AOL
puts fight to spammers by blocking sites
America Online Inc. is using a new tactic in the war
against spam. It is blocking members’ ability to view web sites promoted
by bulk emailers. This policy, which was adopted earlier this year, makes
the company the first of its kind to break the online tradition of
internet service providers remaining neutral to anything the web has to
offer. Many online solicitors advertise products by providing links in
their email to web sites that display the products and take orders. Now
AOL members that try to visit a blocked web page will receive an error
message saying a connection to the page couldn’t be made but aren’t
informed that the site is off-limits. Although AOL has joined with
competitors EarthLink Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. to sue spammers
and develop spam-blocking technologies, AOL is alone in its effort to
limit access to commercial web sites advertised through spam.
Witty
worm whittles through firewall to attack
An internet worm destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of
personal computers worldwide Saturday morning by, ironically, manipulating
a security flaw in a firewall program designed to prevent online threats.
The “Witty” worm, named for a message in its code that says, “insert
witty message here,” writes random data onto the hard drives of
computers with the Black Ice and Real Secure internet firewall products.
This results in drive failure, which makes it impossible to restart the
PCs. This worm is different from those that come in the form of an email
attachment because it spreads automatically to at-risk computers without
any user control. There are at least 50,000 infected computers so far. The
firewall programs were developed by Atlanta-based Internet Security
Systems, which has released a patch and a detailed writeup of the affected
products.
Top
news sites on the web belong to papers
Audience statistics from
Nielsen//NetRatings report that seven of the top 20 news web sites or
groups in the U.S. during February were affiliated with newspapers. The
top sites in the current events and global news category were Yahoo! News,
CNN, MSNBC, AOL News and Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc. A surprise
statistic showed Google News in the No. 20 slot with 4.9 million unique
users, the first time it has made the rankings. Three individual newspaper
sites reached the top 20: NYTimes.com, USAToday.com and washingtonpost.com.
Newspaper chains that made the cut were Gannett, Knight-Ridder, Tribune
and Hearst. The Nielsen//NetRatings rankings are based on a panel of
60,000-plus Americans accessing the web at work and home.
Did
your neighbor give to Bush? Check online.
Getting nosy on the internet is
easy if you’re into politics. A new web site dedicated to finding out
just how much dough your neighbors are dishing out to presidential
candidates makes it as simple as a search. All you have to do is key your
address and zip code into the “Neighbor Search” at fundrace.org, and a
list of donations your neighbors gave to any presidential candidates last
year will appear. The search engine uses technology called geocoding,
which matches street addresses with longitude and latitude data.
Candidates are required by law to disclose any contributions of $200 or
more, and the Federal Election Commission makes this information available
for download. Electronic filings are available through Dec. 31, and the
site’s creator, Michael Frumin, plans to add data as they become
available. The site has received more than 100,000 searches since the tool
launched Wednesday.
|
