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E-commerce is alive and well. Holiday shopping sales were through the virtual roof last season and analysts predict continued growth in the online channel in 2006. There's only one problem: Security threats seem to be rising almost as quickly as e-shopping revenues. From phishing to pharming to hack...

Microsoft is considering making a bid to buy eBay, according to a published report, a move that could dramatically alter an e-commerce, Web portal and search space already in a state of flux. The New York Post was the first to report that Microsoft had held talks about a possible merger but that ant...

To many telecommunications customers, the Universal Service Fund, or USF, is one of several hidden costs of making long-distance phone calls. It is one of a handful of government fees that appear on each month's phone bill. Currently, customers pay a monthly USF charge based on how much they spend ...

Hoping to connect advertisers with a key youth demographic and pave the way for broader use of mobile marketing, Virgin Mobile USA on Tuesday said it would debut a program that lets pay-as-you-go members earn minutes by watching ads. Virgin says its SugarMama service will be a way for users to earn ...

Europe's highest court ruled Tuesday that an agreement calling for wholesale transfer of personal data on airline passengers to the United States is illegal, a ruling that emphasizes the shifting legal and moral framework for storing and sharing personal information. The European Court of Justice, w...

Consumers are saying that mobile music services are exceptionally overpriced -- at least 85 percent higher than they actually feel comfortable paying. A new research report by Strategy Analytics, entitled, "Mobile Music USA: Sprint Service Preferred to VCast But Price Premiums Too High on Both," ind...

Advertisers have been skeptical for years about the pay-per-click online marketing model. Finally, there may be a model that advertisers like -- one that is decidedly offline, however. It's called pay-per-call. Consumers are starting to get used to the technology as a way to obtain answers to questi...

Europe's longest-running show moved to the Court of First Instance in Brussels last month. The Court heard Microsoft's appeal of the EC's antitrust judgment against it. The questioning from judges raised serious doubts about the legitimacy of Europe's order to artificially separate out the Explore...

Hollywood's movie studios and major television networks filed a lawsuit this week claiming copyright violations from Cablevision's planned remote-storage digital video recorder service, demanding an injunction to ban the service. Cablevision's plans, announced in March, are to store content aired on...

The U.S. Treasury said Thursday it will stop collecting a 108-year-old telecommunications tax assessed to support the brief Spanish-American War and offer tax refunds for the past three years. The 3 percent federal excise tax applied to all long-distance calls since 1898, when it was put in place at...

A Congressional committee has backed a plan that would bar major telcos and cable companies from charging Web services companies to accept their traffic, giving the so-called Net neutrality campaign a welcome boost. The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted 20-13 to recommend a ver...

It's fun to think about how far we've come with technology and what the future might look like. For example, consider the Mark series of computers created at Harvard University in 1944 and you'll get some sense of how miniaturized computers have become. The MARK series was 55 feet long and 8 feet h...

What's the best way to reduce the risk of ID theft? Though it sounds counter-intuitive, would you believe that using the Internet more often does just that? A new survey by Javelin Research & Strategy indicates that those who pay their bills online have a lower likelihood of having their identit...

The two most prominent leaders of Enron, the energy company whose dramatic rise and fall become emblematic for one of the darkest chapters in U.S. corporate history, face life in prison after a jury issued numerous guilty verdicts Thursday. Enron Chairman and founder Ken Lay was found guilty on all ...

eBay and Yahoo announced Thursday they will work together on a range of fronts, including search and paid advertising, striking a deal that leverages each company's strengths and one that will undoubtedly send shockwaves across the Internet industry. After several days of swirling rumors that the tw...