Apple:
50M iTunes served in first 11 months
Apple Computer Inc. said Monday that it has sold 50 million
songs over the internet through its iTunes Music Store at the price of 99
cents per song. The 50 million figure did not include songs redeemed
through the Pepsi promotion to give away 100 million free songs. Apple
sells a portable iTunes digital music player called the iPod and also
allows customers to download a program onto their computers enabling them
to play the songs. Apple launched its iTunes music store for Mac users in
April 2003, expanding the service to PC users in October and setting as
its goal the sale of 100 million songs by April 28, 2004, the anniversary
of the music store's debut. Now the company is selling 2.5 million songs
per week, which translates into 130 million songs per year.
Judge
shuts down Interior internet for Indians
For the third time now, a
federal judge has ordered the Interior Department to sever most of its
internet connections, finding that the department still hasn't fixed
computer security problems that puts millions of dollars in royalties for
Native Americans at risk. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the
systems disconnected to protect oil, gas, timber and grazing royalties
held in trust for Native Americans since 1887. The Interior Department was
assigned the task of managing royalties from lands held in trust, but they
were poorly managed and money was squandered, stolen or never collected.
When the Indians sued in 1996, Lamberth said the department must account
for the money and repair its management flaws. Interior insists that just
a few million dollars are owed to the Indian landowners. The Indians'
attorneys contend it is likely tens of billions of dollars. Lamberth first
disconnected the systems in 2001 after Special Master Alan Balaran
demonstrated that even an amateur hacker could break into the system
storing data about the Indian revenues, potentially setting up bogus
accounts.
PayPal:
Uh, some private info's on the loose
If you have a PayPal account, look out – scammers may
have your email address. PayPal warned its users this week that hackers
had gotten customer alias, mailing address, email address and transaction
data by tricking retailers via email into sending them the info. Though
more sensitive financial data appears to still be safe, PayPal was still
concerned that the scammers would use the information to convince
customers to send along credit card info by that long-standing hacker
scheme of linking victims to an “update” site to re-log their personal
info. PayPal isn’t saying which merchants were scammed or how many user
addresses were released.
19%
of opt-in email being blocked by filters
Spam
filters may be blocking out the
“good” e-marketing. According to a study conducted by Return Path, an
email deliverability company, the problem of false positives is growing,
with 18.7 percent of opt-in e-mail being blocked by major internet service
providers. In an analysis of 30,000 campaigns sent by more than 100 Return
Path clients in the second half of 2003, there has been a 1.7 percent
increase in false positives over the first half of 2003 and a 3.7 percent
increase over the same period in 2002. NetZero was the worst offender,
blocking 37.7 of email that subscribers had signed up for themselves. SBC
Global/Yahoo! was next with 26.7 percent, and Mac blocked 26.2 percent.
EarthLink had the highest level of deliverability, with only 7 percent of
opt-in email being blocked.
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