Provided by CommunityDNS, the information in this post consists of news items in the security-based Internet community.

Global Mobile Broadband Subscriptions to Top 600 Million

In a recently released report, there should be 4.6 billion mobile subscribers by the end of 2009. Of those subscriptions 600 million will use mobile broadband. Fixed broadband users are expected to reach 500 million by the end of 2009. While Europe has a fairly high penetration rate of approximately 200 fixed broadband subscribers for every 1,000 people, there is only 1 fixed broadband subscriber for every 1,000 people in Africa.

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Online Ads: Spyware or Teasers? Congress to Decide

Targeted ads, accounting for $1.1 billion of the overall $24.5 billion dollar 2009 online advertising market space, are opposed by 75% or Americans. A recent poll found that while there is a greater appreciation of ads targeted towards the user, people were opposed to targeted ads once they learned it meant their Internet surfing habits were being tracked.

Later this year a bill will be introduced into Congress aimed at helping Internet users better understand the information that is collected about them, how it is collected and how it is used. The bill also calls for an “Op-out” option whereby users can opt-out of having their surfing habits tracked.

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Google Robbed by Botnet

While online advertisers have lost money due to hackers, so too has Google. Hackers have been growing a botnet whereby the surreptitiously installed malware will secretly change the DNS settings on the compromised computer. When a user enters Google.com, for example, the user will be delivered to a fake site that looks like the Google search results page. Ads presented to the Internet user will not benefit Google, but instead benefit the hackers who get paid for ad click-throughs.

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Enterprises Confident In Defenses Against External Attacks, Study Says

In a study of more than 400 organizations in 18 countries, each with 500 employees or more, 45% of the respondents said their fear of data loss was not from external sources, but internal. 85% felt loss of data through external hacking was “very unlikely”.

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