What do you think the hot news is on the mean streets of the Internet? The Apple lawsuit against pre-med student Vivek “Desicanuck” Sambhara for putting a beta version of Mac OS X 10.4 (”Tiger”) on Bit Torrent? The teenager who was arrested for sending instant messenger spam (”spim”)? The release of a new, particularly virulent strain of MyDoom? The hacking of the FBI’s email system? The latest RIAA lawsuit?

Nope, none of these.

The hacking and subsequent posting on the Internet of Paris Hilton’s Tmobile Sidekick address book, complete with telephone numbers and email addresses of various stars, and sundry others.

Yep, that’s right. People care more about Paris Hilton’s hacked Sidekick address book, notes, and photographs more than they care about their computer’s security, the security of large computer systems on which their personal information resides, spam, spyware, or pretty much any other Internet nasty.

Aunty knows this because in the past 24 hours Aunty herself… [Continued...]