Friday
31st May 2002
SPAMMER SUES
ANTI-SPAMMER
In a case that may well make
legal history, a West Australian firm accused of spamming will take an anti-spam
crusader to court for listing the company's web site on Internet "black list"
used by ISPs to bar emails from suspected spam sources. Perth-based T3 Direct
said this week that it will seek compensation of AU$43,750 from Joseph McNichol
for allegedly listing the firm's IP number with
spews.org, a secretive non-profit
organisation that compiles anti-spam lists. T3 Direct's bulk emailing activities
have attracted widespread complaints over the last few years, according to
the West Australian Internet Industry Association, but the case is the first
time anyone has sued because someone else has alleged they're a spammer.
McNichol's lawyers have said that they will defend the action, and the case
has already begun to attract international support from anti-spam groups
worldwide.
Thursday
30th May 2002
NET USE HIGHER IN THE
BUSH
While the level of Internet
penetration is generally lower in Australia's rural and regional areas than
it is in the cities, rural users make more use of the Net according to a
new study by
Nielsen/Netratings (NN).
NN report that the average Australian regional Net user spent 29 hours online
in the first three months of 2002 compared to 24 hours for urban users -
almost 20% higher usage. Rural users also accessed the web 56 times (against
42 times for city users) and spent more time doing banking, accessing news
and other information and looking up phone numbers on the White Pages web
site than city users. NN believe that the disparity in usage is caused by
a lack of shopfronts and alternative entertainment resources in rural areas.
Wednesday
29th May 2002
NY ATTORNEY-GENERAL SUES
SPAMMER
While telcos may lick their
lips at the idea of being paid to forward spam to SMS users (see yesterday's
story), New York's Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced today that
his office will sue a US firm that allegedly sent out more than 500 million
spam emails in the last year. The suit alleges that MonsterHut.com of Niagara
Falls sent millions of spams to people who did not want the messages or
specifically tried to block them since March 2001. MonsterHut.com allegedly
told its clients the recipients wanted the messages through "permission-based"
agreements. A staggering 750,000 people complained about receiving MonsterHut.com
spam, Spitzer said, and the New York suit will seek civil penalties of US$500
for each offence. Monster.com's site is no longer on air. In other
news: Australian freemail service
Start.Com.Au will close its
free email service on June 2nd after being unable to cover the costs of providing
the service for 160,000 customers. Start.com.au is the latest in a long line
of free email services to close down since the end of the dot.com boom.
Tuesday
28th May 2002
TELCOS TO CHARGE FOR SMS
SPAM
In news that may leave consumers
much less pleased than telcos,
The
Australian reported today that Australian telecommunications companies
are currently implementing charge-back schemes with their SMS partners overseas
that will allow them to profit from spams sent to Australians by foreign
SMS spammers. The new arrangements will also allow domestic SMS spammers
to access cheaper rates, potentially ushering in a new era of spam overload
in completely different arena to the Net. The telcos are hoping to make a
windfall profit by taking advantage of Australia's currently weak anti-spam
laws, which do not view unsolicited marketing messages sent over
telecommunications lines - and often received at a direct cost to the consumer
- as either an invasion of privacy or bandwidth theft.
Monday
27th May 2002
PENTAGON REBUFFS MICROSOFT
OVER OPEN SOURCE
A campaign by Microsoft to
persuade the US Defence Department (DOD) to abandon open source software
in favour of its own proprietary offerings may have backfired badly. According
to a report in
Newsbytes, a study prepared for the DOD on May 10th concluded that
open source often results in more secure, less expensive applications than
Microsoft's offerings and that if anything, the use of open source should
be expanded rather than reduced. "Banning open source would have immediate,
broad, and strongly negative impacts on the ability of many sensitive and
security focused DOD groups to protect themselves against cyberattacks,"
the Mitre Corp. report said, going on to add that open-source software "plays
a more critical role in the DOD than has been generally recognized." The
report also said that banning open-source software would drive up costs,
quoting an example at the US Census Bureau where programmers used open-source
software to launch a web site for obtaining US federal statistics for US$47,000,
against the US$358,000 it would have cost if proprietary software had been
used.
Friday
24th May 2002
EU LOOKS AT PRIVACY
IMPLICATIONS OF .NET
In another blow to Microsoft's
dream of being the Internet's "gatekeeper", the
European Union (EU) announced
today that it will look at whether Microsoft's system of collecting personal
data from online users - a linchpin of the company's proposed .Net services
strategy - breaks EU privacy laws. The investigation was requested by Erik
Meijer, a Dutch member of the European Parliament. Meijer had raised questions
about .Net Passport service, saying that failure to register with .Net Passport
results in exclusion from many sites' services and that de-subscribing is
not currently possible. The EU is already investigating Microsoft for allegedly
designing its Windows operating system to work better with its own server
software than those of its rivals, and has also expressed concerns about
the company allegedly tying its Media Player software to the Windows operating
system.
Thursday
23rd May 2002
DFAT PICKS US BANKRUPT
FOR EMBASSY JOB
According to a report in
Newsbytes
today, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has awarded
a lucrative and highly sensitive multi-million dollar contract to a subsidiary
of bankrupt US firm Global Crossing. The contract - awarded to Asia Global
Crossing (AGC) - is to set up a network linking 40 Australian embassies and
consulates around the globe. AGC is 59% owned by Global Crossing, which has
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the USA with debts of around US$12 billion.
Other owners of AGC include Softbank of Japan and Microsoft, both of whom
own around 15%. Under the terms of the deal, AGC will set up three regional
hubs in Canberra, Washington and London. They'll be linked in a private network
with frame relay connections to Australian embassies, consulates, high
commissions and diplomatic missions worldwide.
Wednesday
22nd May 2002
BAD WEB SITES COST
BUSINESS
A new study by
Enterpulse (EP) has found
that 66% of visitors who arrive at a web site and are dissatisfied with it
or have a bad experience while visiting it rarely - if ever - return. Researchers
surveyed 301 heavy Net users and said that the phenomena (which they've dubbed
the "Internet Death Penalty") came as a complete surprise. They suggest it
indicates that many businesses who may presently be "dabbling" in the web
with amateur sites may actually be doing themselves more harm than good in
the long term. They may also be unaware just how much business they're losing.
EP found that the main causes of visitor dissatisfaction are poor or inconsistent
site navigation, slow download speeds and lack of personalisation features.
EP also found that even where sites scored highly for navigation and
personalisation, slow download speeds caused by excessive graphics or other
frills still led to high dissatisfaction levels in almost 43% of the study's
subjects.
Tuesday
21st May 2002
SPAM DEFEATS EMAIL
MARKETING
The uncontrolled growth of
spam in the last year has led not only to widescale consumer burnout but
has also made legitimate email marketing steadily less effective, according
to a new study by Quris. More than
half of all US users now immediately delete emails from people they don't
recognise without even opening them and 40% of subscribers to opt-in email
systems (ie "permission-based" marketing systems) do the same thing. In a
survey of 1200 people, Quris found that spam now makes up the largest share
of most people's email in-boxes. Around 70% of users feel that the volume
of spam has definitely increased over the last year and 66% say that they
already get "too much" email. As a result, Quris found, consumers are generally
becoming burned out and the more heavily bombarded they are by email marketing,
the less likely they are to respond. Interestingly, the study disclosed that
opt-in systems were more effective than spam and that marketers who'd maintained
opt-in e-mail practices the longest were also likely to have the most responsive
customers. For e-mail users who've maintained opt-in relationships with companies
for more than 3 years, 61% said they believe mailings sometimes affected
their purchasing decisions, 13% higher than those with shorter
relationships.
Monday
20th May 2002
USA MOVES TO GET TOUGH
ON SPAM
After years of inaction on
the matter, a US Senate Committee has proposed a tough new law that could
see spammers fined up to US$1.5 million and/or thrown in jail. The "Can
Spam" Act, passed by the US Senate Commerce Committee, would require
that spam contain valid return addresses so that recipients can opt out of
spam lists and would impose fines and prison terms against spammers who fake
their e-mail or physical addresses. The legislation would also allow US state
attorneys general to sue on behalf of residents who are continually besieged
by spam. However, under pressure from business groups concerned the bill
would outlaw legitimate communications between companies and their customers,
the bill includes provisions that would exempt companies that can prove they
have a "preexisting relationship" with the recipient. This would be constituted
by any transaction or electronic correspondence initiated by a consumer within
the past three years. The committee also approved an amendment which would
make it illegal to send spam to an e-mail address harvested from another
web site.
Friday
17th May 2002
GOOGLE TRAFFIC
SOARS
Traffic to America's top three
search engines grew by between 16% and 54% over the past six months according
to a new report by Jupiter Media
Metrix (JMM). While the overall search category saw an 11% increase
to 92.3 million unique visitors, the three largest US search sites experienced
especially strong growth with Google doing the best of all. Traffic
to Google sites grew by an astonishing 54% to 34.2 million unique visitors
over the past three months, while Yahoo Search grew 20% to 38.4 million and
MSN Search grew by 16% to 42.4 million. Jupiter Media Metrix attributes
Google’s strong growth to its partnerships with a number of portals
including Yahoo and AOL, while MSN Search's growth has been fuelled by being
set as the default search engine in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.
The growth of the Big 3 has been at the expense of most other engines, however,
with traffic falling at many former "name" search sites such as Lycos, Excite
and LookSmart.
Thursday
16th May 2002
MICROSOFT RELEASES MAJOR
BUG FIX
Microsoft
released a thumping 2Mb bug fix today to patch six newly-discovered (and
serious) security flaws in its Internet Explorer web browser. According to
the company, at least three of the newly-discovered in its troubled web browser
are "serious". Two would allow a hacker to view data on a user's computer
while the third could allow a hacker to take full control of the machine.
The 2MB download includes all prior fixes for Internet Explorer 5.01, 5.5
and 6.0 as well as the latest patches. In other news: Microsoft
and the Victorian State Government announced today that they've signed an
AU$80 million contract for the software giant to supply the State's desktop
software over the next 4 years. The Government has been given a $19 million
discount on the software's retail price. Commenting on the lucrative deal,
Microsoft MD Paul Houghton said: "Microsoft shares the Victorian Government's
belief that technology can change the way government operates and empower
citizens by making government resources available to them over the Internet."
Wednesday
15th May 2002
NET PLAYS KEY ROLE IN BIG
DECISIONS
A new study by the
Pew Internet and American Life
Project (PEW) - likely to have strong parallels in Australia - has
found that US Internet users are increasingly using the Net to source information
for major life choices. PEW found in a study of 1,415 US surfers that they're
using the Net to make choices about education and training (36%), deciding
on a new hobby (33%), improving job skills (29%), buying a car (27%), dealing
with a major illness in a loved one (26%), dealing with their own illness
(24%), and finding a new place to live or sourcing information about investments
(22%). However, PEW also found that seeking online advice about love and/or
legal matters was at the bottom of the heap among those surveyed. Just 15%
turned to the Net for advice on starting or ending a relationship, and only
13% sought legal help online. PEW believe the study reflects the increasingly
central role the Net is beginning to play in modern life.
Tuesday
14th May 2002
FEW HIRES FROM ONLINE JOB
SITES
A new study of 2,000 jobseekers
conducted by international human resource consultants
Drake Beam
Morin (DBM) has found that while online job sites like Monster.Com
may draw lots of traffic, they result in surprisingly few hires. According
to DBM, 61% of their survey group found new positions by networking while
less than 6% (up from 4% in 1999) found them via the Net. Furthermore, a
DBM report on executive job searching revealed that only 3% of those surveyed
found their jobs on the Internet. DBM's findings appear to be supported by
a parallel study carried out by
CareerXroads (CX), who
surveyed 9 major US public companies which collectively accounted for 62,000
hires over the last year. CX found that the percentage of hires made
through the top four job boards — Monster, Hotjobs, CareerBuilder and
HeadHunter — was small, with none exceeding 1.4%. CX attributed at least
part of the poor showing to a lack of tracking data (ie some individuals
who were hired may have first noticed the position listed on a job board
and bypassed it, networking their way into an offer).
Monday
13th May 2002
USER SATISFACTION KEY TO
WEB POPULARITY
A new international study by
Taylor
Nelson Sofres (TNS) has found that user satisfaction with a web site
is not only important to draw repeat visitors - it encourages new visitors
as well. In a study across 14 countries, TNS found that features that have
strong appeal include regularly updated content, rapid downloading, good
search facilities and personalisation capabilities. Other features that rate
highly are clear and straightforward site navigation, depth of content and
"user friendliness". Surprisingly, TNS found that word of mouth is more important
than search engines or links for attracting regular users. Nearly twice as
many regular users of a web site say that they first found the site through
friends or relatives than through a search engine. Further, 98% of satisfied
users said they'd recommend a site to someone they know, compared to only
1% of dissatisfied users.
Friday
10th May 2002
NEW SECURITY HOLE IN MSN
MESSENGER
46 million users of Microsoft's
MSN Messenger have been advised to download a patch to fix a critical security
hole in the product which could allow hackers to run malicious commands on
a user's computer. The flaw - the latest in a string of serious, embarrassing
security defects in the company's software - affects Microsoft MSN Chat Control,
Microsoft MSN Messenger versions 4.5 and 4.6 and Microsoft Exchange Instant
Messenger 4.5 and 4.6. According to
Microsoft, the flaw affects
a feature that allows users to gather in a single virtual location to exchange
messages across the Net in near real time. The flaw was unearthed a month
ago by a security company, but not announced until today when the company
made a patch available to fix it. In February Microsoft warned of an unrelated
flaw in MSN Messenger that could allow a hacker to gain access to screen
names and email addresses. The company has urged users to either download
the latest patch as a matter of urgency, or upgrade to the latest version
of MSN Messenger or Exchange Instant Messenger by visiting an MSN chat site.
Thursday
9th May 2002
US NET TRAFFIC DOUBLED
IN 2001
In a study likely to be paralleled
elsewhere, telecommunication industry analysts
RHK report that Internet
traffic doubled in the USA during 2001 - a sign of the medium's continuing
spread into everyday life. RHK estimate that the USA's Net traffic now stands
at around 100 petabytes (ie 100 million gigabytes) per month. This is more
than twice the equivalent long distance voice traffic for the whole of the
USA. However, while Internet traffic has doubled in the USA over the last
year, RHK indicates that revenue derived from pipes carrying information
grew by just 17% over the same period. RHK also predict that while dial-up
is still the access method of choice for around 79% of US households, the
number of residential broadband subscribers in North America will reach 36.8
million by 2005.
Wednesday
8th May 2002
AUSTRALIAN MOBILE RADIATION
MAY DOUBLE
The
Australian Radiation Protection and
Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) yesterday approved and published
a new standard for electromagnetic radiation emissions which - if accepted
- could see the level of radiation emitted by mobile phones and a range
of other devices in Australia double. Using the bizarre logic that since
no-one has yet conclusively proven or disproven that mobile phone radiation
can cause cancer, leukaemia or lymphoma - despite several disturbing research
studies around the world in recent years which suggest that it might, and
other studies which show that EMF radiation above certainly levels most likely
does - ARPANSA has submitted its suggested new standard to the Australian
Federal Government and State legislators. If accepted by legislators, the
new standard could come into force as early as the end of the year.
Tuesday
7th May 2002
LINUX 34% CHEAPER THAN
WINDOWS
Contrary to Microsoft's assertions
in its recent
"We Have The
Way Out" campaign that Unix-based systems are more expensive to operate,
Australian IT service provider
Cybersource (CS) estimate that
companies that swap to Linux can make substantial savings very quickly. The
company has released a Total Cost of Ownership study which analyses the
differences between Linux/Open Source platforms and Windows/Microsoft platforms
which discloses Linux cost savings of between 25% and 34%, depending on hardware
factors. The study was modelled on an organisation with 250 computer using
staff, an appropriate number of workstations, servers, internet connectivity,
an ebusiness system, network cabling and hardware, standard software and
salaries for IT professionals to establish and support the infrastructure
and technology. CS found that the total cost of ownership for a Linux solution
was US$482,580 over three years compared with US$733,973 for a Microsoft
solution; and if new hardware was required, the Linux solution cost US$790,717
over three years while Microsoft's alternative cost US$1.04 million. (CS
support both platforms). The study reinforces
an earlier
report by Amazon last year, which swapped from Microsoft to Linux
and saved US$17 million per quarter - a 30% cost reduction.
Monday
6th May 2002
90% OF WEB SITES ARE
ORPHANS
Although there are now more
almost 20 million web sites in the world, 90% are orphans that no-one links
to according to web monitoring firm ServerWatch (SW). In the company's April
2002
Security
Space Survey Results, the firm report that they were only able to
trace 6.3 million web sites through links (many of them duplicates), indicating
that the web may be significantly more "porous" than widely believed. SW
also report that despite 6 years of intensive marketing effort Microsoft's
IIS web server still remains a minority server on the Net, accounting for
25% of all sites (against almost 66% now run running Apache) and that .COM
remains the most widely-used domain, accounting for almost 51% of all domains
in the world. Interestingly, UK firm
Netcraft - polling a
sample base 6 times bigger than SW - report that Microsoft's share is slightly
higher (at close to 32%) and Apache's slightly lower (at 56%). They attribute
this to Microsoft aggressively targeting a few domain registrars who provide
"domain parking" services. But Netcraft also report that for active, live
sites the figures are strikingly similar.
Friday
3rd May 2002
SPAM COSTS KOREA US$2.25
BILLION
In a startling report likely
to have strong parallels worldwide, the
Korea
Times say that a study by Nara Research estimates that spam now costs
Korea US$2.25 billion per year. Nara found that Korean ISPs now spend around
US$1.78 billion on storage costs for spam while infrastructure costs such
as filtering software, extra hardware and personnel to cope with the volume
of unsolicited mails costs the country an additional US$49 million. The research
also indicates that recipients' efforts to remove spam work out at an additional
US$911 million per annum. The number of domestic email users in South Korea
is currently around 20.5 million people and 98.9% of these said that they've
been spammed. As a result - on average - Koreans now spend 7.23 minutes a
day deleting spam and pay around US$100 per year to deal with the problem.
In just one day, the Times report, some 900 million spam mails were sent
to Korean email subscribers while the number of unsolicited mails sent on
a yearly basis was now 340 billion.
Thursday
2nd May 2002
AMERICANS DEMAND PIRACY
CRACKDOWN
Major US software companies
- which already have a stranglehold on the Australian market - are now demanding
that Australia introduce a raft of new laws to bolster their near-monopoly
position while simultaneously scrapping another proposal that might weaken
it, according to a report in
The
Australian today. The Australian says that a delegation of US lobbyists
from the Business Software Alliance (which represents Microsoft, Adobe,
Macromedia, Symantec, Borland and Autodesk amongst many others) met officials
in Canberra over the last week and demanded the immediate introduction of
laws to ban the use of pirated software by business. The lobbyists also want
the proposed relaxation of parallel importation laws scrapped, the Australian
reports, and guidelines struck to help Federal Court judges set damages for
breaches of copyright. The group has also threatened that if the Government
doesn't accede to its demands the companies will have these matters put on
the agenda for free trade agreement negotiations between the two countries.
Wednesday
1st May 2002
AUSTRALIAN NET DECLINES
AGAIN
The Australian Internet continued
to contract during April after a major die-back in February and negligible
growth in March according to the search engines we poll to construct our
monthly
Australian Internet Growth
Index (which has been attempting to measure the number of
live Australian web sites - as opposed to the number of registered
domains - since January 1996). Perth suffered the greatest decline (-5.7%)
followed by Brisbane (-3.6%), Melbourne (-2.4%) and Canberra (-2.0%), though
there appeared to be a growth of around 4.1% in regional and rural web sites.
The May 1st figures (with April 1st figures in brackets) are as follows:
Australian
Internet Growth Index April 2002
(Figures Show Estimated Live Sites) |
-
Brisbane - 11,176
(11,594)
-
Sydney - 45,687
(46,315)
-
Melbourne - 42,853
(43,922)
-
Adelaide - 8,461
(8,484)
|
-
Perth - 9,054
(9,602)
-
Hobart - 4,076
(4,002)
-
Canberra - 8,384
(8,545)
-
Darwin* - 11,363
(10,890)
|
NB: The Darwin figure includes
rural Australian sites |
|
During April 2002 Australian
Cybermalls hosted 65,188 visitors, a slight fall on March's 66,558.
Our visitors viewed 344,777 page displays from our servers, which in turn
consumed 16.88 Gb of bandwidth. Our April 2002 traffic summary
can be viewed
here.
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