MS helps catch Bulgarian phishers

Eight people have been arrested in Bulgaria in connection with online scams to gather information from Internet users worldwide, reports CNet news. Microsoft said it had helped investigate the cybercrimes, in which the phishing group allegedly sent e-mails purporting to be from MSN customer service.

The group allegedly launched 46 phishing attacks using 43 hacked Web servers located in 11 countries around the world. They sent e-mail messages to intended victims inviting them to update personal data such as credit card account details and personal identification and verification numbers.

That information was allegedly used to make purchases and receive money transfers, defrauding US, German and UK credit card holders of more than $50 000, Microsoft said.

The popularity of Apple`s iPod has given a huge boost to the number of people visiting the iTunes music store, reports the BBC. Statistics gathered by Nielsen NetRatings shows that traffic to iTunes grew by 241% in 2005. Between December 2004 and 2005 the numbers of people going to the site grew from 6.1 million to 20.7 million.

The figures mean that about 14% of the Net`s active population are regularly using the iTunes service. "Consumers have clearly indicated they are eager to control their own music libraries, one song at a time," said Jon Gibs, director of media analytics at Nielsen NetRatings.

As well as looking at raw user numbers, Nielsen NetRatings also tried to find out who those users were. For instance, Nielsen said, iTunes users were 2.2 times more likely to own a Volkswagen than the average Internet user.

Although Internet Explorer was only due to be unveiled during the first quarter of 2006, a build of the new browser and several screenshots have leaked online, reports iAfrica.

The link to the code of the IE7 build (version 5299) was posted on the Windows tech forum JCXP.net late last week. Although Microsoft took down the link, techies around the world managed to get their hands on the build, which can be downloaded as an 11MB file in .rar format.

The patch, which allows the IE7 build to run with cracked copies of Windows, had been downloaded over 12 000 times by yesterday morning. Although Microsoft has yet to comment on the incident, based on the company`s action, it`s believed the leaked release is authentic.