Top 10 IT News Stories of the Week

IDG News Service —

1. "Microsoft Launches Campaign Against Google-DoubleClick,"
Network World, September 24

"Microsoft, Others Protest Google's DoubleClick Deal,"
PC World, September 22

Microsoft paired with PR and marketing firm Burson-Marstellar on the Initiative for Competitive Online Marketplace, which seems aimed at building support for pushing regulators to possibly block Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick. The companies don't say outright that's what they're up to, but the principles listed on an iCOMP petition leave little room for doubt. The two companies had planned to announce iCOMP in a few weeks, but media reports beat them to the punch so that words of the initiative came out the same week that a congressional subcommittee held a hearing about Google's $3.1 billion bid for DoubleClick. Microsoft's general counsel was among those who spoke out against the deal, arguing that it would give Google too much dominance in search-based advertising and online display advertising.

2. "Phishing Likely to Blame for eBay Members' Data Theft,"
Computerworld, September 28, 2007

An e-mail phishing scam seems the most likely route used by whoever obtained and then posted confidential information about some 1,200 eBay members on a discussion forum of the auction site. The criminal (or criminals -- it's not known yet who or how many were involved) didn't hack into eBay systems, the company said of the incident, which occurred on Tuesday and led to the Trust & Safety forum being taken offline about an hour after someone began posting personal data. Credit card numbers included in the data appear to have been faked to "cause public concern," an eBay spokeswoman said. All of the affected users have been contacted by telephone, eBay said.

3. "Apple Releases iPhone Update 1.1.1,"
Macworld, September 22

Apple Update Disables Unlocked iPhones," Macworld, September 27

Apple released its iPhone update, adding a number of features and providing security fixes. Some iPhone users who downloaded the update quickly learned that Apple meant business when it said that unlocking the phones to enable their use with service providers other than AT&T, which has an exclusive contract with Apple, could mean that iPhones would be disabled with updates. A message saying that the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card was no good greeted users of unlocked phones after they installed the update. Apple had said that it found that "many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet "cause irreparable damage to the iPhone's software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed." At least they had warned users.

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