eBay beefs up security

Executives at eBay are touting security as their top priority in 2007, after an internal survey showed online scammers may be denting the company's reputation, reports BusinessWeek.com.

The US online auction company began a programme last year to safeguard members' identities by concealing their user names on expensive listings. That measure could make it harder for con artists to contact losing bidders and goad them into "second chance offers", where customers wire cash to the scammers' accounts.

Engineers also want to reduce counterfeit items and clamp down on scams between buyers and sellers from different countries, said William C Cobb, president of eBay North America.

The Internet phone service Skype is introducing domestic calling plans for 24 countries, where users will pay a monthly subscription and a connection fee but no per-minute charges, reports BusinesWeek.com.

The monthly fees for the new Skype Pro plans have not yet been finalised, but are expected to be set at less than five euros, an executive told the Associated Press yesterday.

The per-call connection fee for Skype Pro calls within a given country to a regular phone or mobile device within that same country will be 3.9 euro cents, said Stefan Oberg, GM for Skype Telecoms.

Alltel, a regional cellphone provider in the US, has introduced an application the company developed in hopes of making every handset a user-friendly breeze, reports BusinessWeek.com.

The application, Celltop, is designed to reduce the number of menus and clicks it takes to fetch news and information from the Web, or even just access a call log or handle text messages.

The idea is to put a customer's favourite functions and information front and centre with one click. Once pressed, the application loads up to 20 customised "cells", displaying them two at a time, side-by-side.