Archive

Phishing scams seeking to steal donations earmarked for Hurricane Katrina victims may have started a week ago, but security experts said to expect a spike in this fraudulent activity in the weeks to come. Scam artists often prey upon the sympathy for tragedy victims by sending out millions of spam m...

For the last year or so, online financial institutions and their IT consultants -- as well as consumer interest groups -- have focused on fixing security, adding authentication and encryption and other technologies to forestall scammers. But the phishing plague continues. Now, experts tell The E-Com...

With sights set on becoming a major Web player, News Corp. said today it would buy IGN Entertainment, a site where some 28 million gaming fans visit for new software, gaming tips and other features, for US$650 million in cash. IGN and related sites -- which operate under names such as GameSpy, FileP...

EBay is reportedly in talks to buy VoIP innovator Skype Technologies in a deal that could be worth as much as US$3 billion. One analyst says the deal could immediately help the company leverage its base of loyal users to extend its reach well beyond e-commerce. Reports today indicate that eBay was ...

In the latest chapter of what's become an epic legal battle, Microsoft has filed suit against the European Union, hoping to have a court provide guidance on what parts of its source code it must reveal. Microsoft filed with the Court of First Instance for review of a provision of the sweeping anti-t...

Microsoft is moving to make its software more attractive to smaller and medium-sized businesses, providing better pricing, easier licensing and resources to help partners focus on the smaller market that currently represents the biggest growth. Analysts indicated that Microsoft, fighting older versi...

Online merchants selling digital products for small sums of money will find it easier to do so through the Internet's best known online payment service, PayPal. That's because the company has announced a new "micropayments" pricing scheme to make selling low-priced goods through PayPal -- especially...

Welcome to the event. Here extreme manufacturing meets extreme consumption. The sidekick nations simply dance around the leftover inventories and surplus raw materials. The other remaining 200 nations simply pray and hope that the mating of these two elephants will result in some romance with true l...

The comparison shopping and shopping search business has been around for a while. Like many other corners of the Internet business, it's seen more than its share of businesses come and go. Most of the change has come through acquisition. EBay's purchase of Shopping.com was quickly followed up by the...

Controversial plans in the U.S. and the UK to institute national identification cards as a way of curtailing identity theft will likely only lead to different versions of the same crimes, according to a researcher. The UK researcher also says that consumers will consider national ID cards to offer s...

File-sharing network Kazaa must alter its software to try to stop illegal music sharing, a federal judge in Australia ruled yesterday, but one analyst said the ruling won't change peer-to-peer file-swapping at all. "In the end it's about as relevant as anything else these industries have done. Tryin...

Internet TV -- long hyped by Microsoft and other major computer industry players -- has a new advocate. A non-profit corporation is developing a free, open source, Internet TV (IPTV) platform with funding from technology industry luminaries Mitch Kapor and Andy Rappaport. The organization, Worcester...

As heart-wrenching images of devastation and despair from New Orleans and others parts of the Gulf Coast of the U.S. continue to rivet Americans from coast to coast, computer security experts are warning that scammers have already devised elaborate phishing attacks and other online scams meant to ta...

In a blow to Microsoft and a strong vote of support for open-source software, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is putting in motion a plan to abandon the use of the Microsoft Office suite of desktop productivity applications in favor of an open-source approach that may make it easier to share docum...

Google is raising eyebrows by probing for opportunities outside the digital world for the first time ever, announcing it would conduct a test of a program to re-sell print advertising space to customers of its online marketing programs. Google has purchased space in next week's issues of PC Magazine...