Internet worth £100bn to UK

Xhead = Internet worth £100bn to UK

The Internet is worth £100 billion a year to the UK economy, a study has concluded, according to the BBC.

The research, which was commissioned by Google, found the Internet accounts for 7.2% of the UK's gross domestic product.

If the Internet was an economic sector, it would be the UK's fifth largest, said the report from the Boston Consulting Group. This would make the sector larger than the construction, transport and utilities industries.

The notorious Koobface social networking malware is now targeting MacOS X systems, reveals V3.

Security firm Intego reports that variants of the malware have been targeting Mac users on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Bursting onto the malware scene in 2009, Koobface made headlines by using the popular social networking services to spread among users. Modified versions of the malware were spotted in the wild earlier this summer.

The man convicted of breaching then vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo Mail account has asked a federal judge to spare him a prison sentence and instead put him on probation, states The Register.

David C Kernell's request comes six months after a federal jury found him guilty of felony obstruction of justice and a misdemeanour count of unauthorised access to a computer.

The same jury acquitted Kernell on a felony charge of wire fraud and deadlocked on a charge of identity theft.

Russian police are reported to have filed a criminal case against a man accused of being one of the world's biggest spammers, says V3.

Igor Gusev and his company, Despmedia, has been accused of running a massive pharmaceutical spam operation that police estimate generated $120 million in three-and-a-half years, primarily by selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals such as Viagra.

Last year, Russia's Federal Security Service closed down the spamdot.biz Web sites, which was reportedly run by Glavmed.com, which was owned by Despmedia.