World

The good news is that Illinois is no longer the most heavily spammed state in the country. According to a report released this week by a unit of anti-virus software maker Symantec, the Land of Lincoln dropped to No 5 from last year’s top ranking. The bad news is that Illinois residents are still receiving a huge amount of unwanted e-mails pitching prescription drugs, prospective suitors and international finance schemes. And most states are getting more spam than ever

Nokia has been on an acquisition tear lately, albeit mostly small deals (Plum, Cellity and Bit-Side all this year). A source close to the deal says that they’ve just made one more acquisition: boutique travel social network Dopplr, headquartered in London

Data centres in Sydney and Brisbane have shut off external ventilation systems, restricted loading dock access and attended false alarms after a major dust storm choked the cities today. Macquarie Telecom, Equinix, ac3, manageNET and AAPT outlined a number of preventative measures taken in their respective data centres to prevent dust ingress. At least two major firms — Optus and CBA — confirmed false alarms had been set off in Sydney facilities due to high winds and dust particles in the air. But all reported they had come out largely unscathed from the storm, one of the worst on record

The lack of SMS integration is a perennial complaint for Australian Twitter users. Chime goes a fair way to solving that problem, letting you update your Twitter status via an Australian phone account

Australia’s consumer watchdog is leading an international crackdown on internet scams, particularly those taking advantage of the global financial crisis to lure people in. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says the scams are costing Australian consumers $1 billion a year, and that criminals are using the global financial crisis to lure people in

Telstra is believed to be planning to launch a personal video recorder and set-top box, likely to be called the T-box, as early as December, in a bid to shift the entertainment, news and sport content it offers under the BigPond brand from people’s computers to their televisions. The strategy, which puts Telstra into direct competition with Foxtel (which has its own iQ set-top box), enables the telco to retain a content play if it is forced to divest its 50 per cent shareholding in the pay-TV company

After an earlier decision failed to reach its objective, this week a Brazilian court made an unprecedented ruling against file-sharing clients. Following legal action by anti-piracy groups against a website offering a file-sharing client for download, the court decided that software which allows users to share music via P2P is illegal

Thousands of businesses and homes in Sydney’s CBD could be without phone, internet and mobile phone coverage for up to a week after a contractor accidentally severed crucial cables. Contractors working for Energy Australia cut through a bundle of 10,000 Telstra copper wires and some multiple-fibre optical cables near the corner of York and Erskine streets about 9.30pm yesterday

Australian internet users now consume twice as much data than they did a year ago, but figures by Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reveal there are still over 200,000 businesses and government agencies on a dial-up connection. Last June, over a three-month period, Australia downloaded around 55.4 terabytes (TB). This year the figure almost doubled to 99.9TB as more subscribers ditched dial-up for faster ADSL-style fixed line connections or wireless broadband

Think you can be anonymous online? Most people simply have no idea how easy it is for law enforcement officials — and other litigants, like someone suing you — to gain access to personal email, Google searches, and other online information users think is theirs. The latest ominous evidence of this fact comes from our friends to the north. A Canadian court has ordered Google to turn over the identities of anonymous Gmail users who had accused York University faculty members of fraud and dishonesty. Like similar cases in the US, the York incident shows just how easy it is for courts to allow authorities to gain access to our personal information