Bill Lindner

The Home Office in the UK has reportedly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain to routinely hack into people's personal computers without a warrant, allowing police or MI5 officers to covertly examine the hard drive of someone's PC at ... his home, office or hotel room -- all from a remote location. The pronouncement comes after a decision by the European Union's council of ministers in Brussels expanding the implementation of a statute permitting warrant-less surveillance of private property. Material gathered by "remote searching" includes the content of all emails, Internet ... (view more)

According to a court document, an expert estimates that Microsoft earned more than $1.5 billion through the sales of PCs labeled as "Vista Capable" when they allowed some PC makers to label XP-running PCs as "Vista Capable" prior to the release of ... the Windows Vista operating system in early 2007. (Source: nwsource.com ) Last February we reported that a "Vista Capable" lawsuit was granted class-action status because some PCs labeled as "Vista Capable" were only capable of running the most basic version of the operating system. (Source: infopackets.com ) Despite claims that Microsoft ... (view more)

The British Government is contemplating the third-party construction of a super database containing the identities and location of every person in Britain. The 'super database,' which comes at the hefty cost of 12 billion British pounds, would be ... run by one or a number of private companies and would track every citizen's Internet usage, every phone call, every text message, as well as many other transactions. The government claims the database is necessary to fight terrorism and serious crime. Of course, the government also claims it would come with stringent safeguards to protect a user's ... (view more)

Trials of Australia's mandatory censorship program will begin soon -- details of which the government is refusing to reveal -- despite a high-level report to the Rudd government that found the technology simply does not work, will significantly slow ... Internet speeds, and will block access to legitimate websites. Recently it was announced that Australia would implement mandatory Internet censorship as a way to combat child pornography and adult content. However, this strategy could be extended to include controversial websites focusing on topics like euthanasia or anorexia. Australian users ... (view more)

The second month of Microsoft's campaign against fake security software has resulted in the removal of the rogue "Antivirus 2009" application from almost 400,000 infected PCs. (Source: computerworld.com ) Microsoft claims that December's version of ... the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) -- the free utility included in Windows Update every month -- specifically targeted "Antivirus 2009." According to Microsoft, MSRT removed the rogue application from over 394,000 PCs in the first nine days after it was released on December 9. Last month Microsoft claimed it purged programs called "Advanced ... (view more)

According to market researcher iSuppli, for the first time ever PC makers shipped more portable PCs than desktops. Portable PC shipments rose almost 40 percent in the third quarter of 2008 to 38.6 million compared to a 1.3 percent drop to 38.5 ... million shipments in desktop PCs. Overall, PC sales were up 15.4 percent globally with 79 million PCs shipped. Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell benefited from notebook sales as prices on portable PCs declined by targeting sales overseas while U.S. shoppers curbed spending amid the current recession. HP maintained its lead with 18.8 percent of the market ... (view more)

Microsoft has once again given Windows XP a reprieve, reportedly extending the cut-off date to system builders -- smaller shops and computer dealers who build PCs to order -- from January 31, 2009 to May 31, 2009. According to a Microsoft ... spokeswoman, the company will likely increase the cut-off date again. Despite Microsoft's claims that Windows Vista has sold well, consumers are still reacting badly to it and demand for Vista-XP downgrades is still strong. (Source: crn.com ) Downgrading from Windows Vista to Windows XP is still a popular method for users purchasing new systems with the ... (view more)

The password management feature in your favorite web browser could be helping identity thieves steal your personal data, according to a survey recently conducted by Chapin Information Services (CIS). Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and ... Chrome are vulnerable to a total of 20 vulnerabilities that could result in exposing your password-related information. Three problems are among those that, when combined, allow password thieves to steal your password without your knowledge: The destination where passwords are sent is not checked. The location where passwords are requested is not ... (view more)

For the past few days, users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) have been urged by experts to switch to another web browser until a serious security flaw could be resolved. Microsoft asked its users to remain vigilant while they investigated the ... issue, which could allow criminals to take control of anyone using Internet Explorer and steal passwords and personal information. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) Attacks have been detected against IE 7.0 but the "underlying vulnerability" was present in all versions of the browser, and the problem could well encompass other versions of IE in time. Mozilla ... (view more)

Despite the efforts of the computer security industry, malicious software is reportedly spreading faster than ever and security researchers have acknowledged that they cannot seem to get ahead of the onslaught. Internet security is broken and it ... appears that nobody knows quite how to fix it. This so-called malware surreptitiously takes over a PC then uses it to spread more malware to other machines exponentially. (Source: informationweek.com ) A conservative estimate by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe says that as more businesses and people move onto the Web, criminals ... (view more)