Google lifts alcohol ad ban

Google is to lift its restrictions on advertising alcoholic spirits on its UK site from January, says Brand Republic.

The search giant will allow spirit brands to run search campaigns relating to brand activity, but not direct response campaigns that promote actual sales.

It is understood the global ban on advertising alcoholic spirits will only be lifted in the UK and will occur in the second week of January.

Since its launch in 1997, the only advertising seen on Battle.net, Blizzard's online service for all things Diablo and Starcraft, have been banner ads telling readers to purchase its latest wares, but all that is set to change, says The Escapist.

The World of Warcraft developer has struck a multi-year deal with the Microsoft-owned online game advertiser Massive to supply Battle.net with advertising beyond the walls of Blizzard. Some of Massive's other customers include Electronic Arts, Activision and Sega.

As Massive's strength is in placing dynamic advertisements within the games themselves, Blizzard COO Paul Sams has squelched the fears of gamers, saying: "This partnership does not include in-game advertising, as Massive understands and respects our stance against advertising that might detract from game-play or offend our players."

Electronic billing and payment service provider CheckFree fell victim to an online attack, which saw cyber-criminals briefly take control of its checkfree.com and mycheckfree.com domains, redirecting users to rogue servers believed to be based in Eastern Europe, reports The Paypers.

According to data provided by the billing company, the attack lasted for approximately four hours, until CheckFree regained control of both domains.

While users were connected to the rogue site, they were unable to visualise their accounts while the site tried to download malicious software onto their computers.