Warning of anti-virus call scam

Internet users are being warned about cold callers who offer to fix viruses, but then install software to steal personal information, reveals the BBC.

Campaign group Get Safe Online said a quarter of people it had questioned had received such calls, many suspected to have been from organised crime gangs.

Some gangs, employing up to 400 people, are known to set up their own call centres to target people en masse.

Research In Motion (RIM) has outlined its tablet strategy and the thinking behind its BlackBerry PlayBook device, due to ship in the US in early 2011, say V3.

David Heit, RIM's director of product strategy, said in an interview that, rather than imitating Apple's iPad, the BlackBerry PlayBook had developed out of feedback from enterprise customers about the need for a more convenient way to access Web applications and documents.

"For years, one of the things we have been asked about by customers is the browser. They told us they wanted the full Web experience on the BlackBerry, but when they got it, they found the screen was too small to be satisfactory," he explained.

The world's two largest poker sites, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, are battling to keep poker bots off their sites, notes The Register.

In October, Full Tilt removed an unstated number of players, confiscated the funds in their accounts, and pledged to redistribute this money to players who'd lost to the bots. PokerStars took similar action with 10 accounts in July.

Poker sites are paranoid about their customers thinking there are bots on the site - either run by their customers or the site themselves. People running bots are convinced the sites use them too, though not necessarily to thrash the customers, but to always provide opposition to keep the games going.

Tweeters have joined forces to support Paul Chambers, the man convicted and fined for a Twitter message threatening to blow up an airport, writes the BBC.

The Twitter community is angry that the 27-year-old accountant has failed to overturn his conviction.

A day after his appeal failed, two “hashtags” to highlight his situation remain top topics in the UK. Free speech advocate Index on Censorship said the UK judiciary was out of step with social networks.