ID Theft May Soon Be a Crime
Last week the Senate passed a bill that created a new crime: aggravated ID theft. The House of Representatives also passed the bill, and if the bill is signed by the president, using a stolen identity to commit certain crimes will be illegal. Because many cases of identity theft are inside jobs, the bill asks for stricter penalties against those who use information maliciously.

Men Charged in AOL Email Theft
According to federal prosecutors, a 24-year old man who worked at AOL stole 92 million AOL screen names and sold them to a spammer. Both he and the 21-year old spammer, who used the addresses to promote his online gambling service, were arrested and charged with conspiracy. The men face up to five years in prison and a minimum of $250,000 in fines if convicted. The 24-year-old, Jason Smathers, was an AOL employee until the arrest was made (he was fired as charges were filed).

Students Go to Hacker School
Students can pay $4000 for a one-week course to become an "ethical" hacker, learning how to beat security and break into corporate networks. The course, held in Los Angeles, not only teaches the technical side of hacking but also trains students to use public sources to find data about companies and their executives. The company that teaches the class makes almost $15 million per year by teaching classes like these, and business has taken off after September 11th.

Meet Someone New with Your Cell Phone
A student and professor at MIT have developed a program based on Bluetooth technology that will help you meet people with similar interests. Each person will fill out online information about themselves, and then their cell phone will emit signals at regular intervals, checking for others with similar interests. If a match is found, you receive a thumbnail photo of the other person, along with information about your mutual interest. Not only could this software be used to make social connections, but it might be applicable in a corporate environment, say to help people find others who have the information they're looking for.

Large-scale Attack Thwarted But More to Come
Last Thursday, hackers broke in to several web servers at well-known web sites and installed malicious code. The code led those who visit the sites to be secretly redirected to a web site in Russia that installed a Trojan virus on their machines. From there, the hackers were able to gather users' password and credit card information. Fewer than 100 people reported having their machines affected by the virus. Companies like Microsoft have said to expect more attacks of this nature, and to protect your machine, at a minimum, set your Internet Explorer security level to high.

Hotmail Responds to GMail Storage Threat
Hotmail is the latest email provider to up the amount of free storage space for its users. They are now offering 250MB of storage, compared to Google's one gigabyte for its GMail service. This is an increase from the current 2MB limit, and beats Yahoo's 100 free megabytes. For $20 per year, Hotmail will give you 2 gigabytes.

Alibi Service for Cell Phone Users
Text messaging groups can now be used to provide an alibi for people who want to skip work, cheat on spouses, or just otherwise lie. These "alibi networks" involve sending a text message to a few thousand people, some of whom may agree to help provide you with excuses. Not only are these types of contacts fleeting, but they help people tell white lies without involving their friends. The popularity of text messaging has been increasing, and as it does, it makes more money for cell phone companies and encourages new and creative uses for the phones.

Perform a Search Without the Puppy
You may have noticed that each time you do a search on files in Windows XP, a puppy appears to help you with your search. While the text boxes to input information are much the same as in traditional Windows, when your results are displayed, the puppy provides results and additional options, in a seemingly helpful manner. If you're interested in searching without the puppy, you can edit your registry. Choose Start, Run, and type regedit. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CabinetState. Choose Edit, New, String Value. Name the new string "use search asst." Then double click the new string and in the value data field, type "no" without the quotes. Close registry editor and you can now run searches in traditional Windows format.

How Did You Get on a Spam List in the First Place?
Spammers will mail random account names at well-known companies or domains. If they don't receive a bounceback message, they know the email address is legitimate. So you might think that the solution is easy: turn off those automated bounceback messages. Unfortunately people make mistakes when typing legitimate addresses, and they might never find out, if not for those bounceback messages. To keep yourself off spam lists, don't ever respond to a piece of spam mail, even if the mail gives you a method of opting out. Don't use your real email address if posting to newsgroups. And if you do provide your legitimate email address when purchasing something over the Internet, your email address may be sold or distributed, so be ready for spam. If you're interested, you can even report your spam mail to the Federal Trade Commission. See this web site for more information.

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