Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

British teenager sentenced. A 16-year-old British teenager has been given a six-month suspended sentence for his part in distributing the Randex worm. A total of four suspects are reported to have been involved in the distribution of the worm – two US nationals, one Canadian and the British teen. The 16-year-old Canadian suspect was arrested…

AOL worker accused of selling customer email lists offered deal. A former AOL employee charged with selling the company’s customer email list to spammers has been offered a plea deal, it is reported. In exchange for entering a ‘guilty’ plea, it is believed that prosecutors will recommend a fine and up to two years in…

Trend Micro to take over from McAfee as new provider of virus scanning for MSN. Trend Micro has announced that it is to be the new provider of virus scanning for Microsoft’s MSN Hotmail customers. Rival firm McAfee Inc. has provided anti-virus scanning for MSN since 2000, but this year the deal has gone to…

Largest judgement against spammers to date. A company in Iowa has been awarded a total of more than $1 billion in what is believed to be the largest judgement to date against spammers. The Associated Press reports that Iowa man Robert Kramer, owner of service provider CIS Internet Services, filed law suits against 300 spammers…

Virus Bulletin RSS feeds now support ‘Live bookmarks’ allowing you to browse our latest headlines directly from your browsers bookmarks menu. The Virus Bulletin RSS feeds now support the new ‘Live bookmarks’ feature offered by some of today’s leading web browsers such as Mozilla’s Firefox . Our live bookmarks offer a way to scan our…

Microsoft buys anti-spyware provider. Microsoft announced yesterday that it has acquired anti-spyware firm GIANT Company Software Inc. Microsoft says it plans to use intellectual property and technology assets from the acquisition to provide new anti-spyware tools for users of Microsoft Windows. A free beta version of Microsoft’s spyware protection, detection and removal tool is expected…

Judge says Maryland anti-spam law is flawed. A judge has ruled that Maryland’s anti-spam law is flawed because it violates the commerce clause of the US Constitution. The Montgomery judge made the ruling as part of his dismissal of a lawsuit against New York email marketing company First Choice Internet. In dismissing the complaint, Circuit…

Just in time for Christmas? Symantec may be close to acquiring data storage firm Veritas, according to reports circulating on the Internet. AV firm Symantec, which has something of a reputation for making regular acquisitions, is reported to be close to handing over a whopping sum of more than $13 billion for the data storage…

Australian police given power to use spyware. Police in Australia have been awarded the right to use spyware for evidence-gathering, thanks to a new law passed last week. Under the Surveillance Devices Act, police can obtain a warrant to use ‘software surveillance technologies’, including keyloggers. However, the new law has been heavily criticised, with many…

Lycos ends its ‘make love not spam’ campaign – but not before the file had been trojanised… Lycos has announced that it has ended its controversial ‘ Make Love not Spam ‘ campaign, claiming that it has run its course and accomplished its objectives. The campaign, in which Lycos encouraged users to download a screensaver…