A crackdown on “phishing” scams has been announced by 15 of the top technology companies.

Email providers such as Google and Microsoft will work with companies like Paypal and the Bank of America to improve authentication.

Phishing attacks typically involve scammers posing as familiar companies in an attempt to trick users into sharing personal information.

This co-ordinated effort aims to make this more difficult.

It will mean an agreed standard for authenticating legitimate emails arriving at the inboxes of AOL, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo customers and will verify messages from Facebook, Paypal, American Greetings, Bank of America, Fidelity and LinkedIn.

Sources:  [1]
Sourced by: Roy W Nash

A new air defence system that can destroy enemy missiles travelling at supersonic speeds has been revealed by the Royal Navy.

Sea Ceptor missiles fired from warships will reach speeds of up to Mach 3 and protect an area of around 500 sq miles.

Microsoft Office 15 officially made its debut as a technical preview yesterday, available to a small number of early testers who will provide feedback that can influence the final release.

And though the technical preview program is already full, a beta of the new Office suite will surface for everyone to play with later in the summer.

A Microsoft blog posted yesterday by PJ Hough, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office Division called Office 15 “the most ambitious undertaking yet for the Office Division.” While not giving too many details, he simply said that the new suite will mark the first time that “Microsoft will simultaneously update its cloud services, servers, and mobile and PC clients for Office, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio.”

We’ll soon see what it brings, and how Metro factors into the equation.

Sources:  [1]

Twitter has announced that it now has the technology to selectively block tweets on a country by country basis.

In its blog, Twitter said it could “reactively withhold content from users in a specific country”.

But it said the removed content would be available to the rest of the world. Previously when Twitter deleted a tweet, it would disappear worldwide.

The decision has been criticised by the freedom of information advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, and comes at a time when Twitter is in the process of expanding its global business.

Sources:  [1]
Sourced by: Roy W Nash

Europe’s Herschel space telescope has produced a majestic new version of a classic astronomical target – the Eagle Nebula, also called M16.

This dense region of gas and dust some 6,500 light-years from Earth hosts copious numbers of bright new stars.

Look just below the centre of the image and you will see the columns that were famously dubbed the “Pillars of Creation” when they were pictured by the Hubble telescope in 1995.

But Herschel and Hubble see distinctly different things in the nebula.

Hubble is sensitive to optical light, the kind of light we detect with our eyes. This is easily blocked or scattered by the dust, and shows us merely the shape of the billowing clouds of material.

Herschel, on the other hand, is sensitive to much longer wavelength radiation, in far-infrared. This enables it to detect the emission coming directly from the cold gas and dust that cloaks so much of the region.

The picture is being featured on the BBC’s Stargazing Live series.

Sources:  [1]
Sourced by Roy W. Nash

Eastman Kodak, the company that invented the hand-held camera, has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The company has recently moved away from cameras to focus on making printers, to try to stem its losses.

The 133-year-old firm has struggled to keep up with competitors who were quicker to adapt to the digital era.

Rupert Goodwins, editor of the ZDNet web site said, “Kodak made all its money from selling film, then the digital camera came along and now no-one’s buying film. It’s not like they didn’t see it coming. Kodak hesitated because they didn’t want to eviscerate their business”.

The move gives the company time to reorganise itself without facing its creditors, and Kodak said that it would mean business as normal for customers.

Sources: [1]
Sourced by Roy W. Nash

A new law promising internet users the “right to be forgotten” will be proposed by the European Commission tomorrow.

It says people will be able to ask for data about them to be deleted and firms will have to comply unless there are “legitimate” grounds to retain it.

A spokesman for the Justice Commissioner clarified that the action was designed to help teenagers and young adults manage their online reputations.

The move is part of a wide-ranging overhaul of the commission’s 1995 Data Protection Directive.

Sources:  [1]
Sourced by: Roy W Nash

The London Olympic and Paralympic Games are likely to require up to 20,000 separate wireless frequency assignments, according to the communications regulator Ofcom.

The organisation says that is nearly double the number of licences that it granted for the city over the course of last year.

The regulator says it approved 12,505 applications in 2011 and has already received 10,000 requests covering the seven-week period of the Games, but expects that number to rise thanks to the event being “the biggest media event in history”.

Ofcom says it has built a “state-of-the-art” spectrum assignment system to prevent interference between the variety of users, but adds that it it deploying about 90 radio engineers to deal with any cases that do occur.

Further detail will be provided when the plan is finalised “within the next few weeks”.

Sources:  [1]
Sourced by Roy W Nash