Microsoft fixing Bing bug

Microsoft is fixing a bug in Bing that allowed spammers to bypass spam filters and distribute malicious links, reports CNet.

Researchers at Webroot Software discovered a spam campaign earlier this week that used the search engine's own redirection mechanism and a link-shrinking technique to send people to spam Web pages, according to a post on the Webroot threat blog.

The problem is with how Bing formats links in RSS feeds. The redirect from Bing to the spam site is not obfuscated, allowing scammers to append anything to the end of the Bing redirect URL and so trick spam filters, said Andrew Brandt, a threat researcher at Webroot.

Almost half of frontline police officers now have access to a mobile personal data assistant, according to the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), and the devices are proving popular with the lion's share of officers, says Computing.co.uk.

Last year, the Home Office allocated £80 million over the next three years to the project, widely recommended by top police officers as a way of cutting bureaucracy and time spent in the station.

In fact, the NPIA discovered, following a survey of the Bedfordshire police force, that the amount of time officers spent in the office was reduced from 46% before the introduction of the devices to 36% afterwards. The devices cost the force £270 per year each.

A federal judge has summarily dismissed a lawsuit Chicago's sheriff brought against Craigslist, ruling the Web site can't be sued for prostitution ads posted by its users, reports The Register.

The ruling is good news not only for Craigslist, but for any US-based Web site that accepts comments, photos, or other types of user-submitted content.

The 22-page decision made it clear that a provision in the Communications Decency Act fully immunises the site for user-supplied ads even when they "provide" contact details for prostitutes and brothels.

An ambitious new Web site that will open up government data to the public will be introduced in beta form in December, says the BBC.

Reams of anonymous data about schools, crime and health could all be included.

Data.gov.uk was developed by Sir Tim Berners Lee, founder of the Web, and professor Nigel Shadbolt, at the University of Southampton.