Uniting to tackle spyware

The Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC), a group of IT companies and public interest bodies, is hoping to succeed where a previous organisation failed in tackling spyware, Techworld.com reports.

The ASC has released an agreed-upon draft definition of spyware that it hopes will promote public comment and ultimately result in users becoming better educated about the dangers of spyware.

ASC members include America Online, Computer Associates, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro, as well as anti-spyware vendors Aluria Software and Webroot Software.

The ASC is inviting public comment for the next month on documents it has released.

The documents include a list of spyware and other potentially harmful technologies aimed at users, a glossary defining commonly used terms relating to spyware and safety tips about how to protect against spyware.

Although the Mozilla Foundation has fixed several security flaws in its Firefox browser, it has left a lot of people in the dark about what some of the issues entail.

"Two of the flaws that have been patched were reported in June by security-monitoring company Secunia," a Mozilla representative says.

Firefox 1.0.5, released Tuesday, patches about 10 bugs in the open source Web browser, some of them "high risk", says Chris Hofmann, director of engineering at Mozilla.

The group has not released details on the other eight vulnerabilities, even though the software revamp was made available online on Tuesday. Mozilla says it is still working on providing a description of those outstanding security problems, News.com reports.

"We have a collection of bug fixes that we have been working on for the last couple of weeks," says Hofmann.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phone systems still lag significantly behind the traditional phone network for reliability and quality, and there are major differences in quality among brands of VOIP service, according to a company that evaluated six US providers.

Keynote Systems tested the services for reliability and quality by making domestic long-distance and local calls from VOIP services to the public switched telephone network in May and June this year, PCWorld.com reports.

The survey evaluated VOIP services accessed via digital subscriber line and cable modem, which are geared mostly to consumers.

Call quality was evaluated by software and used an industry standard for listening quality, says Dharmesh Thakker, senior product manager at Keynote.

Four days before the sixth book in the Harry Potter series goes on sale officially, online book seller Amazon.com has already logged 1.4 million orders.

More than 60% of the orders for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came in through the US-based Amazon.com. The remaining sales originated from Amazon`s stores in the UK, France, Germany, Canada and Japan, Vnunet.com reports.

European anti-trust regulators raided the offices of Intel and a number of PC-related companies as part of an anti-trust investigation into the chip giant.

European Commission (EC) officials and national competition authorities from the member states descended on several Intel offices, as well as a number of IT companies that manufacture or sell computers, said an EC representative.

Last year, Japanese officials also conducted a raid on Intel offices, and they made their findings available to anti-trust agencies in other countries, Silicon.com reports.

"These inspections are carried out within the framework of an ongoing investigation," the representative said.