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Another Fatality Due to Texting While Driving

Just a couple of months ago the deadly MetroLink train crash, which killed at least 25 people in California, was held to be due to the engineer texting on his cell phone while driving the train. Now a high ranking British official is being charged with the death of another motorist, when the car he was driving – while texting – collided with another, killing the other driver.

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Live Internet Map Shows Current Pirate Activity

Pirates have been in the news a lot lately. Not the pirates of yore, but modern-day pirates who are boarding and hijacking ships right now. In fact, there have been dozens and dozens of pirate attacks on ships off the coast of Africa alone this year, several of them just in the past week. Now you can follow these events with this online interactive map of current and recent acts of piracy.

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Personal IP Addresses Not Protected by Privacy Rules in UK, Germany

A German court has ruled that an IP address is not afforded the same privacy protections that Internet users enjoy for their names and other personally identifying information, even though a user may have a static IP address which is directly linked to the user alone.

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Email Autoresponder Leads to Embarrasing Road Sign

Many accounts of what we’re about to tell you are saying that it illustrates the dangers of email and autoresponders – but we think that it’s really about the danger of not using your brain. It all started in Wales, when the Swansea council needed an English phrase translated into Welsch for a new road sign.

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Google, MS and Yahoo Sign Global Network Initiative to Protect User Privacy in Other Countries

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all signed on to the Global Initiative Network, pledging to protect the privacy of their users around the world, including – perhaps particularly – users in countries such as China, where demands that ISPs rat out their users are routinely made.

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Internet Voting Becomes Reality

If you have ever thought “Gee, I wish that we could vote by Internet,” well, your wish has just come true. This year, Internet voting has become a reality, as the very first voting by Internet system for a U.S. general election goes online. Unlike other electronic voting machines, the electronic voting machines used for Internet voting are basically just stripped-down, secured, laptops. Assuming it works as planned, it will be perfect for, for example, absentee voting.

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Feds Take Down Worldwide VPXL Spammers Lance Atkinson and Jody Smith

Authorities in the U.S. and New Zealand have coordinated to take down big time male enhancement and supplement spammers Lance Atkinson and Jody Smith, and their Target Pharmacy, Canadian Healthcare, Inet Ventures, Tango Pay, Click Fusion, and TwoBucks Trading spam operations. Lance Atkinson and Jody Smith were the muscle behind what Spamhaus has called “the biggest spam gang in the world,” and they recruited countless affiliates to send their spam through a spam affiliate program called Affking.

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New Email Scam Includes Passport Picture and More

A new email scam floating around the Internet includes a picture of what appears to be a genuine passport in the name of the sender. The sample we have appears to be a real Algerian passport in the name of Morsli Boubakeur, which is who our email – coming from mauvai98@yahoo.fr – is allegedly from. But it’s still a scam – don’t be taken in.

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Chinese Government Eavesdropping on and Intercepting Skype Text Messages and Chat

Canadian activist group Citizen Lab, with the help of an article in the New York Times, has blown the lid off the newest Chinese censorship scandal: the government of China is eavesdropping on, and in some cases intercepting, text messages sent via the Skype network.

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Order Boy Scout Popcorn Tins Online! Get Gourmet Popcorn Gift Tins, or Even Donate Popcorn Gifts to the Troops, All from the Comfort of Your Computer

Looking for the Boy Scout popcorn order form, to order Boy Scouts popcorn? Here it is! While everybody knows that Girl Scouts sell cookies, far fewer people realize that Boy Scouts fund raise by selling gourmet popcorn gift tins – popcorn tins full of both regular and flavored popcorn – all different kinds of popcorn, and we at the Internet Patrol are helping! Carmel popcorn, cheese popcorn, chocolate popcorn, even microwave kettle corn! (That’s the sweet popcorn you get at farmers markets and movie theatres.) You can even get unpopped gourment popcorn, if you like! But never before has it been so easy to order these gift tins of popcorn – gourmet popcorn gifts that anybody would love – because now you can do it online! And they will ship right to your door, or the door of anyone to whom you want to send popcorn gifts!

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The Problem with Site Blocking Browsers and Search Engines is That They Block Good Sites

Firefox and IE both have site blocking (or at least, site warning) built into their current iterations. Google also does site blocking now. All do site blocking based on some metric, known only to them, that tells them that a site is more likely than not to be a malicious site, such as a phishing site, or a site loaded with spyware. The problem with site blocking browsers and site blocking search engines such as Google is that sometimes they get it wrong.

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Be the Change: Learn from the Past and Don’t Repeat it – In Memory of 9/11

The philosoper George Santayana is widely credited with famously uttering the advice that “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.” This video is dedicated to those whose past – and passing – we must remember, that we may not ourselves repeat it.

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Email Death Threat: The Hitman Email Scam Makes a Comeback

If you receive a death threat email, you’re in good company. The so-called “Hitman email” scam has made a comeback. Around since at least 2006, the content of the death threat email has evolved some, but the general gist of it remainds the same: the Hitman email claims that someone wants you dead, that the Hitman email sender has been hired to kill you, and that if you come up with a sufficient amount of money, they will spare your life.

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Get the Condom Ringtone – Yes Really – Free

The Condom ring tone has to be the ultimate in socially responsible ringtones. In a novel effort to make condoms and condom use more socially acceptable in India, the BBC World Service Trust has created the Condom ringtone free for anyone – anywhere in the world – to download.

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What Your Email Address Says About You

Researchers in Germany have come out with a very interesting study about what your choice of email address says about you. We’ve already talked about what the domain of your email address says about you (such as do you send from aol.com, hotmail.com, yourowndomain.com, etc.), but this new study looks specifically at the username side of your email address. Such as, are you “onehottie@”, “buttoneddown@”, or “uptight@”? In fact, the title subject is honey.bunny77@hotmail.de (that is the German arm of Hotmail).