Broadband Comparison, News & Reviews

Google is starting to get fed up with the amount of scammers who use their company name in order to pull off scams. The analysts behind Google said that since the recession they have seen an increase in the amount of complaints they receive after scammers work their magic on unsuspecting browsers.

In fact, the Google analysts went as far as to say that if you consider how many people do not report scam attempts, there could easily be a few more thousand victims who have lost millions of pounds in the scam offers.

Now the company is striking back by filing a lawsuit that will allow them to directly attack scammers who operate by using the Google name without permission.

In particular the company intends to attack a company that places Google?s name on their ad which promises browsers they can make millions of dollars while working at home.

The ad has caused distress from people such as Marvin Shultz who gave it a try since he had heard about Google from his daughter. Instead of being billed $0.99, his card was billed almost $50 which could have been enough to pay off the electric bill. As a result of losing the money his power was cut off for being delinquent.

Google claims that the responsible party is Pacific Web Works along with 50 other defendants that are alleged to a part of the scam that has spread across the internet.

Assistant Director of the FBI Cyber Crime Division Shawn Henry said that when looking at anything online keep in mind the well known adage that if a deal or promise sounds too good to be true, it probably is a scam.

Filed under: Broadband Scam Alerts by Alan

While Google may be new to the mobile operating industry, they are not quite so new to online advertising, which is why their purchase of AdMob, a mobile advertising company may raise a few eyebrows in astonishment; especially given the fact that Google paid US$750m for the company.

Although mobile advertising is not considered to be a very profitable market, Google apparently felt secure in wagering a large amount of money towards its success. AdMob has already built a solid base for itself selling ads for both Android and iPhone platforms.

The purchase of the company by Google if it proceeds as planned will help keep Google ahead of its competitors and give it a chance to change the mobile advertising market in the same way that it redefined the online search advertising market.

Android was originally designed by Google to be an open source project, free of license charges, but now that it is becoming more popular Google is ready to cash in on some of the profits, which it now can do since it owns AdMob.

This is not the only major acquisition by Google this year, as the large internet giant has also bought reCAPTCHA and On2. The company has also been rumoured to have purchased Gizmo5 as well.

Although the complete plans for the AdMob purchase are not entirely clear, you can bet that Google has something crafty up their sleeve as the company seems to always keep one foot ahead of the competition and nearly never makes a bad move.

Filed under: Broadband News and Reviews by Alan

Microsoft stated on Monday that Hotmail was the target of an extensive scam that led users into giving away their passwords to unauthorized users, who posted approximately 10,000 passwords online.

The company said that the security breach was not due to any fault from their servers, but instead due to the extensive work of con artists, who convinced the individual email owners to reveal their personal details.

However, the larger piece of news is that the password scam is now thought to have not only affected thousands of Hotmail users, but also users who use email accounts at Comcast, Yahoo, Google, Earthlink, and a few other third party email services.

According to Neil O?Neil of the Logic Group it is possible that up to a million email passwords may have been given away and accessed from the scam.

He went on to state that since the breach was made public so quickly after the initial discovery of the attack, hackers were given the heads up about the presence of the passwords, leading to many hackers to gain full access to the lists, before Microsoft requested the lists be deleted.

O?Neil went on to state that the implications of this are more than most people may initially think, since most people tend to use the same passwords for all of their accounts, which potentially could have placed paypal and ebay accounts at risk as well.

To combat this problem internet users are often advised to change their passwords on a regular basis, and keep their anti-virus software up to date.

A spokesman from Microsoft stated that the company is aware of the fact that some Hotmail users? passwords were illegally placed on a website by a phishing scheme, but that they had launched an investigation, and requested the websites that hosted the details to take them down.

Filed under: Broadband Scam Alerts by Alan