Tirelessly keeping watch over the mean streets of the Internet! We\’re helping you with spam alerts, spyware warnings, spoof advisories, sleazeball sightings, security updates, system fixes - and, of course, product reviews - it\’s all part of the beat for the Net Patrol.
Nigeria really seems to be doing all the right things to bring under some semblence of control the flood of financial scams which originate within its borders, including the infamous “419 spam scam”. Earlier this month the Nigerian courts sentenced a Nigerian 419 scamstress to 2 1/2 year in jail, and now their […]
China has been in the news with relation to the Internet a lot of late. They recently joined the anti-spam “London Plan”, have expanded their Internet offerings to their citizens with MSN Spaces’ Chinese portal (which admits to censoring in China), and, most recently, have been in the center of a corporate espionage scandal.
In an at least temporary victory for Redmond giant Microsoft, in a lawsuit which defending Mountain View giant Google is calling “a charade”, a Washington state trial court has ordered ex Microsoft employee Kai-Fu Lee to refrain from starting his new job at Google to the extent that it would violate a non-compete agreement which […]
A New York woman has filed a lawsuit over Hot Coffee. No, she didn’t scald her lap, and no, the defendant is not McDonalds. Rather, 85-year-old Florence Cohen is suing the publishers of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas over the so-called “Hot Coffee” mod which opens up previously-hidden scenes from the game. […]
Every once in a while you have to just laugh at the 419 scammers who abound on the Internet. Ok, maybe twice in a while, as we all just had a good laugh looking at the pictures at the 419 Eater website.
If you are into understanding how much world-changing information is being kept away from us, while appreciating from a direct person account (which of course you can believe or not) how vulnerable high-security systems within the US Government and military really are, you MUST listen to this fascinating BBC interview with Gary McKinnon, who has […]
The U.S. Department of Justice has opened their online National Sex Offender Public Registry for business. The controversial registry collates information from all of the online state registries, allowing for people to search all of the online databases at once to determine who and where are the registered sex offenders. At least those […]
In what is being hailed as one of the largest spam&scam busts of the decade, and the biggest 419 bust in history, the FBI and Spanish police have collaborated to arrest three hundred and ten (that’s right, 310) people in Spain, all of whom were connected with an enormous email scam being run by Nigerian […]
With the release of the new AIM Fight, Aunty Spam thought that it would be fun to
survey folks to see what their AIM Fight scores are.
Authorities are reporting that pirated online copies of the newest Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, hit the streets of the Internet in record time. Pirated (scanned) copies were available in ebook form, and audio versions on torrent sites, mere hours after the book was released for sale.
Is it a case of sour grapes, or good business? Microsoft this week has sued Google. Not over technology or copyright. Nope. Over poaching one of its top executives, Executive Vice President Kai-Fu Lee.
It’s no secret that Microsoft has recently forayed into the Chinese Internet scene, and Google has been there […]
The newest worm in the big apple known as the Internet is worm_opaniki.y, also known as Oscabot-L. What makes Opaniki.y unique is that it impersonates iTunes, by sending itself around disguised as “iTunes.exe”.
Even though they can serve such legitimate purposes as preventing cellular eavesdropping, cell phone jammers have always been controversial, and in fact cellphone jammers are illegal in the United States, where, according to the FCC, “The operation of transmitters designed to jam or block wireless communications is a violation of the Communications Act of 1934, […]
Both Visa and American Express have announced that they are severing business relations with security-beleagured company CardSystems, Inc.
The concept of “first, do no harm” apparently doesn’t extend to those who provide support services for doctors, as a founder of a medical answering service has been charged with hacking into a competitor’s service, and rearranging the system so that calls to the doctors were met with the passionate moans of someone seemingly in […]
f you go to a movie in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles, that vibration you feel in your pocket may not be someone trying to pick your pocket (or, hey, something else) but may be a bluetooth promotional kiosk in the movie lobby sending something to your cell phone via bluetooth.
TiVo first came to prominence as the company which allowed its customers to record whatever they wanted from television whenever they wanted - anything, any time - with the touch of a button.
And it allowed its customers to skip commercials.
We’ve had lots of stories on identity theft lately. That’s because it’s happening to a lot of people. People whose credit card information has been stolen (ChoicePoint, Lexis Nexis). People whose college admissions and academic records have been hacked (Stanford, UCSD).
We’ve all seen variations on the theme. “I am Mariam Abacha, widow of the late Nigerian head of state, Gen. Sani Abacha. After the death of my husband who died mysteriously…”
Those wacky people at True.com are up to it again, talking all logical and sciency about online dating, when everyone knows that the Martian/Venusian aspect of dating requires an alchemist, not a psychologist.