US demands Google search info

The US Justice Department wants Google to turn over information on how millions of Americans use the Internet, but the search engine giant has vowed to fight the demand, reports abc News.

The New York Times says Google has been refusing the request even though three of its competitors have agreed to provide information to establish a profile of Internet use that will help enforce the US Child Online Protection Act.

Google asserts that the request is unnecessary, overly broad, would be onerous to comply with, would jeopardise its trade secrets and could expose identifying information about its users.

The government wants to use the information from Google and other search engines to build a case for restricted access to pornography as required by the Act, instead of merely putting pornography filters in place as argued for by the courts.

The first products based on the WiMax broadband technology have finally hit the US market after many delays in setting standards.

Red Herring says the products, from Aperto Networks, Redline Communications, Sequans Communications and WaveSat, add credibility in the US for the technology, which already has a growing market in Eastern Europe, South America and the Middle East.

These first products are only for the fixed standard for stationary wireless connections. The mobile WiMax, designed to work with mobile devices like cellphones and laptops, has been agreed in principle, but is not expected to be certified and on the market until next year.

Apple has made changes to its iTunes music software in response to complaints that it abused user privacy, reports BBC News.

Apple recently introduced a new iTunes feature called MiniStore that recommended other tracks users might like to buy, but an investigation found that the recommendation system used unique identifiers for each user in a way that could compromise privacy.

The original version of MiniStore was turned on by default, but the revised iTunes warns users about data being collected and lets them switch off the recommendation system.

Britain`s biggest retailer, Tesco, is to shake up Britain`s phone market by offering a Skype-like service to millions of customers that it claims is a much user friendlier way of making free calls to other Internet users.

The Times Online says Tesco wants to challenge the dominance of British Telecom (BT) by encouraging people to switch from their traditional landlines for the Net service, which allows users to make free calls anywhere in the world to others online.

The product, which works using voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) that converts voice into data and sends it over the Internet, will be available off the shelf from Tesco stores from today. Consumers will need to have a PC running and a broadband Internet connection to use the service. They will also have to pay fees for calls to landlines and mobile phones.

The Finnish anti-virus company, F-Secure, well-known for issuing security warnings about various software products, has had to issue an advisory for a critical vulnerability in its own products, reports ZD Net.

The advisory warns businesses of a critical vulnerability in its anti-virus products, saying an attacker could execute the code of his choice on affected systems by using specially crafted ZIP files to circumvent F-Secure anti-virus products and cause a buffer overflow on both Windows and Linux operating systems.

F-Secure says it is not aware of any malware that exploits this vulnerability and has not yet seen any attacks, but recommends that businesses "patch now" to avoid attack.