UK upgrades ID card tech

The UK Passport Service (UKPS) is working on a technology upgrade to help it cope with the new demands resulting from biometric passports and identity cards.

The UKPS said the first biometric passports are expected late this year or early next year. The first will feature a facial biometric, although other biometrics may be added at a later date, Silicon.com reports.

The agency said biometric passports, and the face-to-face interview process also being introduced, are key to cutting fraud.

"When the UKPS has confirmed that the identity has not been stolen, the biometric in the passport will link the document to the individual and prevent any future attempt by any other person to obtain a passport in that identity," the agency explained.

In an effort to fight spam, Blue Security is distributing the beta of a free program that, once installed on a PC, makes it part of a community that works to cripple Web sites run by spammers, PCWorld.com reports.

Blue Security explains that when signing up for a Blue Frog account, users install the software on their PC and can then submit up to three e-mail addresses to Blue Security`s Do-Not-Intrude Registry.

The company opens up multiple e-mail accounts on the users` behalf, accounts they technically own, but never use. These e-mail accounts are managed by Blue Security and are designed to attract spam. Blue Frog analyses the spam that goes into these e-mail accounts and identifies messages that are not compliant with the US Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act.

Blue Security CEO, Eran Reshef, believes that fighting back by "inducing loss" against spammers is the only way to eventually stop spam.

Microsoft has stepped up its rivalry with Google, filing a lawsuit over Google`s hiring of a former Microsoft employee, reports Computerworld.com.

In a complaint filed in the King County Superior Court in Washington, Microsoft alleges that Kai-Fu Lee, who joined Google this week to spearhead new research and development efforts in China, is violating a non-competition agreement signed when he was hired at Microsoft.