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Would you like to receive regular email updates of my ecommerce and marketing research, plus news of additions to the site? Subscribe today for free via the form in the right hand column of this page! April 16 Hackers hit the big timeIt's been revealed that during March, hackers manage to compromise some of the most power clusters of computers on the planet, including systems at Stanford University, the San Diego Supercomputer Center and the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications. What does this have to do with Ecommerce? Plenty - these systems are meant to be well guarded and policed by some of the most highly skilled geeks around. I raise this issue just to ask a question - how's your disaster plan looking these days? If your online business doesn't have one, it's really time to consider getting something together. Extortionists threaten E-commerce site ownersAn Australian betting agency has become the latest victim in online extortion, losing an estimated $2 million in business last weekend after being shut down by overseas extortionists. The way this works is simple; site owners receive an email demanding money and if the money isn't sent, the perpetrators hit the site owners server with a DoS (Denial of Service) attack. A DoS attack is executed by software that generates a very large number of requests for pages from a web site, or sending a very large number of emails - (also known as mail bombing). The requests come so fast, it prevents anyone else from accessing the site. The frightening thing is that the tools necessary to carry out a DoS attack are quite easy to obtain.
April 14 Microsoft releases new security patchesMicrosoft has released three critical patches Tuesday to address Windows security flaws that could allow remote control of a computer. Also in this months update is a fourth patch relating to security, which the company categorized as "important". Visit Windows Update. April 12 Buy now, pay later - onlineWe've all seen the ads on TV... "buy now, pay later", "no money down", "don't pay a thing for 18 months". Well, it seems a version of it is gaining popularity in the online world - this may be another viable way to get credit card shy consumers to part with their cash, and to boost the value of sales. Offered by i4Commerce, the Bill Me Later solution bypasses the need for a credit card. Using basic information from the client, plus their Social Security number, Bill Me Later authorizes a purchase and sends the customer a bill with flexible payment terms. Learn more. April 11 CAN-SPAM, WILL-SPAMThe CANSPAM act has done nothing to alleviate the problem of junk email. In fact, growth rates over the last few months reported by some hosts indicate that spam/virus mail hitting servers is increasing around 25% per month on the previous month. Forward projections based on that figure are truly frightening. Commtouch®, a global developer and provider of proprietary anti-spam solutions, said its spam detection centers saw record volumes of spam email during March 2004. Spam was detected coming from 152 countries. 60% of that volume originated in the United States with China a distant second with 6%. Read more.
Microsoft - Longhorn - less new featuresIt appears that a number of programmers have been taken off the Longhorn project (Microsoft's next version of Windows) in order to focus on XP's Service Pack 2; due for release later this year. The redeployment of programmers was carried out specifically to improve security related features in the next version of XP. Longhorn is still slotted for public release in early 2006. April 8 2004 Microsoft - "Active Protection Technologies"?At a luncheon this week, Steve Ballmer drove home the point that the future of Internet security would only be successful if all parties, from end users, to developers, to governments co-operated in the battle against cybercrime. Rather obvious in my opinion, but one interesting point related to Microsoft's forays in what Mr. Ballmer terms "active protection technologies" to make computers more resistant against virus infections. "One example of this is what's called 'behavior blocking,' which are really technologies identifying and intercepting code that looks suspicious, before the computer is infected," said Ballmer. "A protected computer will say, "'This doesn't smell right to me. I won't execute this without asking the user for permission,'" Ballmer added. "And that's really an important area of breakthrough." I'd like to hear a little more about this; as it sounds as though Microsoft has just discovered what a virus scanner is and how to set it to run in the background - but I'm sure there's more to it than that ;). A lot to Yahoo! about - profits soarYahoo's net profit and sales more than doubled to $US101.2 million in the first quarter of 2004, with huge income from marketing and user fees. Marketing services revenue more than tripled and fees for services such as premium email increased by 38%. Read more.
April 2 2004 European businesses lacking in virus protectionEven though issues relating to viruses have been given a much higher profile in the media, it appears that many European businesses are ignoring this very important aspect of security. McAfee recently carried out a survey of 500 businesses in the UK, Italy, Netherlands, France, Germany and Spain. It was very disturbing to note that around 60% of companies in the UK and France *do not* keep their anti-virus scanners up to date. Read more about the survey. Altavista goes Yahoo too..Last month I mentioned that All The Web, purchased by Yahoo some time ago, was now showing Yahoo results. In the last couple of days, the same has happened with Alta Vista. Alta Vista, which was the mightiest search engine around in the 90's was another company purchased by Yahoo during it's acquisition bender last year. Another era (quietly) ends... and to be honest, good riddance. Perhaps Yahoo! can improve things for AV; they couldn't really do much to make it worse. April 1 2004 Free email from Google!Yep, you heard right, Google is set to give away free email accounts with *1 gigabyte* of storage. Unfortunately, you won't be able to get @google.com addresses - it will be @gmail.com. At present, a select few have been invited to try out the service, but public release of gmail is only a few weeks away according to this CNN report. It sounds great, but seriously, 1 *gig* of email? I originally thought this was an April Fool's day joke... but it seems not - this will really have the execs at Yahoo and Microsoft scratching their heads. It's also causing an interesting debate on privacy issues in some forums given that Google will use content sensitive advertising delivery methods to display ads when emails are viewed. Spam - the solution?As I'm also involved in the hosting industry, issues pertaining to spam are of particular interest to me. I've been reading what a number of other hosting companies have been saying on the subject and the figures are very disturbing. In terms of volume, many are reporting spam figures as high 80% of all incoming mail. I shudder to think how many terabytes of bandwidth are being totally and utterly wasted each day due to spammers. I've heard on many occasions that unless a global solution is found by the end of this year, it could threaten the Internet itself. Like our physical environment, our online environment is choking in it's own toxic crap. Similar to our physical environment, as I've mentioned before, I really cannot see a "magic bullet" solution. The Internet, and World Wide Web in particular has gotten too big, too quickly and international borders do not really exist. The non-existence of borders as such is something that I've always appreciated about the net; but having this scenario exist within societies defined by physical borders, i.e. countries, is unsustainable. I can hardly see all the world governments coming together under one government purely so I can have a clean inbox :). All this aside, the *root* of all these problems - online and offline is quite simple - it's us; spammers and non-spammers alike. Spammers reflect a trait within all of us and exhibited by most of us. It all boils down to our tendency towards greed - the bigger car, the higher paying job, the trinkets we buy. Until we change that basic human trait, issues like spam will continue to reflect this and flourish. Get all the latest news from Taming the Beast, current ecommerce development and internet marketing strategies, plus general web site promotion tips - subscribe to our free update today and have it delivered directly to your inbox!
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In Loving Memory - Mignon Ann Bloch
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