Actrix Newsletter January 2003

This newsletter has been produced to help you get the most out of the Internet,
and to keep you, as an Actrix customer, informed of developments and services within the company.
Past newsletters may be viewed at http://editor.actrix.co.nz/
Newsletters are now archived by article at http://editor.actrix.co.nz/byarticle/
Questions and comments about the newsletter can be e-mailed to editor@actrix.co.nz
Other inquiries should be e-mailed to support@actrix.co.nz

by Rob Zorn

If you've been following Internet trends (take for example some of the Internet related news snippets featured here over the last few months) then you'd know that a lot's been written lately regarding the proliferation of spam e-mail. Your own experience may well back this up. Some experts estimate that in the not-too-distant future, the amount of advertising junk mail turning up in your mailbox will exceed legitimate mail.

Sure, unsolicited e-mail is annoying, but what's worse is the dark trend towards explicit pornographic content that seems to be occurring. Among the promises of great mortgage deals, debt elimination and the cheapest printer cartridges imaginable, there was always the odd invitation to a porn site, or information about how some account I am supposed to have applied for at one weirdo site or another I've never heard of has now been approved. Normally they'd promise the sexual world if I would only click the link they provided.

These days, though, they're tending to go a lot further. Instead of just a link and a clumsily penned pseudo-steamy invitation, we're getting pornographic images right there in the e-mail itself. Often these images go beyond just nudity. I've been gathering a few examples of the stuff that has been received by myself, others around the office, and even some from a customer or two.

It is not a pleasant collection.

I won't go into inappropriate detail, but the worse you could imagine is probably all there from animals through to very young-looking participants. The pictures are often very explicit and no restraint, subtlety or even blurring of the images is noticeable.

Most of us would probably agree (as does New Zealand law) that within the bounds of human decency and at an appropriate age, people should be free to do or look at whatever they like. But people should also be free not to have this sort of material thrust into their faces unsolicited. As adults, most of us can probably handle it okay. A few clicks of the Delete key and the images are permanently gone. It's more the kids that are the concern. Do we really want them starting up the computer, going online, and then, through no fault of their own, coming face to face with stuff that they really don't need to know about until a whole lot later in life?

What about your legal standing? If it is an offence to possess this sort of objectionable material (and it certainly is) then aren't these spammers forcing you to break the law? After all, when you download an e-mail that has illegal pictures in it, you now "possess" those pictures.

What Internal Affairs has to say about the matter

I spoke with Steve O'Brian at the Censorship Compliance Unit of the Department of Internal Affairs. In particular, I was concerned about the legal aspects surrounding porn spam, and also about what avenues are open to people who receive this stuff and want to do something about it. I got pretty good answers and the scope of our conversation covered quite a few related matters. I'll jot down the main points for you here.

Firstly, if you receive pornographic spam, you have not necessarily been singled out. You probably aren't the specific target and the spammer doesn't know you or anything about you. All that's happened is that somehow your e-mail address has gotten onto a spam list, along with literally millions of others. Don't take it too personally or start to fear that you're the target of someone who wants to hurt you in some way.

Secondly, you haven't done anything wrong. Internal Affairs are well aware that this sort of thing goes on. They know full well that spammers don't care who they send their porn to and that most people who receive it have not requested it, and have no interest in it.

Thirdly, your husband or children have not necessarily done anything wrong. Just because the spam e-mail says that someone at your e-mail address has signed up for a porn account, it ain't necessarily so. It's usually just a trick on the spammer's part to try and entice you to their web site.

Fourthly, Internal Affairs are not going to send the troops around to break down your door and arrest you just because you have received offensive spam. It's technically an offence if you have these images on your computer, but common sense does and will prevail. Delete the offending e-mail and don't send it on to anyone else (unless for the purposes of law enforcement or notifying your ISP or whatever). That way you clearly remain a victim and not a perpetrator and Internal Affairs will have no interest in wasting their time with you. If you do start sharing the stuff for no good reason, then your claim to being an innocent victim of a spam attack becomes a little harder to justify, and you may find yourself attracting the wrong sort of attention from our law enforcement agencies.

Fifthly, whatever you do, don't use their "Unsubscribe" feature. Most spam e-mails blatantly lie and say that they never send to anybody that hasn't requested to hear from them. They then offer you the ability to unsubscribe by clicking a button or sending them your e-mail address in some way so they can remove you from their mailing list. In fact, all they are doing is trying to confirm whether your e-mail address is actually working. They can sell a list of confirmed e-mail addresses to other spammers for even more money!

So what can you do about it?

One thing that must be kept in mind is that this sort of spam generally tends to have come from overseas. No doubt the spammer is breaking his or her own local laws in sending the stuff, but the point is that New Zealand law has no jurisdiction over them if they're not operating here. The Censorship Compliance Unit of Internal Affairs will attempt to deal with the problem, but they almost always end up being reliant on the overseas local law enforcement agencies. In other words, about all they can do is ask law enforcement in the spammer's country to prosecute. Sometimes this works well. Sometimes it doesn't.

Another thing that must be understood is that spammers are well practiced in hiding their details so they can't be traced easily. There are all sorts of things that can be done behind the scenes to mask who, what and where you are on the Internet. Sometimes the sad reality is that the spammer can't be traced, or by the time he is, he is long gone.

Because of the technical and international nature of the whole spam issue, the local police are probably not the best people to complain to. They may be able to get something accomplished if the spammer is local, but the chances of that are not great, and the matter would probably be passed from them to Internal Affairs anyway.

You can complain directly to Internal Affairs by e-mailing censorship@dia.govt.nz. Internal Affairs is a government department. As such they are public servants and you have every right to seek their assistance. It needs to be pointed out, however, that they are already very much concerned with indecent spam, and have set themselves up in such a way that they probably would already have received the e-mail you wish to complain about, and they are likely to be pursuing it. Due to the recent upturn in amounts of spam, they do receive a steady stream of complaints, so much so that they are not always able to reply to them all and still get their work done. Keep this in mind if you are considering complaining. Try not to be impatient either. Wheels turn pretty slowly when it comes to pursuing these sorts of things.

Why don't ISPs do more to stop this stuff?

This isn't a bad question, but its one often asked by someone hot under the collar, understandably indignant, but who may not have thought through all the problems and pitfalls the ISP may find itself in if it tries take on the role of censor, and starts blocking people's mail at its own sole discretion. Also, spammers know pretty well how to get around most filters that can be erected against them. They will rarely send from the same address twice and it really isn't difficult to find ways around filters that check text content (send the offensive material as an image with a harmless title, for example).

Actrix Cyber-Security Suite

Nevertheless ISPs (at least Actrix, certainly) do realise that spam, and particularly the offensive sort, is becoming more and more of a concern. As a result, most are introducing new services to assist customers in dealing with spam, whether its offensive or just outright annoying. I am happy to foreshadow that Actrix will be releasing some new products and services early in 2003. Aside from an opt-in server-based virus scanning solution, which I mentioned a newsletter or two ago, we will be providing CyberFilter, an opt in spam filter service that will allow you as the customer total control over what does or doesn't reach your mailbox. The system will be based on white and black lists maintained personally by the customer through a web based interface with rules associated with their mailbox(es). The software has been written and, over the break, our web developers will be designing the interface and completing testing and bug-fixing on the back-end functionalities. Look at for more information about the cyber-security suite in the new year!

You can read about Actrix's stance on a server-based virus solution in my article Actrix and Server-based Virus Scanning from the October 2002 Newsletter.

by Rob Zorn

In case you weren't aware, each and every Actrix customer is entitled to some free web space at which to mount their own user homepages. This article will address the purpose of this facility and how to use it. Then we'll touch briefly on how to actually build a web page for yourself.

You can make use of your Actrix user homepage at no extra cost. Each customer is entitled to five Megabytes of space (which is ample for lots of pages of text and quite a few images). This facility is designed for personal use, and not really for business or commercial purposes, though if you have a little hobby business that you don't feel is big enough for its own domain and specific website, then I don't think we'll have too many problems letting you utilise your free user homepage space. One thing though, you can't use your free homepage with your own specific domain (e.g. www.mydomain.co.nz). We won't let you point your domain at that free space. All Actrix user homepages will have the following URL or address: http://users.actrix.co.nz/yourusername.

Your Actrix user homepage (hereafter referred to as your "personal web space") is ideal for personal sites. People have many reasons for their own personal sites. It's a great way to share news about your family with friends or relatives overseas. It's good for sharing your interests or opinions with the world. If you'd like to see what some Actrix users are doing with their free space, you can check the index at http://users.actrix.co.nz/. This is a short list of users who have requested to have their homepages listed in an index. There are many more, but, out of respect for your privacy, Actrix will not add you to the general index unless you request this.

Recently our web developers have put a lot of work into upgrading the customer interface for using personal web space. It's now a whole lot more user-friendly, and has increased functionality. It is easy see what files you have, view your directory structure, create new directories and upload and delete files.

User Homepages Upload Tool

Your personal web space is automatically created for you when you open an account with Actrix, so you don't need to apply for it. As soon as you're ready you can head on over and start uploading files. The customer interface is available to you at http://www.actrix.co.nz/domestic/userhomepages.php (or by clicking Domestic/User Homepages at the Actrix web site). This will take you to a customer log in box. Enter your account user name (usually the first part of your e-mail address) and your account password to get in. Once inside you'll see your current directory structure (to the right). This will be empty if you don't currently have a user home page. On the left hand side you'll see the file upload feature.

To upload a file to your personal we space, click the Browse button on the right hand side to select the file from your hard drive. Oncer selected, click the Upload button. You can choose what directory to upload the file to by using the drop down menu that is part of the "Upload to" feature. To create a new directory which will automatically be added to the drop down menu, use the New Directory feature. By default, your new directory will be added to the root section of your personal web space. If you would like the new directory to be a subdirectory of one that already exists, use the "Create in" feature when you make your new directory. Simply choose the existing directory from the drop down menu. I highly recommend, if you're new to HTML, that you put all your files (images and HTML) into the one root directory. When you first create a web site, much of the initial difficulty stems from confusion over how to link files between directories. It's simple once you get the hang of it, but can be frustrating at first.

So How Do I Make a Start?

If you've worked with HTML before, this should be all you need to know. If you'd like to have a go at creating your own web site, but you're not sure where to start, don't despair (in fact get excited!) because it's not that hard to do, and you don't need any special tools or knowledge. Your first web site will probably be pretty much "no-frills" but once you have the basic understanding necessary to get some text and images up, you can start to look at ways of enhancing your design and layout.

In concept, HTML is very simple and all you really need is a text program (such as Notepad - whatever you don't try and use a word processor such as WORD unless you can save your file as text only with line breaks). HTML is just a text file that a browser reads and interprets. It works on a basic system of on and off tags. For example, if your HTML file says this: This is a bold heading, the browser that comes along to read the HTML file knows that everything after the tag should be rendered in bold text. It will stop rendering in bold when it comes across the tag. In other words, everything between and will be rendered bold. Most HTML works on this sort of system. All you need to do is find out what a few of the basic tags are. Then you can start to experiment with laying out a page of text. You can add images to your web page by adding a tag such as <img src="myimage.jpg">. This tag tells the browser that it is supposed to display an image at that point in the document. Your tag tells the browser that the image source (or name) is myimage.jpg. The browser will look for that image in the same directory as the file it is reading and display it for you where you have told it to.

That's probably enough about HTML for this article. My purpose in describing these two basics was just to show how easy it really is. I recommend now that you find a good simple HTML tutorial on the web. There are millions of them such as:

Norrie the Actrix Nerd's "How to HTML" (a bit dated now, but still a good start);
A Beginner's Guide to HTML (thorough, but less well-explained);
Dave Raggett's Introduction to HTML (quite good and broken down into Basic and Advanced sections).

There are many more. Any search on "Introduction to HTML," or "Guide to HTML" (and so forth) should get you plenty of results.

You shouldn't be too scared to have a go. Most people who make web pages (even many of those who do so for a living) are completely self-taught. I recall the first time I tried was with a tutorial set up for users of free space at Geocities. I was surprised by how easy it was, and had a page I was happy with up in about 20 minutes. I don't think I'd be quite so happy with that first page these days, but I value what I learned and the start I was able to make there. I had all sorts of little problems at first, the minute I tried to do anything fancy. More often than not it was because I had forgotten a / or a " in my code somewhere. A little bit of persistence and I'd find my silly mistake and it would never (almost) happen again. Learning extra stuff wasn't that hard either. You can view the source of most web pages (right-click and then left-click on View Source) you visit to see how the designer of the page you're impressed with did it. So, the sky's the limit when it comes to the possibilities.

If you want, you can buy or download programs that will do the HTML for you. These are called wysiwyg programs (what you see is what you get) because you just work with text and images, and the program builds the HTML for you behind the scenes. The most common bought programs are Macromedia's Dreamweaver and Microsoft's FrontPage, but they are expensive. You can download cheaper programs and free trial versions at a site such as Tucows NZ. One I have found particularly good is CoffeeCup HTML. It tends to let you be boss of your own code whereas other wysiwyg programs will re-write your code and add lots of extraneous bits and pieces that aren't necessary. In fact, these days, I write most code in Notepad and only use a wysiwyg because they create tables much faster than I can do by hand.

If you're using a text editor such as Notepad (free with Windows), my suggestion is that you save all the files you are working on in a directory on your C: drive (e.g. named HTML). Your main page should be saved as index.html (this is the page a browser will open first when it is sent to your site). To have a look at what you're creating before you upload it, open your browser and type c:\HTML\index.html into the address bar. Your browser will then open that file for you and you'll see how it will look on the web. Remember to re-save your file and refresh your browser to look at changes. Whatever you do, don't design something in Word and then use the "Save as HTML" feature. This invariably serves up a dog's breakfast of whacko code that will cause you no end of problems. There are much simpler ways.

If you get stuck with your HTML, the best thing you can do is persist and try different options to see what works. Unfortunately, you can't really expect a whole lot of help from our help desk when it comes to this. Most of the staff will know a little about HTML (and some will be great at it) but helping customers with HTML problems is not part of their job description. If you're lucky, and you strike them on a good day when they're not too busy, they may be able to give you a tip or two. Please don't be offended, though, if they refuse to go into great detail with you as your own skills with HTML aren't really relevant to the service we provide you. They will do their best to help you with the web upload feature, though. There's plenty of help out there on the web for free for other problems.

So, that's it for the Introduction to the User Home Page feature of the Actrix web site. I hope you will make the most of your free personal web space. Once you're happy with your site, let me know if you'd like to be added to the main index!

Please note: Actrix supplies links to these sites for your interest and possible use. We cannot endorse or take any responsibility for their contents. Got a site you think would be neat to share with other readers? Let me know and receive a free Norrie the Nerd chocolate bar courtesy of Actrix!

Powers of Ten
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/ - It's not often these days that I see something on the Net that really knocks my socks off. This site comes pretty close. Starting with an image of the Milky Way from 10 million light years out in space, this wonderful little flash animation moves closer and closer to Earth by powers of 10 with each frame. When it gets down to a blade of grass, well, it just keeps going and the whole cellular universe opens up. It'll take a while to load on a dialup connection, but will be worth the wait!

It's All About Einstein
www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/ - It's hard to think of him as anything other than a brilliant and quirky genius. However, the man with the world's most famous brain faced personal struggles just like everyone else. He grew up poor, wasn't the best of students, and lived through an adulthood with a series of marriages and love affairs gone sour. Einstein was not always at ease with his celebrity, yet he used it to better humanity and show how intelligence isn't just about an IQ, but choosing to live a productive life with no excuses.

The Pause that Refreshes and More!
http://members.tripod.com/~Barefoot_Lass/cola.html - Crazy Uses for Coca Cola! Whether or not you believe that coke will dissolve a nail in just a few days, this site does suggest a number of uses for Coca Cola that are intriguing to say the least. From the ideal bathroom grout cleaner to the main ingredient in several chicken dishes, this beverage seems to have a multitude of possible uses. Some of the ideas look quite feasible. This is the Internet, though, so keep your legend-alert cap on.

Are You Sure You Haven't Been Taken?
www.anw.com/aliens/52questions.htm - I mean really, how do you know for sure whether or not you've had a close and uncomfortable encounter that you can't remember? Here are 58 questions you can ask yourself to determine whether or not you have been secretly abducted by inter-stellar visitors for medical experiments. I have. They want my DNA to start a master race on another planet. Seriously!

The Museum of Hoaxes
www.museumofhoaxes.com/index.html - Now this is a great site. You're provided with a gallery of photos (most of which you've probably seen before circulating in e-mail). Now you can learn whether or not the pictures you've marvelled at in the past are real or authentic. There's a fun quiz you can do to test your ability to spot hoax photographs, as well as links to current hoaxes on the Internet. There's also an excellent set of links to web sites that aren't about hoaxes, but actually are hoaxes!

Web Puzzler
www.imagiware.com/puzzle/ - After you select an image from the list, you will be shown the puzzle. Try to solve the puzzle by rearranging the pieces. Select and click to switch any two pieces. You can also click to see the completed image if you need help. The Web Puzzler also keeps track of how many moves it takes you to solve the puzzle. Good fun and easy to do, this site provides enough challenge to be interesting without having to occupy you for ages.

The Ultimate IQ Test
www.emode.com/tests/uiq/ - Brought to you by Emode, who claim to be the world's leading self-assessment company (whatever that means) and developed by PhD's (whatever that proves) this IQ Test is quite a challenge, unlike the many that circulate and then return you a really high score to make you feel good. At the end of the test you'll also receive a short description of your intelligence type. This is the Internet, so one never really knows just how scientifically accurate a test like this one is, but it is fun and some of the questions will give your mind a workout. Just make sure you untick the box that signs you up for their newsletter before you finish up.

Cap'n Wacky's Boatload of Fun
www.capnwacky.com/ - There is indeed a boatload of fun at this site. Regular offerings include an advice column from outer space, confessions of a stick-figure model, Nobel prizes for kids and sentences written by a student obsessed with tacos but not very good with vocabulary. The humour is adult without being too grubby.

100 Top Albums of the '80s
http://pitchforkmedia.com/top/80s/ - At the end of every year, we're inundated with lists that break down the best and worst of just about everything. Pitchfork, an outstanding independent music daily that has been cranking out record reviews since 1995, recently offered up a different kind of list: the Top 100 Albums of the 1980s. The writers and reviewers at Pitchfork point out that despite its reputation for producing "the worst fashion, fads, and music of any decade of the 20th century," the '80s saw the establishment of hip-hop, alternative rock, and indie rock. You can also check out the top 100 albums of the '90s.

Akiyoshi's Illusion Pages
www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html - Akiyoshi Kitaoka, from the Department of Psychology, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, has produced this page full of what he calls anomalous motion illusion images. Each one is static and usually composed of straight lines and geometric shapes, but they play tricks on your mind and appear to move or bulge where they shouldn't. There's a warning on the page that they may make you dizzy, woozy or nauseous. I doubt it.

E-mail Roulette
www.plinko.net/roulette/faq.asp - This looks like fun. You sign up through the web page and decide on a user name and password. Then you send an e-mail using the web form. It will get sent on to some other random person who has joined the scheme. They can choose whether or not to answer you. I'm intrigued by the randomness of the whole thing. It may or may not be your cup of tea. While it's true that you participate at your own risk, there are pretty strict rules about what you can or can't send, and thought has been given to complaints procedures.

Dr Grammar
www.drgrammar.org/ - See? I told you the Internet was good for something! Dr Grammar's web site is dedicated to providing all the help you could possibly need when it comes to the technical side of your writing skills. When is it right to use "further," and when should "farther" be used? How much can I "borrow" from someone else before what I'm doing becomes plagiarism? All sorts of questions about language are answered in the lists of FAQs and resources provided. The Dr used to be in a street gang, so he's quite the colourful character.

Top 11 Lies Computer Science Students Tell Themselves

Taken from the text of a T Shirt available for sale at BBSpot (http://bbspot.com/store/tshirts.html).

Japanese govt behind spy hacks: The Japanese government has been implicated in attempts to steal research secrets from a New Zealand medical research institute, a network security consultant has confirmed. Click here for more.

Set up 100 hi-tech firms, NZ urged: A shortage of managerial skill and expertise has been identified as the biggest obstacle to rapid growth of New Zealand's information and communications technology industry. An ambitious report issued yesterday recommends New Zealand set itself the goal of developing 100 new technology companies with annual turnover of more than $100 million by the year 2012. Click here for more.

Microsoft deal coup for NZ: If Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer stands up at the podium and demonstrates the business integration capacity of .Net, chances are he will be showing off software produced in New Zealand. Click here for more.

Web publishers uneasy about National Library Bill : The National Library looks likely to win the right to compel anyone who publishes on the Net to help the library access and store their content. Click here for more.

Internet now big part of Kiwi life: Three-quarters of New Zealanders over the age of 10 now have access to the internet from any location, according to Nielsen Media Research's NetWatch. Click here for more.

More Net users, more online shoppers : According to Nielsen-Netratings, more than 560 million people worldwide had Internet access from home at the end of the third quarter. The data indicates that around 10 million additional households went online from June to September to bring the total number of home Internet users to 563 million. Click here for more.

File swappers ordered to pay up: An anti-piracy group has launched a controversial program against file-swappers, sending them huge bills for their peer-to-peer downloads. In a unique crackdown on illegal file-sharing, a Danish anti-piracy group has mailed invoices to alleged pirates demanding compensation for downloading copyrighted materials off the Internet, an attorney for the group says. Click here for more.

Spam likely to clutter e-mail for some time: Sick of being inundated with get-rich-quick schemes and Viagra ads in your e-mail? Well, get used to it because, despite concerted efforts to fight it, "spam" is expected to get worse before it gets better, analysts say. The average American will get more than 2,200 spam, or unsolicited bulk e-mail, messages this year and 3,600 by 2007... Click here for more.

FBI: Hacker stole 80,000 credit cards: Israeli police, aided by the FBI, arrested an Israeli suspected of hacking into computers of a U.S.-based electronics company and stealing personal information, including the credit card numbers of some 80,000 customers, according to court document released Sunday. Click here for more.

Australia trial could set Web precedent: Australia's highest court ruled on Tuesday that a defamation case sparked by a story on a U.S Web site could be heard in Australia, opening a legal minefield for web publishers over which libel laws they must follow. Click here for more.

Study refutes e-mail myth at work: If you're feeling inundated by e-mail at work and think the annoyance must be universal, you're wrong. A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that overwhelming levels of e-mail are quite atypical, an outcome that surprised even the researchers. Click here for more.

FBI flashes 'virtual wanted poster': The FBI is taking its pursuit of fugitive crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger to the Internet with a "virtual wanted poster." In a first-of-its-kind agreement announced this week, Lycos will flash a message about Bulger, including his likeness, in one of several banner ads that appear in rotation on the Web portal's global network. Click here for more.

Spam may overtake e-mail in 2003: A message-filtering service warned this week that spam will exceed legitimate e-mail traffic by July. MessageLabs says e-mail threats, including viruses and spam, are increasing at an "alarming rate." MessageLabs says that about 30 percent of all e-mail sent in November was spam, a figure that's actually smaller than other recent estimates. Click here for more.

Cheaters threaten success of online gaming: Tony Ray knows how cheating can ruin a good time online. The 35-year-old Houston software developer was a video gamer who regularly conquered rivals on the game "Team Fortress." Then, opposing teams started acquiring supernatural powers. Their perfect aim just wasn't humanly possible. Click here for more.

Spammer gets junk mailed : A US bulk emailer is threatening legal action after so-called "anti-spammers" signed him up for lots of junk mail. Click here for more.

Microsoft Announces Ads for Blue Screen of Death (Satire): In an effort to boost sagging revenue growth, Microsoft today announced it will begin selling advertising space on the company's world famous Blue Screen of Death. The screen, displayed whenever Windows cannot recover from an error in the operating system's core, until now has historically served as a display of unintelligible diagnostic data that has not made any sense to anyone, ever... Click here for more.

Microsoft warns of IE, Outlook flaws : Microsoft late Wednesday warned of new security glitches in some of its Internet software that could expose sensitive data. The Redmond, Wash., company said a glitch could allow hackers to pilfer information from computers running versions of its Internet Explorer Web browser. The Internet Explorer security hole affects versions 5.5 and 6 for Windows. IE 5.01 is not affected by the glitch. Click here for more.

Microsoft sets its sights on the home: To many people Microsoft resembles a religion more than it does a business. Its crusading zeal and dedication to the mission of putting a Windows PC on every desktop and in every home only reinforce the impression. And like every religion it has its evangelical wing charged with preparing the ground for new converts. Click here for more.

The Microsoft FTP server leak: Microsoft made customer details - along with numerous confidential internal documents - freely available from a deeply insecure FTP server earlier this month. A well as numerous PowerPoint slides, such as Linux Vs Windows comparisons and .NET strategy papers, Microsoft "published" files an estimated 11 million customer email addresses and seven million snail mail address on the server. Click here for more.

$9 million theft from Microsoft paid for lavish life: A director for one of Microsoft's high-profile .NET projects was arrested yesterday on federal charges that he stole and sold more than $9 million in software from the company to buy luxury cars, jewelry and a 51-foot yacht. Click here for more.

Mac Loyalists: Don't Tread on Us: There are 25 million people around the world who use Macintosh computers, according to Apple. But unlike ordinary personal computers, people don't simply use Macs, they become fans. They develop a passion for the machines, which can sometimes turn into an obsession. Click here for more.

Microsoft holds monopoly, but also vision : For many people, especially lots of techies, nothing is more offensive than praise for Microsoft. After I wrote in this column two weeks ago that I had liked Bill Gates' speech at Comdex and found in it several impressive Microsoft innovations, I was besieged with e-mail from readers who called me crazy, biased, corrupt, or all three. Click here for more.

The Cult of Hackers: Hackers are typically portrayed as one of two stereotypes: digital Robin Hoods taking on the Internet's wired establishment or sinister masterminds who can upend everyday users' lives with their technical exploits. In reality... Click here for more.

Huge identity theft ring busted: A 33-year-old help desk worker at a small Long Island company was charged Monday with the biggest identity theft fraud in U.S. history. Philip Cummings’ actions led to the theft of more than 30,000 people’s identities, federal authorities charge, in what U.S. Attorney Kevin Barrows called “every American’s worst financial nightmare multiplied tens of thousands of times.” But as authorities explained how Cummings allegedly ripped through the nation’s financial system, the irresistible question hung in the air: Why was it so easy? Click here for more.

New e-mail worm detected: Anti-virus software maker F-Secure has reported the presence of a new email worm called Winevar. The company has ranked it as a level 2 alert - a new worm causing large infections which might be local to a specific region. Click here for more.

Xupiter Spyware: Every once in a while, a threat emerges on the Internet that is so pervasive that it deserves a special web page on the PC Fear Factor web site. Such is the case with Xupiter, a piece of spyware that is running rampant on the web, infecting millions of computers. Click here for more.

Microsoft Unveils Licensing Discounts To Counter Linux: Microsoft has unveiled a new policy to prevent its business customers from switching to Linux or other open source alternatives. Called Open Value, the new offer is part of the software giant's Licensing 6 volume licensing program. "What's happening is that Microsoft sales reps have been instructed to be on the lookout for any businesses that are migrating some of their machines to the Lindows OS," Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio told NewsFactor. Click here for more.

Microsoft to offer Linux software?: In a major strategy shift, Microsoft Corp. will introduce software based on the Linux open source operating system in 2004 for Web services and server software, market researcher META Group predicted on Monday. Click here for more.

Buried in debt? Try 'cyberbegging': Need to pay down credit card debt? Desperate for money for music lessons? Simply tired of working and too embarrassed to stand on the corner with a tin cup? Try "cyberbegging." Click here for more.

Tattoos, Britney top Web search list: If Japanese cartoons, music-sharing and tattoos were on your mind the last time you did a Web search, then you're onto the latest trend. Those were among the most popular Internet searches in 2002, according to the folks at search engine Lycos. Click here for more.

Student gets 'A' for hacking school computer: It was a breeze for 15-year-old Reid Ellison to hack into his high school's computer grading system. But what to do once he broke in took a bit more ingenuity. Click here for more.

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