India Broadband

Security company Sophos has said in a statement that eBay and PayPal happens to be the biggest targets of email spammers and phishing networks.

The company released its latest report on email spamming and it mentioned that three out of every four phishing attacks target users of eBay and its electronic payment system PayPal.

Sophos said that 54.3 percent of spam traps were aimed at PayPal users and 20.9 percent tried to dupe users of eBay.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos spoke on their research: “The reason why the phishers focus so much on PayPal and eBay is because they are so popular around the world. Although bank customers do also suffer from phishing attacks, they tend to be less likely to have the global reach that these net giants have.”

However, this report is in total contrast to a similar study conducted by Anti-Phishing Working Group. Their data shows that 92 percent of phishing attacks in May were directed at brands and companies in the financial services sector.

Intel has just launched their new Core 2 Duo processor lineup, which they claim is the most crucial product launch since the Pentium processors.

And they have further decided to cause more problems for their smaller rivals AMD. Intel has announced that they are slashing away prices on some desktop PC microprocessors by more than half.

This come just days after AMD announced similar price cuts on their processor range to counter the effect of new processor launches from Intel.

Market experts believe that this slash in processor prices would result in significantly cheaper computer products in the coming months.

The price war between the two companies means better deals for the end customers. Awesome month for the computer industry!

Microprocessor giants Intel have now launched its new Core 2 Duo processor lineup on Thursday. This would further boost their offense against their smaller rivals AMD.

Intel claims that their new dual-core chip comes with better performance and greater energy efficiency.

The company added that this processor range launch is their most significant launch ever since the introduction of the original Pentium processor in 1993.

Intel CEO, Paul Otellini added: “This is not just an incremental change… This is a revolutionary leap.”

Tim Bailey, director of platform marketing at Intel Asia-Pacific had these views: “We’re really bullish on Core 2 Duo and we believe that it’s going to enable us to grow a significant amount of (market) share over the second half of the year. That’s our goal.”

Nokia is the world’s largest mobile maker and they have just started testing technology, which would enable the users to roam seamlessly between phone networks and local wireless hotspots powered by Wi-Fi connectivity.

The company said in a statement that they would get around fifty families in Oulu near the polar circle in northern Finland to test out these technical products over the next two months.

These handsets are typically called unlicensed mobile access, or UMA and these help the consumer to make cheap calls when they are inside a Wi-Fi hotspot as it uses VoIP technology in that scenario.

And once the user moves out of the internet network, the phone automatically switches to a GSM, GPRS or UMTS mobile phone network, which is available at that location.

These mobile phones are likely to benefit those consumers who have wi-fi connectivity at home, as they are likely to save a lot of money on making phone calls using the VoIP network.

World’s most popular social networking portal MySpace.com confirmed that they suffered a pair of extended outages over the weekend.

This was blamed on the power problems at a key data center in the Los Angeles area. MySpace.com company co-founder and President Tom Anderson confirmed that the site was having uptime issues as they suffered failures in both the main power supply and the backup generators.

The company tried to amuse the visitors by letting them play Pac-Man on the net while they worked hard on restoring the functionality of the website.

MySpace.com added that the problem seems to have gone now and they are back on track with reliability and solid uptime. They are also looking at ways to prevent such kind of problems in the future.

Owners of RedLightCenter.com have launched a social networking portal for adults named Utherverse.com.

The company is aiming to make it the MySpace.com for adults and expects to have more than 1 million registered users by the end of 2006.

They would be encouraging the joining members to upload erotic photos and to complete fantasy profiles.

Brian Shuster, chief executive of Utherverse.com added that they would ban registration by web users who are below 18 years of age. And this might help MySpace.com, as adults would have their own social networking community to play with.

Shuster added that they would use credit-card age verification and manual moderation to prevent minors from accessing the content on the website. He said: “Our users can feel safe and relaxed in the knowledge that they are dealing with other adults.”

AMD recently announced their decision to acquire the makers of computer graphic cards and controllers ATI. This deal is expected to boost AMD’s capabilities to compete against the microprocessor giants Intel.

However, this deal is now expected to cause troubles for Apple Computers, which recently shifted from IBM’s PowerPC processors to Intel processors.

Apple Computers have a business relationship with ATI and they use graphics controllers developed by them on MacBook Pro and iMac.

Intel has already confirmed that they are not going to renew ATI’s chipset bus license and the long-term result could see Apple change the graphic systems on their products, which are developed by ATI.

Apple might have to start using Intel’s own 950 graphics system or to expand their relationship with NVIDIA.

Apple Computers has finally launched the wireless edition of their Mighty Mouse. This device comes powered with Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity and can be used as a single or multi mouse button.

Apple has designed the mouse to be comfortable for both left and right handed computer user. In addition, it has a top-mounted scroll ball, which enables the user to scroll in any direction.

Apple has made this mouse available in their retail and online stores for a price tag of $69.

The company added that the mouse is compatible with Apple’s most recent Mac models with integrated Bluetooth technology. It has the capability to work from a distance of 30 feet from the computer.

It can be powered using either one or two AA batteries and has an on/off button. Apple added that the mouse comes with a power management system that runs in low power mode when not being used.

David Moody, vice president of Apple’s worldwide Mac product marketing team spoke about this new product: “We cut the cord on our popular Mighty Mouse to give consumers more flexibility when using a Mac. A Bluetooth-enabled Mac desktop with an Apple wireless keyboard and Mighty Mouse is the ideal cable-free setup at home or in the office.”

Sharman Networks has said that they would be paying more than $100 million to settle music industry lawsuits over the illegal downloading of songs.

They are the operators of the popular p2p application Kazaa and have been facing lawsuits from companies like Vivendi SA’s Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI Group Plc and Warner Music Group in Los Angeles and Australia.

They have also agreed to turn Kazaa into a legitimate service and would work on stopping their users to share and download digitally pirated games.

John Kennedy, chief executive officer of the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry spoke on this new development: “For the industry we consider it a great success. It sends a huge deterrent message to other similar sites. We hope it will drive digital revenues in a major way.”

Software giants Microsoft has just stopped short of confirming that their upcoming Windows Vista operating system would be released at its current scheduled launch date.

They have already delayed the release of this operating system many a times and they are now going to miss out on the crucial holiday season this year.

The company said that they see no reason why its new Windows Vista operating system would be delayed. Kevin Johnson, co-president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division said: “We will ship Windows Vista when it is available. However, we are going to ship the product when it is ready and we are just going to take it milestone by milestone.”

Overall, not a very confident from the company, which is due to launch one of the most crucial products in their history!