UK e-retailers reach record high

E-commerce retail sales in the UK reached a new high in May as the sector`s growth accelerated to its fastest rate of increase in eight months, reports vnunet.com.

Online shopping growth outstripped traditional shops by a factor of 40 last month, despite widespread aggressive discounting by bricks and mortar retailers, according to the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG).

UK shoppers spent over ₤1.5 billion online during the month, 35.6% more than a year earlier and 13% more than in April, according to the report.

"In a tough retail environment, large numbers of consumers are opting for the convenience and value that they are now confident of finding online," says IMRG MD Jo Tucker.

"The Internet is a great trading medium for retailers too: it gives them real-time feedback on consumers` buying moods, enabling them to continually optimise with great precision their offers, ranges, prices and stock levels in order to maximise profitability."

Yahoo has cracked down on chat rooms geared towards luring children - the same rooms exposed in Houston television station KPRC`s online investigation two weeks ago, reports wesh.com.

The move has drawn the attention of millions of Internet users from around the world. Many are outraged that their favourite chat rooms were shut down along with the sex-themed rooms.

Last month the TV station found that Yahoo was hosting a long list of chat rooms geared towards sex with children. It also found men were lining up for sex meetings with kids or to trade lewd pictures.

Houston lawyer Adam Voyles has filed a $10 million lawsuit against Yahoo for hosting the rooms.

The Liberty Alliance is aiming to boost the privacy of mobile phone users by creating service interface specifications for content messaging, including both SMS and MMS, reports vnunet.com.

The consortium says the specifications, which will be based on its Identity Web Services Framework, aim to offer more privacy-friendly content messaging for mobile devices.

The specifications will also provide features such as different user identifiers for each content provider, periodic updating of these identifiers and the ability to terminate federation with a content provider.

"The business presents a large source of income for mobile operators and content providers alike, and it also represents a huge opportunity for privacy intrusion and increased spam," says Liberty Alliance VP Timo Skytta.

Linux Torvalds has released version 2.6.12 of the Linux kernel - a revision that includes support for Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) and significant changes to many drivers, techworld reports.

The revision comes three months after version 2.6.11, and is the first release since Torvalds switched to a different system for managing the kernel source code.

The revision introduces a driver for TPM chips such as those found in some IBM laptops. The TPM is designed as a hardware safeguard for critical data such as passwords.

Improvements have been made to IPv6, SELinux, the Software Suspend feature and the device mapper. An address space randomisation feature is designed to help block the effectiveness of viruses.