the criminals are respectable people,� Ms Takeda said. �If it were some kid who shoved a magazine into his bag and ran off, you could call the police. You can�t really do that when the shoplifter is a housewife with a flashy mobile phone.�

As the mobile screens have improved � some are the same quality as a digital camera � so the thefts have become more ambitious. Students, for example, are finding that entire textbooks can be photographed and read later at palm-sized convenience.

The publishing industry is suffering badly from the advance of mobile phones in Japan. Where once the train carriages were full of people reading comics or newspapers, passengers now concentrate solely on the screens of their phones. Mobile phone operators say that text-message volumes correspond almost exactly with the commuter rush-hour peaks and troughs.

The latest phones come equipped with a tuner that can � fuzzily � pick up television broadcasts, and several operators have introduced phones with navigation software that shows the user as a moving red blip on an ultra-detailed street atlas of Japan.

The Japanese market is comfortably the most advanced in the world. As the phones themselves have become capable of ever greater feats of engineering and technology, their presence in daily life has become ever more pervasive. Industry experts believe that Japan�s market today is what Britain�s will look like in about 18 months� time.

The third-generation broadband technology whose introduction has been endlessly postponed in Britain has been in action since mid-2002 in Japan. Some services � such as one that translates a cat�s meowing � have died a death; others � such as one that shows videos of all the baseball home runs hit on a given evening � are a wild success.

The pace continues unabated. In June alone, the Japanese public can look forward to a chip from Hitachi that will let mobile phones play video games at the same frame rate as a PlayStation, software that will upload medical records to their doctor�s computer before they reach the surgery, a program that turns the handset into a voice-activated television remote control and a phone equipped with translation software for six languages.

For Shigeru Katayama, an advertising executive from Mitaka, the morning ritual would be unthinkable without his mobile. Before leaving the house he checks the weather forecast before consulting a chat room to discover which coffee shops in his area have cheap deals on that morning.

On the way into the office, he can drop into a convenience store, point his phone at a machine and be presented with concert tickets for the next evening. If it all makes him late for work, Mr Katayama could always call his boss and have a live video conference call from the train.

The floor manager at Sato Musen, a sprawling electronics shop in Tokyo, is convinced that mobile phones have made otaku or �geeks� out of the entire Japanese population: �Some features they will never use, but people love the idea that it exists. I think the Japanese market is ahead of the rest of the world not just because Japanese phone makers are the best, but because as customers, the Japanese are the most adventurous.�

June 4, 2004 at 08:49 PM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (12) | Top of page | Blog Home

Canadian Netizens Download Page

NFO CFgroup - Services

2003

2004

June 4, 2004 at 02:27 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (19) | Top of page | Blog Home

Q&A: Microsoft Announces Leadership Changes that Reinforce Commitment to Business Applications

Q&A: Microsoft Announces Leadership Changes that Reinforce Commitment to Business Applications

REDMOND, Wash., June 3, 2004 -- Microsoft today announced a restructuring of leadership designed to optimize the company's focus on delivering business applications to small and mid-market segment businesses. Effective immediately, Doug Burgum, Microsoft senior vice president responsible for Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS), will report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, as Burgum continues to drive Microsoft's overall business applications vision and strategy to transform the company into a business applications market leader. Orlando Ayala, senior vice president responsible for Microsoft's Worldwide Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partners group, will now report to Burgum, as Ayala expands his role to include chief operating officer (COO) for Microsoft Business Solutions, where he will be responsible for MBS strategy around sales, services, marketing and operations.

To learn more about how these leadership changes will impact Microsoft's strategy to lead in the small and mid-market segment business applications space, PressPass spoke with Ayala and Burgum.

PressPass: How do today's announcements signify Microsoft's overall commitment to business applications?

Doug Burgum: Microsoft's commitment to developing and delivering world-class business applications for small and mid-market segment customers began several years ago with the acquisitions of Great Plains and Navision, and has progressed over the past few years with investments in enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), online services, retail management and small business. Additionally, through expansion into new geographies, our commitment to bringing business applications to small and mid-market segment customers throughout the world is unwavering.

The partnership between my team's deep understanding of business applications and Orlando's strong track record of executing on, growing and developing Microsoft sales organizations is a winning combination that will deliver on the goals and strategies we have put into place for FY05 and beyond.

PressPass: Microsoft says it is strengthening its commitment to business applications. How?

Burgum: Microsoft is strengthening its commitment to business applications in a number of significant ways. First, Microsoft continues to make industry-leading levels of investment in research and development to enhance and further develop both existing and future business applications. We have major upgrades to our ERP and CRM solutions planned for fiscal year 2005. In the coming months we'll be releasing enhanced versions of Microsoft Business Solutions--Great Plains, Microsoft Business Solutions--Navision, and Microsoft Business Solutions--Solomon. Our current products and these future products will not only provide great solutions for business customers, but will provide a platform for ISV partners to extend and build upon, helping us grow and maintain a healthy ISV ecosystem. In addition, for the next five years Microsoft is investing US$2 billion per year in sales, marketing and development efforts specific to the small and mid-market segments. These investments will help us fulfill our mission of serving that market segment with technology and services that are truly empowering and innovative.

PressPass: What is the significance of this leadership change to Doug Burgum's role within Microsoft Business Solutions?

Burgum: As a direct report to Steve Ballmer, I'll continue to lead the Microsoft Business Solutions P&L and drive our overall business applications vision and strategy as we complete our transformation into a business-applications leader. This move will ensure that the MBS team's proven track record in the business applications industry will be leveraged to its fullest extent.

We are also tightening the alignment between Microsoft Business Solutions and the WW Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partners (SMS&P) group. Over the past 18 months, we have worked closely with Orlando Ayala and his team, with the goal of helping our small and mid-market segment customers take advantage of the power of technology and services offered by Microsoft Business Solutions. As we move forward, we will further drive collaboration between our two groups in ways that benefit our customers and the partners that serve them. Of course, Orlando's new dual role will help ensure these synergies are realized.

PressPass: What is the role that Orlando Ayala will play within the Worldwide Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partners group and Microsoft Business Solutions?

Orlando Ayala: I will continue to lead Microsoft's Worldwide Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partners group, a global sales and marketing group that focuses on strategy and the broad value proposition we bring to small and mid-market segment companies and the overall partner ecosystem. In addition, as chief operating officer for Microsoft Business Solutions, my role has expanded to include oversight of sales, marketing and operations for that business group. An important component of my new role will be to advocate for stronger synergies between the two groups and across the entire Microsoft organization to help improve the way customers and partners experience Microsoft Business Solutions.

PressPass: How does this reorganization impact Microsoft's channel and ISV partners?

Ayala: The changes announced today will not affect our channel or ISV partners. We remain squarely focused on providing industry-leading technical and business-enablement programs to our broad partner base. Our partner business is integrated across the whole company and this will not change. If anything, the announcement today just reinforces that the MBS partner channel is an important asset to us to cultivate across all partner types, from ISVs to resellers.

For ISVs in particular, we have an unparalleled value proposition to offer them across our platform and within the Microsoft Partner Program. In addition, we will continue to deeply support and engage ISVs on our platform through [Microsoft vice presidents] Eric Rudder and Sanjay Parthasarathy's team.

PressPass: What's the impact the reorganization will have on Microsoft Business Solutions customers?

Burgum: For customers, the new structure announced today will enable tighter integration across the range of Microsoft products and services. The more closely aligned and coordinated our efforts are when we set out to deliver solutions and services to our small and mid-market segment customers around the world, the more successful we will be.

PressPass: What is the overall strategy of Microsoft Business Solutions?

Burgum: Microsoft Business Solutions is focused on delivering integrated business applications to small and mid-market segment companies and divisions of large enterprises. These businesses need software and services to manage their finances and operations and improve customer relationships, resulting in increased productivity, streamlined processes and better business decisions overall. We are in a unique position to offer customers unparalleled value with an integrated platform that extends from Microsoft Windows, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server and the Microsoft Office System.

Together with our global partner network of resellers and independent software vendors (ISVs), Microsoft Business Solutions offers a complete solution of products and services in the areas of financial management, supply chain management, customer relationship management and analytics.

Ayala: Business Applications are integral to Microsoft's future growth and the company's ability to fulfill its mission of enabling people throughout the world to realize their full potential. As COO of Microsoft Business Solutions, I look forward to partnering with Doug and executing against the strong business applications strategy we have in place and delivering world class solutions to small and mid-market segment customers throughout the world.

PressPass: What impact will today's announcement have on Microsoft's overall small and mid-market segment business strategy?

Ayala: I think it's a powerful indication of our unwavering commitment to small and mid-market segment customers worldwide. As a company, we are squarely focused on providing the technology, tools and partner ecosystem that best serve the needs of these customers. Today's announcement signals even further synergy with our business applications business to ensure we are offering the full range of solutions across our value stack to small and mid-market segment customers.

June 4, 2004 at 11:41 AM in Microsoft | Permalink | TrackBack (2) | Top of page | Blog Home

The Ballmer Treatment

Yahoo! News - The Ballmer Treatment

By Cynthia L. Webb, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Steve Ballmer takes his job very seriously (remember the famous "scream" speech?). And to make sure Microsoft Corp. remains the world's dominant software company, he's not afraid to leave his CEO perch and get down in the trenches.

The latest Microsoft unit to get the full-court-press Ballmer treatment is its Business Solutions group, which sells software to small- and mid-sized businesses. At any other company, the unit's modest increase in quarterly revenue would be something to celebrate. But in Redmond, those numbers are a sign of crisis, and Ballmer's decision to intervene surely indicates that Microsoft is not willing to settle for anything short of dominance in the small business market.

In typical fashion, however, Microsoft executives "said Ballmer's involvement does not signal the unit is struggling or needs extra help," The Seattle Times reported. "Ballmer's latest move shows that Microsoft is more committed to making software for smaller businesses," the paper said. "'In no way does this mean retrenchment,' said Orlando Ayala, a senior vice president overseeing the sales force for small and midsize businesses" and the unit's new chief operating officer. Microsoft provided more details on the reshuffle on its Web site.

Crisis or not, Microsoft is making big changes. The unit will cut "100 research and support positions in North Dakota, Ohio and Denmark, executives said. Microsoft will then add the same number of jobs, mostly in sales and marketing, to the unit, which has about 2,000 employees," The Seattle Times reported. The newspaper noted that the unit "is not a moneymaker, and sales of its accounting, e-commerce and other software are minuscule compared with those of Windows or Office products. For the first three months of this year, the unit reported $153 million in revenue -- just a 4 percent increase from a year earlier. It had a net loss of $65 million, compared with a $92 million net loss in the year-ago period. In April, Microsoft lowered its revenue forecast for the division for the quarter ending June 30. Sales should be about $180 million, $25 million less than previously forecast, because of lowered sales expectations in the United States, Chief Financial Officer John Connors said at the time."
� The Seattle Times: Microsoft CEO Moves To Oversee Lagging Division

Ballmer has a long history of getting personally involved in rescuing struggling Microsoft units. "At one point, he even moved his office to Microsoft's RedWest campus to delve into the company's Internet efforts," The Seattle Times reminded readers. From the Post-Intelligencer: "It's also not unusual for Ballmer to become more involved in a group that might not be living up to expectations, said analyst Matt Rosoff of Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland-based research firm. Past examples include the mobility group, which makes software for small devices." Rosoff also talked to InternetNews.com: "When a business division isn't living up to Microsoft's expectations, that's usually what triggers a re-org and draws Steve Ballmer's attention," Rosoff told the news outlet. "I think he wants to keep a closer watch and push them up a level."
� The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Microsoft Increasing Its Bet On Unprofitable Division
� InternetNews.com: Microsoft Business Solutions In Re-Org

The world's largest software company has a plan of attack for the unit: When in doubt, throw more money into the mix. The Business Solutions budget is getting a $50 million infusion, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. "Executives yesterday acknowledged difficulties during the past year but said the changes reflect the big role Microsoft sees such business applications playing in its future. The larger budget will, among other things, put more technical specialists in the field to promote Microsoft Business Solutions software, bolster advertising, and help train the business partners that sell and support Microsoft software. 'We're increasing our bet,' said Doug Burgum, the senior vice president who heads the Microsoft Business Solutions division," The Seattle P-I reported.

CNET's News.com provided some more details on how the business applications unit got its start. "The company entered that market in 2001 with the $1.1 billion purchase of Great Plains Software, putting it into direct competition with Lawson Software, Britain's Sage Group and numerous other software companies that cater to midsize businesses. That's when Burgum, who was chief executive of Great Plains, joined the company. He's still based in Fargo, N.D., at Great Plains' former headquarters."

Microsoft "expanded the unit internationally with the acquisition of Danish software maker Navision. It has also added new product lines, introducing a set of applications for coordinating sales, marketing and customer service. The company says it will invest $2 billion annually for the next five years in sales, marketing and development efforts targeted at small and midsize business, or companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. Microsoft doesn't report the unit's finances, but AMR Research says it brought in about $659 million in revenue for the company last year, a sliver of its more than $32 billion in annual revenue."
� IDG News Service: Microsoft Bumps Business Apps Group Up Hierarchy
� CNET's News.com: Microsoft Elevates Great Plains Division

Reuters outlined the nitty-gritty of the management shuffle. Burgum "will now report to Ballmer instead of Jeff Raikes, head of the information worker division that makes the Office family of applications," and Ayala will report to Burgum. "The change is directly unlikely to affect customers and partners, but it signifies the importance Microsoft places on its growing enterprise applications business," IDG News Service said. "Microsoft's desktop applications are ubiquitous in the business world, but the company did not traditionally compete in the market for the expensive, complex ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) systems used for back-office functions." Burgum "said his division had already operated with a 'lot of independence' from the Office-focused division, but said the changes would make it easier for Microsoft to compete in the business applications industry," InternetNews.com reported. "It's a great benefit for our business to engage with Steve (Ballmer) at this level," Burgum said.
� Reuters: Microsoft Shuffles Small Business Software Execs

A Patent A Day, Keeps The Competition Away?

The Wall Street Journal today reported that Microsoft may start wielding its patents as a way to knock down competition from open-source software systems. "In December," the newspaper reported, " Microsoft announced a new policy to begin licensing its patents, citing requests from customers, regulators and others, though it is unclear how many of the patents cover techniques already in use by other companies." And that move has Linux (news - web sites) fans worried. According to the Journal, "some proponents of open-source software see an implicit threat in such moves. They believe Microsoft may press for royalties from the distributors or even users of open-source programs including Linux, and they fear that Microsoft could resort to patent-infringement suits if they don't agree to licensing deals. Such a move could disrupt the open-source world, where many products are free or sold at low prices."
� The Wall Street Journal: Microsoft's New Plan to License Patents Has Linux Fans Worried (Subscription required)

Speaking of patents, Wired reported that a "patent recently obtained by Microsoft for its Palm-sized PC product line is raising concerns among intellectual property experts who say it could be used to demand licensing fees from other mobile-device makers. ... In its patent application, Microsoft said the purpose of the now-patented technology is to make it easier for users to launch applications by either double-clicking a button or holding one down. But the wording of the patent is drawing fire from some critics of the patent office, who view it as another example of how companies are obtaining patents that are either overly broad or apply to technologies already widely in use."
� Wired: When Two Clicks Equals One Patent

Head's Up Microsoft Customer Service

Some wireless Internet users say they are regularly getting dropped connections when using the Windows XP (news - web sites) operating system, Wired reported. "Here are the symptoms of the problem: A Wi-Fi-enabled computer running Windows XP is working fine one minute, pulling up Web pages and processing e-mail. Then, for no reason, the connection drops, websites fail to come up and the e-mail flow stops. The small wireless connection icon in the taskbar says the signal from the access point is strong, so the problem isn't that the user wandered out of radio range. The icon even shows that the computer's Wi-Fi hardware is sending information to the access point -- it's just not getting anything back," the article said. Microsoft's reply? "We don't have data that suggests Windows XP drops wireless connections more than any other system," Greg Sullivan, lead product manager in Microsoft's Windows division, told the publication "Wi-Fi configuration in Windows XP is much different and easier than in previous versions."
� Wired: Windows XP Bedevils WiFi Users

Meanwhile, CNET's News.com reported on the case of Hotmail user Alexandria Felton, who is miffed that her e-mail files were permanently lost due to a glitch. Microsoft says the case was isolated, the article said. "In a statement, Microsoft said 'issues' have occasionally beset its Hotmail service, although the most recent case appears to have affected only Felton's free account," CNET said. "In this case specifically, it appears to be an isolated incident that is not recurring within our customer base. We are working to understand how the customer's data was lost, but we are not able to recover the customer's files," Brooke Richardson, product manager for MSN and Hotmail, wrote in an e-mail.
� CNET's News.com: Hotmail Incinerates Customer Files

Another Open-Source Headache

Is it a fair fight when South America's biggest country gets in a tussle with Bill Gates (news - web sites) & Co.? Brazil's leaders don't seem to be worried as they embrace the open-source Linux operating system in a number of government offices. Now Microsoft has gone on the offensive, with the company's head executive in the South American country blasting the Brazilian government. "Microsoft Brasil's president, Emilio Umeoka, said that ideology led Brazil's government astray when it decided to adopt Linux's free software in public sector computers. 'If the country closes itself off again -- as it did when it protected its information technology, 10 years from now we will wake up and be dominant in something insignificant,' Umeoka told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. 'My boss once said: "Irrelevance is the beginning of the end",' the Brazilian executive of Seattle-based Microsoft Corp. said."
� Reuters via The Washington Post: Microsoft Brazil Decries Government Use of Linux (Registration required)

AOL: You've Got Closure

America Online can cross one more legal battle off the long list of suit it faces. Time Warner's Internet unit "said it settled class-action lawsuits regarding account cancellations with former AOL and CompuServe members. The Internet service provider denied liability in relation to the allegations but agreed to settle to avoid the cost of further litigation and to resolve an ongoing matter, the company said. The settlement agreement will result in the dismissal of cases that had been previously certified as class actions in Oklahoma and California" and refunds will be ponied up for misbilled AOL and CompuServe subscribers, The Wall Street Journal Online reported.
� The Wall Street Journal Online: AOL Settles Class-Action Lawsuit (Subscription required)

Harry Potter (news - web sites) and the Hackers of Cyberspace

The next Harry Potter movie installment, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" opens today in North America. With every blockbuster movie comes hype, sold-out shows ... and an Internet worm? "British software and services company Sophos reported that infections by the three-month-old 'P' variant of Netsky have risen dramatically over the past week, thanks to the worm's ability to disguise itself as a Harry Potter game or book," CNET's News.com reported.
� CNET's News.com: Harry Potter and the Worm of Doom

BBC News noted that other Netsky.P versions "have masqueraded as nude photos of Britney Spears, Eminem (news - web sites) MP3 music files and illegal software. 'Echoing a technique used in 2000 by the Pikachu worm, Netsky.P targets young computer users by sometimes posing as content connected with the Harry Potter books and movie franchise,' said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos" in a canned quote picked up by the BBC.
� BBC News Online: Potter Mania Fuels Pesky Virus

Computer viruses overall are on the rise, according to Sophos. "The number of new viruses released on the Internet in May hit a 2-1/2-year high last month, an anti-virus vendor says. Five new viruses released in May made Sophos' Top 10 for the month. Included are Sasser, Netsky-Z, Sober-G, Bagle-AA, and Lovgate-V, the company said Wednesday. Sasser led the pack in the number of infected machines reported," InformationWeek said, picking up the Sophos virus report.
� InformationWeek: New Viruses Hit 30-Month High

Filter is designed for hard-core techies, news junkies and technology professionals alike. Have suggestions, cool links or interesting tales to share? Send your tips and feedback to cindyDOTwebbATwashingtonpost.com.

June 4, 2004 at 11:40 AM in Microsoft | Permalink | TrackBack (5) | Top of page | Blog Home

Data Storage Market Revenue Up 3.5 Pct in 1st Quarter

Yahoo! News - Data Storage Market Revenue Up 3.5 Pct in 1st Quarter

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Revenue from worldwide sales of computer-disk storage systems rose 3.5 percent in the first quarter and global sales of external disk storage systems posted year-over-year revenue growth for the third consecutive quarter, market research firm IDC said on Thursday.

External disk storage systems revenue rose 6.5 percent to $3.5 billion in the first quarter, IDC said, according to its worldwide quarterly disk storage systems tracker.

In that market, EMC Corp. (NYSE:EMC - news) took the No. 1 spot from Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - news), fueled by a 26 percent increase in year-over-year revenue and ended the quarter with 20.2 percent of the external disk storage system market as measured by revenue, IDC said.

HP's revenue share fell to 18 percent, or $630 million in the first quarter, from 19.3 percent, or $634 million in the year-ago quarter. EMC had external disk storage systems revenue of $707 million in the quarter, up from $561 million, or 17.1 percent of that market a year ago.

In total disk storage systems revenue on a worldwide basis, HP remained at No. 1 in the first quarter, with revenue of $1.18 billion, or 23.2 percent of that market. But that was down from $1.26 billion, or 25.6 percent of the market a year earlier.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - news) ranked second, gaining to $1.00 billion, or 19.7 percent of the market, from $903 million, or 18.4 percent of the market, a year ago, according to IDC.

EMC ranked third, while Dell Inc.'s (Nasdaq:DELL - news) revenue from disk storage systems climbed to $351 million in the fourth quarter, or 6.9 percent of the market, from $296 million, or 6 percent, a year earlier, IDC said.

Hitachi Ltd.'s (6501.T) revenue rose slightly, with first-quarter disk storage systems revenue of $348 million, up from $335 million a year earlier and ranked No. 5.

Sun Microsystems Inc.'s (Nasdaq:SUNW - news) disk storage systems revenue declined to $309 million, or 6.1 percent of the market, from $325 million, or 6.6 percent, a year earlier, IDC said.

Total sales of disk storage systems rose 3.5 percent to $5.09 billion from $4.91 billion a year earlier.

June 4, 2004 at 11:38 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

Royal Bank of Canada computer glitch causes payments chaos

finextra news: Royal Bank of Canada computer glitch causes payments chaos

04 June 2004 - Royal Bank of Canada says it will be working over the weekend to update customer accounts following a computer glitch that has caused payroll delays for thousands of Canadian workers.

The bank fell behind in processing salary deposits for Ontario government workers after running into systems problems during a software upgrade earlier this week.

After fixing the coding, RBC staff have worked round the clock trying to clear the transaction backlog caused by the failure. Millions of transactions, from direct pay deposits to bill payments, were knocked off course during the outage.

In a statement to local press, Rod Pennycook, executive vice-president at RBC, apologised for the delays, which have affected tens of thousands of civil servants and others awaiting transfers from RBC accounts.

He added: "Our systems are running well and we are making good progress. In addition, we are continuing to be extremely thorough to ensure that all transactions are correctly reflected in client account balances."

RBC says it has 245 staff working round-the-clock shifts to update accounts and verify transactions.

June 4, 2004 at 11:20 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home

BMO offers blueprint for IT security

ITBusiness.ca

6/3/2004 5:00:00 PM - A bank executive tells the InfoSecurity conference crowd how he dealt with last year's server loss and why he breaks down tasks across the enterprise. Plus: Why CEOs don't care about ports

TORONTO -- The one thing corporate security managers don't want to become is roadkill, according to the Bank of Montreal's specialist Vivek Khindria.

"Who has tried to jump on the highway and stop a bus?" said Khindria, BMO's department manager for security practices and technology. "It might be a train, it might be a kid on a skateboard."

Even if you can stop a network security problem the size of a bus, eventually you're going to get run over. Khindria spoke Thursday at the Infosecurity Canada conference and gave a presentation called "Integrating information security practices into your corporate governance and frameworks."

One way to avoid getting hit by a bus-sized problem is to recognize that security is not your problem alone. Khindria urged attendees at his seminar to conceive of security as an ecosystem -- one that is linked into every department as well as outside the organization through partners, customers and suppliers. "There is no inside and outside," he said. "We're all connections across many organizations."

BMO faced its own bus-sized problem recently. Last September, two servers containing BMO customer data were bought on eBay by a reseller. The servers were being held by Rider Computer Services, the company that manages BMO's hardware disposal, but were mistakenly shipped to the eBay customer by Rider subsidiary Ecosys Canada.

Khindria said that BMO was notified of the mistake by the buyer and was on the premises in a matter of hours to rectify the problem. He said that BMO's reputation suffered no long-term damage from the incident, adding that after such an incident, the question to ask is, "Did you take all the reasonable steps to prevent it?"

Security can be a daunting undertaking, added Khindria. A quick straw poll he took of the audience suggested that a number of people were thrust into the role without adequate training -- in one case because no one else wanted to do it.

Khindria suggested breaking down security tasks and assigning them. A security policy the size of a dictionary is a reference tool that no one uses, he said. Having individuals specialize in particular aspects of security ensures that there is accountability and tasks are accomplished. Tapping into an established framework like ITIL can also be a resource, he added, since that can be a guide to best practices in security.

Managing security costs is a constant battle of checks and balances, according to Ali Qutob, information security manager at TSYS, a Columbus, Ga.-based company that specializes in credit card processing. TSYS also operates a Toronto office and counts Royal Bank and CIBC among its customers.

The credit industry is naturally security-conscious, he said, and TSYS's customers operate in international markets, each with their own security concerns and regulations. In Canada, TSYS and its customers must fall in line with national privacy legislation PIPEDA.

Credit card processing is a competitive business, said Qutob, who attended Khindria's presentation, and in order for TSYS to remain competitive it must effectively manage its costs, which means effectively controlling security budgets.

He stressed that open source isn't necessarily a cheap alternative when it comes to managing security. But security managers should prepare for open source in their organizations since its arrival is envitable. Qutob's company recently purchased a Red Hat Linux distribution. "Open source sneaks in without you realizing it," he said.

Khindria noted that budgeting for security can be difficult, particularly when those that hold the purse strings aren't always cognizant of what the problems are or could be. A CEO may be baffled by the news that Port 80 is open, for example. Port 80 is the standard port for Web sites.

"The CEO doesn't care about ports," said Khindria. "The CEO is going to care about loss expectancy." By quantifying security problems in terms of potential lost revenue -- or even providing a qualitative description of how security threats can lead to loss of reputation -- CEOs will have a better idea of how security budgets are being spent and what they're designed to address.

June 4, 2004 at 08:45 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (2) | Top of page | Blog Home

Chip and PIN holds key to phishing threat - Consult Hyperion

finextra news: Chip and PIN holds key to phishing threat - Consult Hyperion

13 May 2004 - UK banks are being urged to introduce two-factor authentication based around the Chip and PIN system to head off the increasing threat to online security from Internet-based phishing scams.

UK consultancy outfit Consult Hyperion is promoting national uptake of token authentication, in which consumers tap their PINs into a personal card reader and receive a one-time Web log-in code by return. The system could also be used to authenticate card holders to merchants when shopping via the PC, TV or phone.

The increasing sophistication of Web spoofing scams, and growing evidence of their success in siphoning off consumer funds, is forcing banks to look beyond pure customer education remedies.

"The sophistication of the attacks is high and growing all the time" comments Dave Birch, director of Consult Hyperion. "In some cases, victims are directed to the real bank Web site while a pop-up window is overlaid to capture their details. In other cases, the surfer's toolbar is taken over."

According to Birch, banks should cash in on the million of pounds being spent to introduce Chip and PIN at the point-of-sale and extend the system to cover the phishing menace. If token authentication were implemented, he says, "phishing would cease to be a threat because the phishers would need to break in and steal the card itself and the PIN - having an account number alone would not help them."

In the UK, Barclaycard has been experimenting with a pocket authentication system designed around MasterCard specifications for preventing card not present fraud.

Alternatives to card reader systems include secure SMS messaging to mobile phones - currently used by ASB Bank in New Zealand - and the US-based PassMark security system, which entails the exchange of personalised digital images between banks and consumers online.

June 4, 2004 at 08:32 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (5) | Top of page | Blog Home

Fake order confirmations provide new phishing twist

finextra news: Fake order confirmations provide new phishing twist

21 May 2004 - UK security outfit SecureTest is warning of a new twist on the familiar phishing scam, in which fake e-mail order confirmations direct recipients to a Web server that writes a malicious file to the user's PC.

The e-mail, a bogus order confirmation for an IBM Laptop PC, tells the recipient that their bank account has been debited for �1099.99 and provides a link to check or cancel the order. Following the link leads to a Web server which exploits an unpatched weakness in Microsoft's Internet Explorer to write a potentially malicious file to the user's hard drive.

Ken Munro, managing director at SecureTest, says the malicious code exploits a known threat which is listed by some of the major anti-virus vendors.

"The danger here is in the new format for the scam, and the new form of social engineering," he says. "Many people, on receiving an e-mail saying their bank account has been debited for �1099.99 will at least click on the link and take a further look."

News of this new variant of the phishing scam coincides with the release of the latest data from the Anti-Phishing Working Group highlighting the increasing prevalence of the threat. APWG says it recorded 1125 different e-mail scams in April, nearly tripling from March, with Citibank the most popular attack target.

June 4, 2004 at 08:30 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (10) | Top of page | Blog Home

HSBC moves to secure online banking in Brazil and Australia

finextra news: HSBC moves to secure online banking in Brazil and Australia

01 June 2004 - HSBC Brazil is to use authentication technology from Vasco to provide secure Internet banking for business customers, while the bank's Australian outpost has contracted with Melbourne IT for new scam site search software.

Under the Brazillian agreement, HSBC will provide Vasco's Digipass GO3 to its business customers to securely perform banking transactions via the bank's Connect Bank business Internet banking application. The contract was won by Vasco in conjunction with local Brazillian partner UserID.

In 2003, it is estimated that the Brazilian banking industry lost $30 million due to Internet banking fraud schemes such as trojan horses and phishing attacks.

"Security and user acceptance were crucial for the success of our Web-based Connect Bank business banking application," says Jacques Depocas head of the alternative channels of HSBC Brazil. "Vasco's Digipass GO3 is extremely easy to use and transforms the Internet into a safe place to perform banking transactions."

Digipass GO3 provides users with a unique one-time password for accessing online applications.

Seperately, HSBC in Australia has signed a contract with Melbourne IT to license Fraudshield an 'anti-phishing' tool that searches for bogus bank sites. The software trawls the Internet looking for sites with content that matches that on genuine bank sites. The Melbourne-based company says a number of other banks are trialing the technology.

June 4, 2004 at 08:30 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (5) | Top of page | Blog Home

Keylogging Internet worm on the loose

finextra news: Keylogging Internet worm on the loose

03 June 2004 - Anti-virus firm F-Secure is warning of the spread of a keylogging Internet worm designed to steal online passwords and credit card numbers from infected computers.

The worm, known as Korgo, exploits the LSASS vulnerability to auto-infect Windows systems that haven't applied the MS04-11 patch issued by Microsoft in April.

F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen says the worm is spreading actively, and aggressively stealing user information from infected machines.

"It does this via a keylogger which specifically collects user logins for online banks (the ones which do not use one-time passwords)," he says. "It also logs everything the user types to any Web form - this will collect lots of credit card numbers, passwords etc."

Information culled from machines is sent to one of 11 geographically distributed Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers.

Hypponen advises anyone infected by Korgo to change their passwords and cancel their credit cards. "Especially the ones you've used during last week. This is not a joke."

June 4, 2004 at 08:29 AM in Online crime | Permalink | TrackBack (21) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 03, 2004

Visa to take VbV message to EU consumers as online shopping soars

finextra news: Visa to take VbV message to EU consumers as online shopping soars

02 June 2004 - Online shopping in the UK and Europe is doubling year-on-year according to figures released by payment card association Visa.

Total UK sales figures for the first quarter of 2004 were more than twice that of the same period in 2003 – an increase of 123%. During that time, Visa cardholders in the UK spent over �2.4 billion on the Internet.

A big winner has been the retail industry, particularly in the area of food and drink, in which sales have more than trebled. This growth has been helped by a massive rise in people ordering their groceries from supermarkets over the Web, says the card firm.

The UK public spent almost five times as much on insurance, and four times as much on utility bill payments and taxes over the last twelve months, while expenditure on travel is up by 159% since Q1 2003. The popularity of buying books and music is also still strong, with an increase of 116%.

Outside of the UK, all the major European markets experienced healthy e-commerce growth year-on-year. Spain showed the biggest increases (166%), while Italy (144%) and France (140%) have also more than doubled their Internet spend. Germany, already a huge market for shopping online, had 83% growth over the year.

The research comes as Visa prepares for the launch to consumers of Verified by Visa, its online authentication system for protecting shopping online.

Hugo Bottelier, vice pesident of Visa EU, said: "As cardholders expand their retail horizons, it is important that the banks create a secure environment for them to use their payment cards. Initiatives such as Verified by Visa help to make the online environment as safe and secure as shopping in the high street."

Verified by Visa, and the equivalent MasterCard SecureCode system have been taken up by the UK's high street banks, but penetration among the popular Internet-only banks such as Smile, Egg and Cahoot remains weak.

June 3, 2004 at 07:26 AM in eCommerce | Permalink | TrackBack (35) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 02, 2004

REVIEW: Google's E-Mail Service Flexible

Yahoo! News - REVIEW: Google's E-Mail Service Flexible

By MATTHEW FORDAHL, AP Technology Writer
Google Inc.'s free e-mail service has been derided as an obnoxious privacy invasion that will suck up vast amounts of user data and deposit information into a massive database that never disappears. And that's before it's even officially available.

The Internet search leader says its computers will merely be scanning e-mail so it can place relevant and nonintrusive text ads next to messages. That's how Google plans to make a buck � and be able to offer the service without charging the user.

While privacy advocates pontificated, lawmakers legislated and Google posted notices about how important privacy is, I got a chance to try out Web-based Gmail. I was generally pleased, though it's not yet a finished product.

As for privacy, there are a lot bigger fish to fry as messages travel from computer to computer across the Internet and into the recipient's Google account.

The privacy debate tends to obscure assessment of other Gmail attributes � namely usability, storage and search. In most of these areas, Google trounces other free e-mail services, including those offered by Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc (Nasdaq:YHOO - news).

Gmail's most impressive feature is its 1 gigabyte of storage per user. It makes Microsoft Hotmail's 2 megabytes (1/500th) seem stingy, as well as Yahoo Mail's old limit of 4 megabytes, which will soon be boosted to 100 megabytes.

Instead of trashing messages that might be useful in the future, the e-mails and attachments in Gmail can be archived.

Google, of course, incorporates its powerful search function, making both active and archived messages quickly accessible. The entire inbox can be searched from a text box that appears on every page. Beyond that, Gmail organizes messages by conversation, rather than by simple chronological order. When a new message at the end of the conversation is opened, the older ones appear as horizontal tabs but can be revealed with a couple of clicks.

There are other flourishes: Gmail can be configured to mark messages addressed to me as opposed to a mailing list. Messages also can be marked with a star and everything in that category called up with a click.

Actions such as automatically archiving a message can be programmed. Similarly, user-defined labels can be attached to any message or conversation, making it easier to sort them.

Though Gmail is mostly polished, some areas need improvement. For one, it doesn't work with third-party e-mail programs such as Outlook or Eudora. Its Web-based interface also chokes Safari, Apple Computer Inc.'s Web browser.

The help system also lacked any explanation as to whether messages and attachments are scanned for viruses. It also didn't do any better than my Hotmail or Yahoo accounts in identifying messages as spam.

As for the much-maligned advertisements, I found them to be unobtrusive and well-targeted, just like the text ads that appear alongside Google searches. Google also occasionally provides a list of "related" links to sites and news stories beneath the ads.

But Gmail doesn't always deliver ads. This was usually the case with personal e-mail messages that weren't about vacations.

In its many postings on privacy, Google also says it would "block certain ads from running next to an e-mail about catastrophic news."

I tested it by sending an e-mail to my Gmail account with "catastrophic" news about the death of a fictional uncle, who "died" tragically while vacationing in Hawaii.

Sure enough, no ads for funeral homes appeared. Nor did any useful links to mortuaries in Hawaii.

But when I appended the tragic news to a conversation about Cisco routers and sent it to my Gmail account, technical ads suddenly appeared.

There seem to be ways to get around the ads. The Cisco thread, for instance, did not trigger any when it was in a Microsoft Word document sent as an attachment.

As someone who read Google's policies, which were written in plain English, and willingly signed up, I had no problem with the message scanning � and the company promises not to sell your data to third parties.

But what about the people who e-mail me? Don't they have any say?

As it turns out, there may be bigger worries.

If the message originated at an office computer, there's a chance a suspicious boss (or his software) reviewed it. If written at home, there's a possibility that a paranoid spouse installed a program that captures every keystroke.

If it was sent over an unprotected Wi-Fi network, the message could have been intercepted by a nosy neighbor. If it was checked for spam, it likely was scanned for words like "Viagra" and other tip-offs that a message will be unwanted.

And on the Internet, most people don't bother with encryption even when it's available, so the bored technicians at Internet service providers and elsewhere can easily have a look.

That's not to say Google might not someday be involved in some sort of scandal involving Gmail. But at least the company is clearly stating what will and won't be done with data.

June 2, 2004 at 10:56 PM in Portals | Permalink | TrackBack (42) | Top of page | Blog Home

Sun, Fujitsu Join Forces to Fend Off HP and IBM

Yahoo! News - Sun, Fujitsu Join Forces to Fend Off HP and IBM

By Duncan Martell
MENLO PARK, Calif. (Reuters) - Sun Microsystems Inc (Nasdaq:SUNW - news) is teaming up with longtime partner Fujitsu Ltd (6702.T) of Japan and Siemens of Germany to jointly develop the next generation of Sun systems, the companies said on Tuesday.

Seeking to dispel questions over the viability of its often go-it-alone technology strategy, Sun said the three had agreed to jointly develop the next generation of computers based on Sun Solaris software and SPARC computer chips.

"In order to (be) 'best-in-class' in Unix (news - web sites) we had to do something about Solaris and SPARC because there were questions raised in the marketplace about its viability," Joseph Reger, chief technology officer at Fujitsu Siemens Computers in Germany, said in a telephone interview of the move to back Sun.

Sun and Fujitsu will bring together their Solaris and SPARC-based server product lines by mid-2006, creating a line of high-end machines for running corporate data centers.

These systems, codenamed Advanced Product Line, or APL, are expected to have twice the data-processing capability of their current models, Fujitsu said.

When complete, the companies said, APL will replace Sun and Fujitsu's Sun Fire and PRIMEPOWER product lines, respectively.

Fujitsu, one of the world's largest computer hardware and services companies, has been a partner of Sun from the company's earliest days two decades ago.

In a joint venture with Siemens, Fujitsu sells SPARC-based servers and also mainframes and Windows-based machines that make it one of Europe's largest computer makers.

"Not only does this make sense for Sun," said Jean Bozman, a server analyst with market research firm IDC. "I think it's going to make customers feel that there is a lot more strength in the foundation technology because it isn't just Sun taking a bet on it," she said following a news conference here.

Reger, of Fujitsu Siemens, said that by joining forces with Sun the companies could pose a more formidable threat against two main rivals in the Unix market -- Hewlett-Packard Co (NYSE:HPQ - news) and International Business Machines Corp (NYSE:IBM - news).

Fujitsu expects the cooperation to cut costs nearly by half, making it possible to set more competitive prices for the new products, Fujitsu Executive Vice President Junji Maeyama said on the sidelines of a Tokyo news conference.

Sun ranks No.2, with 28 percent of the Unix server market, closely behind top-ranked Hewlett-Packard, which holds 31 percent, according to market share data from IDC. IBM ranked No.3 with 25 percent of the market during the first quarter.

But while HP and IBM are pushing hard to move into the rival Linux (news - web sites) market, Sun remains focused on the Unix market.

SUN SHOWS PRAGMATIC STREAK

Sun Chief Executive Scott McNealy said in an interview that while Sun, Fujitsu and Fujitsu Siemens will combine research and development efforts, they will continue to compete in selling their own separately branded machines.

"To be able to leverage the two companies' investments in the hardware space is clearly an advantage," McNealy said following the news conference.

Reger said the deal will combine Sun's mid-range and low-end Solaris computers and Fujitsu's and Fujitsu-Siemens' mainframe-class computers on the same Solaris platform.

"Both companies will market the same, yet unnamed product line," Reger said. "This is not a joint venture. We're not putting companies together. This is a joint development and marketing effort to further the cause of Solaris."

In recent years, Sun has been battling to fend off the threat of low-cost competition from computers running mass-market chips from Intel Corp (Nasdaq:INTC - news) and computers running on Linux software, the upstart rival to Sun's Unix-based systems.

The expanded partnership marks the second recent move by Sun to broaden its base of industry support. In early April, Sun did an about-face and patched up its differences with Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT - news), a bitter rival, in exchange for Microsoft's paying it $2 billion to settle antitrust issues.

Sun shares closed up 3.84 percent at $4.33 in Nasdaq trading on Tuesday. In Wednesday afternoon trade in Tokyo, Fujitsu was up 0.41 percent at 738 yen. (Additional reporting by Lucas van Grinsven in Amsterdam and Eric Auchard in New York, Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo)

June 2, 2004 at 10:55 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink | TrackBack (27) | Top of page | Blog Home

Hacking Sparks Need for Complex Passwords

Yahoo! News - Hacking Sparks Need for Complex Passwords

Tue Jun 1, 7:55 PM ETAdd Technology - AP to My Yahoo!

By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
As more Web sites demand passwords, scammers are getting more clever about stealing them. Hence the need for such "passwords-plus" systems.

To access her bank account online, Marie Jubran opens a Web browser and types in her Swedish national ID number along with a four-digit password.

For additional security, she then pulls out a card that has 50 scratch-off codes. Jubran uses the codes, one by one, each time she logs on or performs a transaction. Her bank, Nordea PLC, automatically sends a new card when she's about to run out.

Scandinavian countries are among the leaders as many online businesses abandon static passwords in favor of so-called two-factor authentication.

"A password is a construct of the past that has run out of steam," said Joseph Atick, chief executive of Identix Inc., a Minnesota designer of fingerprint-based authentication. "The human mind-set is not used to dealing with so many different passwords and so many different PINs."

When a static password alone is required, security experts recommend that users combine letters and numbers and avoid easy-to-guess passwords like "1234" or a nickname.

Stevan Hoffacker follows those rules but commits a different faux pas: He uses the same password everywhere, including access to multiple e-mail accounts, Amazon.com, The New York Times' Web site and E-ZPass electronic toll statements.

In such cases, should hackers or scammers compromise one account, they potentially have one's entire online life.

"This is one of these things that if I stop and think about it, it is not good, but I do my best not to stop and think about it," said Hoffacker, an information technology manager in New York.

But it's difficult to remember dozens of strong passwords � so many sites now require them. Alternatives include writing them down on a sticky note attached to a monitor or in an electronic spreadsheet � practices security experts also deem unsafe.

Software such as Symantec Corp.'s Norton Password Manager and Apple Computer Inc.'s Keychain help store passwords in secure, encrypted form. But if you compromise the master password, you're out of luck. Your entire collection is gone.

Many sites, meanwhile, will e-mail passwords insecurely � without encryption � if you forget. A site called BugMeNot.com even encourages users to share passwords for nonfinancial sites like newspapers.

The tools of password harvesting are many:

Keystroke recorders secretly installed at public Internet terminals can capture passwords, as can "phishing" e-mails designed to trick users into submitting sensitive data to fraudulent sites that look authentic. There are computer viruses programmed to harvest passwords as well as software that guesses passwords by running through words in dictionaries.

Though analysts have no hard figures on password-specific fraud, they blame insecure passwords for unauthorized financial transfers, privacy breaches and even the hacking of corporate networks.

With two-factor authentication, having a password alone is useless.

"We will never play the fear factor here, but still it stays a fact that with our products, phishing is no longer an issue," said Jochem Binst of Vasco Data Security International Inc.

The Belgian company issues devices the size of pocket calculators or keychains. You type your regular password into the device for a second code that is based on the time and the unit's unique characteristics. That's the code you type into the Web site.

Someone who steals your device won't have your password; someone who steals your password won't have your device.

MasterCard International Inc. has been testing similar systems in Britain, Germany and Brazil. Swipe a credit card with a smart chip into a special reader, enter your PIN and obtain a password good only once at Office Max, British Airways and a dozen other merchants.

In Singapore, bank customers wishing to designate new accounts for fund transfers must likewise obtain a second password � through a phone call, e-mail or mobile text messaging.

Biometric systems are similar, except a fingerprint or iris scan replaces one or both passwords.

In the United States, use of two-factor authentication remains limited. RSA Security Inc. has several products, including RSA SecurID, but they are primarily issued to employees for remote network access and to customers with high-value portfolios.

"There's a delicate balance between maintaining security but also providing customers with ease of use," said Doug Johnson, senior policy analyst at the American Bankers Association.

Gartner analyst Avivah Litan said banks are "all afraid of making the first step. They don't want consumers going to other banks because it's too hard."

U.S. banks and e-commerce companies have focused, for now, on making sure passwords are strong. EBay, for instance, now rejects attempts to create passwords such as "ebay" or "password."

Before two-factor authentication becomes commonplace, laptops must come standard with biometric readers, or manufacturers must bring down costs for password-generating devices.

Outfitting 1 million customers with such devices could cost $20 million, while Internet fraud (news - web sites) for those customers amounts to "tens of thousands at most," said Tony Chew, director of technology risk supervision at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Singapore banks thus limit dynamic passwords to fund transfers, he said.

Companies also need to set standards.

Though Jubran enjoys her bank's scratch-off passwords, she wouldn't want the Amazon.coms of the world all adopting them as well.

"It would be too complicated to have 10 different cards you scrape off," the 24-year-old medical student said.

Jason Lewis, vice president of product management at RSA Security, figures companies will have to create services so a single device can work on multiple sites.

Nordea and other Scandinavian banks already have partnered with government agencies and utilities, and an identity-management coalition called the Liberty Alliance Project has begun to explore standards.

People will pay more attention to security as they keep more of their lives online, said Robert Chesnut, eBay's vice president for rules, trust and safety. He offered this analogy: "The more stuff you have in your house, the better the deadbolt lock you have."

___

Anick Jesdanun can be reached at netwriter(at)ap.org.

June 2, 2004 at 12:27 AM in Security | Permalink | TrackBack (25) | Top of page | Blog Home

June 01, 2004

Players in mobile market ordered to slash a third off

Scotsman.com News - Top Stories - Players in mobile market ordered to slash a third off

FRANK O’DONNELL CONSUMER AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT

MOBILE phone operators Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and O2 were yesterday ordered to cut charges for calls to their networks by up to 34 per cent.

Telecoms regulator Ofcom said the cost of connecting incoming calls to mobile networks - known as termination charges - should be cut in the six-month period between September and next March.

In a 200-page document which ends a six-year investigation that has enraged the UK mobile industry, Ofcom said the new prices would allow consumers to save "hundreds of millions" of pounds.

Ofcom chief executive Stephen Carter said: "Today�s decision closes a lengthy process, whereby we have concluded that price controls are currently a necessary market mechanism."

BT immediately pledged to cut the costs of calling a mobile from its landlines while the National Consumer Council broadly welcomed the news as good for the public.

However, the major networks, who are struggling with the consequences of overpaying for third generation licences, hinted that the regulator�s decision may not be all good news for consumers.

An mmO2 spokesman said the company had already delayed the introduction of 3G technology and postponed price cuts on calls from mobiles to help offset the reduction in termination charges, which account for around 20 per cent of the UK mobile industry�s revenues.

Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile have already indicated that the cost of handsets, outgoing calls and text messages were all likely to rise as a result of the decision.

The argument for regulation rests on the fact that although there is fierce price competition for mobile subscribers, there is no such competition with termination charges as a caller to a mobile phone has no choice but to pay what the operator demands.

Attempts to cut termination charges were first floated by Ofcom�s predecessor Oftel and upheld in January 2003 after a year-long investigation by the Competition Commission. Oftel accused the industry of overcharging consumers by up to 40 per cent for connecting calls from rival networks and said the new rules would save consumers �190 million each year until 2006.

The Commission said the big networks should reduce their charges immediately by RPI inflation minus 15 per cent, followed by a further three identical annual cuts. The decision would result in Vodafone and O2 cutting their wholesale charges from about 8p to 5.63p a minute and T-Mobile and Orange reducing charges from about 9.5p a minute to 6.31p a minute.

One of the annual cuts has already taken place and the other two are expected between September this year and March 2005. The lower charges, which do not apply to new, high-speed third-generation (3G) networks, will remain in place until March 2006.

Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile last year challenged the decision in the High Court and lost.

An Ofcom spokesman yesterday said BT was directly regulated and would have to pass on the reductions to customers in the form of lower fixed-line phone bills. He said other fixed-line operators such as NTL were not directly regulated, but had passed on the first round of savings to customers and were expected to pass on the others.

"No-one in the industry sees any reason why the next two cuts shouldn�t be passed on to customers as well," he said.

BT said the decision was a good one for both consumers and the communications industry as it should encourage more calls.

Orange said it did not agree that detailed regulation of charges on incoming calls to its network from landlines was necessary.

A spokesman for mmO2 described yesterday�s announcement as "harsh", but said it had factored the wholesale price cuts into its business plans.

Diane Gaston, of the National Consumer Council, said: "We�re glad to see that NCC�s campaigning has paid off and Ofcom has finally decided to press ahead with cuts in rip-off call termination charges."

However, she said Ofcom was wrong not to regulate call termination charges levied by 3G operators on calls from fixed line and other mobile networks.

June 1, 2004 at 08:49 PM in Telecommunications | Permalink | TrackBack (16) | Top of page | Blog Home

Take the High Road to Profits

Bank Systems & Technology > Take the High Road to Profits > June 1, 2004

James Beams, Financial Insights
June 1, 2004

Michael Lewis' widely publicized expose Moneyball charts the unlikely success of the Oakland A's baseball franchise with general manager Billy Beane. It describes how a team with a fraction of the operating budgets of many major league teams used sophisticated technology and analysis to build a constantly high-performing -- and money-making -- team. In our recent survey, we found innovative banks doing the same thing.

Financial Insights surveyed 51 senior line-of-business executives at retail financial institutions in the United States. Respondents included executives at retail banks, brokerages, asset management firms and life/property casualty companies. We focused on the connection between business performance measurement and the use of customer metrics, and how the latter could create better business results. We wanted to understand better what future technology investments banks will make to support the customer-metric infrastructure.

Although the banking industry has experienced record profits in recent years, individual banks face significant challenges as they struggle to survive the next 5 to 10 years. We found that successful financial institutions, similar to the Oakland A's phenomenon, were very innovative in their use of technology and analysis -- in this case, customer metrics to analyze their customer market. That is not all: They have built highly effective and responsive organizations as well to quickly take advantage of uncovered opportunities to build market share and profits.

For example, of the three basic retail strategies -- customer-centric, low-cost and innovative -- 60 percent of banks claim to be customer-centric, a little over 20 percent claim to be low-cost and less than 20 percent claim to be innovative. We found innovative banks to significantly outperform either of the other two strategies by an average of 15 percent to 20 percent.

We found the innovative companies to have sponsorship at the highest level of management for the use of customer metrics, the highest rating of effectiveness for using the metrics, the highest level of management support for continued improvements and the least perceived obstacles for improvement. Notably, innovative companies rated their IT skills higher than either other strategy, and they ranked their IT support significantly higher. This indicates they are more effective at applying their skills and IT resources as well. Innovative companies also had many fewer organizational obstacles.

Customer-centric companies had significantly less sponsorship by line-of-business managers for customer metrics, and they identified major organizational hurdles for implementing improvements. Although they ranked their current technology skills very highly, they also ranked technology cost and organizational support as their most significant obstacles. They ranked their current technology support rather poorly as well. Clearly, some of these supposedly customer-centric organizations are seriously misaligned strategically or have severe organizational issues.

Our findings suggest that what has previously been referred to as CRM has evolved. Those institutions that have promoted the widespread use of customer analytics linked to business performance are gaining significant business returns by being innovative, responsive and flexible to changing market and customer demands. Innovative organizations are using customer metrics to support fact-based decisions and to overcome political wrangling and intuitive guesswork.

We wondered: Was the effective use of customer metrics really the key to innovative companies' higher profitability? We looked at three areas -- management, sales and marketing -- and found that organizations that were very effective in utilizing customer metrics, regardless of strategy, were unsurprisingly the best performers. Organizations that considered their management effective at using customer metrics had a 40 percent to 50 percent higher ROA, and organizations with above-average marketing effectiveness in using customer data had a more than 200 percent increase in ROA. Also not surprisingly, innovative banks were more effective than banks pursuing other strategies.

Even more details support the growing importance of the effective use of customer metrics. We looked at the utilization rates for different metrics, the metrics banks want to enhance, and the technologies and tools they are buying to improve their customer-metric infrastructure. Needless to say, we found a positive outlook for customer metrics.

We expect that financial institutions will continue to spread the use of customer metrics across their enterprise. How an institution accomplishes this will depend on its executive leadership, organizational culture and the level of transparency of the customer metrics across the lines of business and associated business applications. As we noted earlier, we found management's effectiveness in using metrics to achieve high returns particularly important.

Clearly, a business needs to incorporate the role of metrics, both business-centric and customer-oriented, into how it manages its performance. Customer metrics use has moved beyond the curiosity factor into a position of importance. Some financial institutions now consider customer metrics to be highly significant, representing a long-term outlook on their part.

We believe that an institution that ignores the use of customer metrics will be hard-pressed to succeed in the future. The management team of a financial institution that doubts this outlook or believes that the pursuit of developing customer metrics to manage business performance is too hard or expensive should consider one of two options: Get a good price before the franchise declines or retire and let someone else deal with the pain before the outcome becomes obvious.

We have some specific suggestions and comments for all institutions, including the most committed ones.

The use of customer metrics is a never-ending journey. Empower your institution to continuously seek improvements.

Embrace the use of customer metrics in performance reviews, incentive plans and management development and recruiting programs. Find the champions inside the institution who "get it" and nurture discussions about how to spread the use of customer metrics.

Consider engaging in an ongoing discussion about customer metrics with a trusted supplier for your institution. Make sure the supplier, which could be a consultant, a services firm or a solution vendor, has similar aspirations and has the talent to help your institution improve on its customer metrics.

Consider budgeting for customer metrics for both revenues and costs. This approach would lead to a return on operations, and not just on the investment.
James Beams, Research Director, Consumer Banking and Credit
jbeams@financial-insights.com
508-935-4489

June 1, 2004 at 06:12 PM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (3) | Top of page | Blog Home

Ofcom forces action on broadband unbundling

Ofcom forces action on broadband unbundling - ZDNet UK News

ZDNet UK
May 13, 2004, 13:55 BST

Tell us your opinion

BT has announced a massive cut in the cost of local loop unbundling products - on the very day that Ofcom urged the telco to address the issue

Ofcom announced a range of measures on Thursday designed to create more competition in Britain's wholesale broadband market, a sector which is currently dominated by BT.

The communications regulator has demanded that BT lower the pricing it charges rival operators who want to install their own equipment in its local exchanges and offer competing wholesale services -- a practice known as local-loop unbundling (LLU).

It will also appoint an 'independent telecoms adjudicator' who will be charged with establishing better relations between BT and LLU operators.

BT has already announced that it will launch a new LLU product and cut pricing by up to 70 percent over the next few months. The telco says the move will give a very significant boost to broadband competition in the UK, but some observers believe that BT is having to dancing to Ofcom's tune.

Ofcom has welcomed BT's move, and hopes that its own actions will help to create a better market for broadband services in the UK.

"Until today, LLU prices and operational delivery in the UK have been poor by EU standards," said Stephen Carter, Ofcom chief executive. "Now, for the first time, cable operators will be able to roll out DSL services. Until now, the cost of moving off their own networks has made this difficult to fly."

LLU has largely been a flop since its introduction in the UK in 2000. It was meant to help alternative operators to compete with BT on a level playing field by letting them take control of the copper lines between a customer's premises and the local telephone exchange. However, only a few thousand lines have been unbundled, compared to the millions of ADSL customers that BT Wholesale has attracted. This has led to criticism that the cost of getting involved with LLU is too great, a view that Ofcom has now endorsed.

BT, which was aware of Ofcom's thinking in this matter, somewhat pre-empted the regulator's announcement by declaring its planned LLU changes early on Thursday. It will cut the price of its existing LLU product by some 35 percent from 1 June, and later this year it will launch a cut-down version that will allow it to slash prices by another 35 percent.

According to the telco, this move will "usher in a new era of broadband investment".

"Our announcement marks a major move towards the telecommunications market of the future. BT has always argued that a market needs to develop in which those who are willing to invest and innovate can reap the rewards. This is a significant step in that direction," said BT chief executive Ben Verwaayen.

Analysts and rival operators have welcomed BT's move, although not too effusively.

"BT's price cuts look dramatic, but they are designed to bring prices in line with the rest of Europe. BT has obviously decided to act now, before regulatory intervention from OfCom. BT's current price for shared access is around 38 percent higher than the EU average. Today's reduction brings it below the EU average. However, BT's reduced connection fee will still be 50 percent higher than the EU average," said Ovum analysts Serafino Abate and Stefano Nicoletti.

"We at Tiscali think this is very good news for the industry and for the consumer. It opens up access to the BT network at a more basic level, the customer's local BT exchange, to other network operators like us and this will only promote more competition and a better deal for consumers," said Mary Turner, chief executive of Tiscali UK.

"The average broadband user is currently paying between �27 and �30 a month and this announcement means that there is continued downward pressure on price to make broadband more affordable for the mass market," Turner added.

Ofcom is just four months into a year-long review of the UK's telecommunications market that could conclude that BT should be split up. BT has repeatedly argued against this move, and there was speculation on Thursday that the telco is trying to appease Ofcom in the hope of proving that tougher measures can be avoided.

June 1, 2004 at 11:49 AM in Telecommunications | Permalink | TrackBack (25) | Top of page | Blog Home

Cable & Wireless surges back into broadband unbundling

Cable & Wireless surges back into broadband unbundling

By Graeme Wearden, ZDNet UK
By snapping up Bulldog, Cable & Wireless is taking aim at BT's wholesale broadband market. Innovative high-speed services for businesses could follow.

Cable & Wireless opened up a new assault on BT on Friday by purchasing Bulldog Communications for �18.6m.

This acquisition will give Cable & Wireless a foothold in the UK local-loop unbundling (LLU) market, letting it create and sell businesses broadband packages that are different and potentially more innovative than those sold by BT Wholesale.

Bulldog is one of the few companies attempting to compete with BT by installing its own equipment in its telephone exchanges. So far it has unbundled 38 exchanges.

Cable & Wireless now plans to raise this number to 200, which should give many thousands of businesses more choice when selecting a high-speed Internet connection.

The telco isn't yet revealing which exchanges it will unbundle or what products it will offer, but says the deal will give it valuable experience.

"The purchase will enable us to develop our own broadband services, rather than just including products from BT Wholesale as part of our portfolio," explained Peter Eustace, head of media relations at Cable & Wireless.

LLU has largely been a disaster. It was meant to give rival telecoms operators a chance to compete fairly with the incumbent, but in most European countries relatively few lines have been unbundled.

Britain's regulators finally lost patience with the process earlier this month, when Ofcom demanded that BT cut the cost of unbundling. BT actually pre-empted some of Ofcom's actions by announcing significant price cuts on the same day.

Eustace denied that the purchase of Bulldog was a direct response to Ofcom's tougher line on LLU, insisting that Cable & Wireless had been considering a move into LLU before this happened.

Jan Dawson, senior manager at Ovum, believes that the takeover is a smart move for Cable & Wireless because it gets its hands on four years of unbundling experience.

"Most likely, Cable & Wireless will use this advantage to secure wholesale contracts with the larger ISPs looking to migrate their customers from bitstream to LLU services, although we may also see C&W providing retail DSL services to businesses over unbundled loops. All of which should help to fill up what is still the UK's second-biggest fixed-line network," Dawson said.

June 1, 2004 at 11:47 AM in Telecommunications | Permalink | TrackBack (88) | Top of page | Blog Home