Sasser
smacks around office connections
The latest worm digging its way around the internet, Sasser,
had corporations panicking and internet service slowing to a crawl for
some computers yesterday, the first work day of its short life. Sasser is
much like last year’s quick-spreading Blaster worm in that it doesn’t
require users to download it by opening an email attachment. Instead, it
replicates itself by scanning vulnerable computers for the Microsoft
Windows flaw that allows it to spread. Though Microsoft posted a patch for
the local security authority subsystem
that the worm exploits
in April, it says not many users have downloaded it. Sasser may have Blaster’s cunning, but it
lacks its strength – even with thousands of cases yesterday, it’s
spreading more slowly than Blaster did last summer.
Big-hearted
AOL's reminder: Save for college
America Online hopes a little
goodwill will go a long way toward stemming the bleed of subscribers that
began last year. The country’s largest internet service provider is
putting $30 million into a campaign that began yesterday to remind parents
to save money for college, especially via AOL partner Upromise, which
provides rebates for college-conscious consumers. AOL says the program is
simply to promote better relations with subscribers. Under their
agreement, AOL will double rebates received by its members through the
Upromise program. Other Upromise partners include McDonald’s and Exxon.
Some 2.5 million families, and 1 million AOL members, have enrolled with
Upromise.
Study
finds user behavior best for targeting
When it comes to ad targeting, studying user behavior
generates greater benefits than concentrating on content finds a new study
from Dynamic Logic. The group studied a Snapple campaign on women-focused
portal iVillage, and found that ads targeted by user behavior have a 73
percent more favorable reaction than those placed in content areas.
Behavior-oriented ads also drove 29 percent more purchases than content.
The study placed ads both inside the Diet & Fitness channel and via
behavior targeting to women who visited that channel in the past 45 days.
Fifty-one percent of the targeted visitors reported being aware of the ad
compared to 33 percent of those who saw it in the channel. The ad also
garnered a 36 percent favorable impression among the former group compared
to 21 percent of the latter.
New
liberal Brock battling conservatives online
David Brock, the born-again liberal and former conservative
crusader, is taking to the net to help win people over to his new cause.
The author of critical books and articles on Anita Hill and the Clintons
says he has received $2 million in donations from rich liberals to start a
web site to monitor and correct conservative news media. Media Matters is
slated to launch this week, and will put targets on Fox News Channel’s
Bill O’Reilly, CNBC’s Dennis Miller and radio’s Rush Limbaugh, who
will have two researchers assigned to him alone. The site launches as an
offshoot of the new Center for American Progress, the liberal answer to
the conservative media monitor Media Research Group.
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