Archive for September, 2007

Google Calls for Global Online Privacy Standard

Saturday, September 15th, 2007

Search giant Google Inc. will propose on Friday that governments and technology companies create a transnational privacy policy to address growing concerns over how personal data is handled across the Internet.

Google’s global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, will make the proposal at a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization meeting in Strasbourg, France, dealing with the intersection of technology with human rights and ethics.

Fleischer’s 30-minute presentation will advocate that regulators, international organizations and private companies increase dialog on privacy issues with a goal to create a unified standard.

Google envisions the policy to be a product of self-regulation by companies, improved laws and possible new ones, according to a Google spokesman based in London.

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Worm Winds Its Way Into Skype for Windows

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

In a high-profile reminder of the security pitfalls that still exist with PC-based communications, eBay’s Skype Latest News about Skype is warning users of a fast-spreading worm affecting users of Skype for Windows.

The worm spreads through the peer-to-peer phone service’s instant chat application and is activated when a user clicks in a link in an instant message they receive, Skype said.

Those messages may appear to be from someone on a Skype user’s contact list or from an unknown party. The messages contain an attachment that appears to be a JPEG photo but in reality is executable code.
‘Cleverly Written’

The worm, which has been dubbed “W32/Ramex.A,” then uses code within Skype’s application programming interface to access files on the PC.

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Tax bills could be compiled using Google

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

The taxman could soon be totting up the nation’s bills on software supplied by Google after the internet giant signed a landmark deal with the IT services supplier to HM Revenue & Customs.

Today Google will unveil a partnership with Capgemini, under which the IT services group will add the internet giant’s word processing, spreadsheet and e-mail tools to the portfolio of software applications it offers its clients.

The move comes as Google radically ramps up its rivalry with Microsoft, which has long dominated the desktop market with its Office portfolio of products, which includes the stalwarts Word and Excel.

Google unveiled a paid-for collection of rival software tools in February, offering businesses a bundle of web-based services, accessible over the internet, services for $50 (£25) a year per user.

Since then it has said that the product has been signing up more than 1,000 small businesses a day and has been adopted by more than 100,000 firms.

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Russian Mayor Bans Phrase ‘I Don’t Know’

Monday, September 10th, 2007

The mayor of a Siberian oil town has ordered his bureaucrats to stop using expressions such as “I don’t know” and “I can’t.” Or look for another job.

Alexander Kuzmin, the 33-year-old mayor of Megion, has banned these and 25 other phrases as a way to make his administration more efficient, his spokeswoman said Tuesday.

“It’s a suggestion to the staff that they should think before saying something,” Oksana Shestakova said by telephone. “To say `I don’t know’ is the same as admitting your helplessness.”

To reinforce the ban, a framed list of the banned expressions has been hanging on the wall next to Kuzmin’s office for the past two weeks, Shestakova said.

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Symantec lancar Norton Anti Bot

Monday, September 10th, 2007

SYMANTEC Corp melancarkan Norton AntiBot, penyelesaian keselamatan pertama kepada industri multimedia yang dibangunkan bagi mengatasi masalah ancaman pandemik botnet yang semakin bertambah ketika ini.

Norton AntiBot berfungsi sebagai pengesan botnet pada masa sebenar dan mampu memisahkan ancaman itu daripada aplikasi komputer peribadi (PC), sekali gus menawarkan platform keselamatan bersepadu kepada penggunanya.

Perisian berkenaan mampu memantau aplikasi PC dalam tempoh 24 jam dan memproses ancaman botnet pada masa sama, justeru ia menawarkan lapisan perlindungan tambahan yang melengkapkan penyelesaian keselamatan sedia ada.
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