E-tailers blame customers

The US government's investigation into how dozens of well-known online stores worked with controversial marketers to "deceive" customers out of $1.4 billion has prompted some retailers, including Continental Airlines, to sever ties with the marketers, says CNet.

However, the marketers - Affinion, Vertrue and Webloyalty - are still in business and judging from the responses of many of the retailers involved, such as Priceline, Classmates.com, FTD, Shutterfly and Orbitz, it will be business as usual. They see nothing wrong with the marketing practices that millions of angry online shoppers and members of the US Senate have called a "scam", "robbery" and "theft".

While the US Senate Commerce committee produced a staggering amount of documentation during a hearing last week that appears to show consumers are misled into signing up for so-called loyalty programmes, the retailers continue to suggest it's their customers who are at fault.

Gary McKinnon could be extradited to the US to face hacking charges before Christmas, after the home secretary declared he would not be intervening in the case, reports The Register.

Alan Johnson had frozen extradition proceedings against 43-year-old McKinnon - accused of hacking into the Pentagon's computers in 2002 - in the middle of last month. Johnson said he would consider new evidence in the case, namely that McKinnon had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. This followed the Supreme Court's refusal to halt the extradition.

However, the Press Association reports Johnson has decided the extradition would not contravene McKinnon's human rights, and he had no "general discretion" to intervene in the case.

A new device which enables theatre-goers to read live captions of a performance in eight different languages has been released, writes the BBC.

AirScript's developer, Cambridge Consultants, hopes the handsets will attract more tourists to theatres.

The captions, received over WiFi, scroll throughout live performances.

Self-proclaimed Godfather of Spam Alan Ralsky, 64, and six others have been convicted in a spam-based stock swindle.

The gang used e-mail pitches to create a market for essentially worthless stock, which Ralsky and others sold to unsuspecting investors for huge profits before the stock price tanked, reports PC World.

Ralsky was sentenced to four years in prison, five years' probation, and a $250 000 fine. Cases remain pending against two others.