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Email 
 July 21:
How to solve the problem of spam. Regular columnist Bill Thompson explains what it is like to fall victim to a "joe job" in which spammers abuse someone's good name and then leave them to clear up the mess -
BBC News
 June 13:
Yahoo Inc., the world's largest provider of e-mail services, said on Monday that a software virus aimed at Yahoo Mail users had infected "a very small fraction" of its base of more than 200 million accounts. The e-mail virus, or worm, has been dubbed Yamanner and landed in Yahoo mailboxes bearing the headline "New Graphic Site." Once opened, the message infects the computer and spreads to other users listed in Yahoo users' e-mail address books, security experts said -
CNN
June 11:
A new loophole in election spending regulations is likely to produce a torrent of unsolicited e-mails to voters -- and widespread complaints about political spam -- as the midterm elections approach this fall, political consultants say. Purveyors of private e-mail addresses and designers of campaign Web sites report that their businesses are booming this year as partisans take advantage of an exemption in election rules that allows wealthy individuals to pour unlimited sums into Internet communications without having to disclose their identities or total expenditures -
Washington Post
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Filters 
July 24
Q: My 11-year-old son uses the Internet for homework, to check sports scores and to read up on the latest video games. I'd like to protect him from porn and hate sites. Can you recommend some parental control software? A: There are a number of stalwarts in this area, including Net Nanny ($45 from www.netnanny.com), CyberPatrol ($40 from www.cyberpatrol.com) and Cybersitter (also $40 from www.cybersitter.com) -
San Franscisco Chronicle
June 30
China is tightening controls on blogs and search engines to block material deemed subversive or immoral, the government said Friday. The announcement comes amid a media crackdown by President Hu Jintao's government, with Web sites being shut down and journalists jailed. -
CNN
May 7
It's not unheard of these days for a child doing online research for a school project to accidentally stumble into a porn site or someplace else that's too dicey for a parent's comfort level. Between e-mail filters, parental controls and special software, there are plenty of tools meant to help parents keep their children safe. The next target for fed-up parents: Internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo -
Washington Post
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Games / Gambling 
July 20:
The habit started seemingly innocent enough, buying scratch tickets at local liquor stores and gas stations 10 years ago. But a few years later, he would find himself -- night after night -- in a Kinko's FedEx store. He wasn't there for the copiers, but for the Internet connection. And he was in trouble. Seven nights a week, for four- or five-hour stretches, he'd hunch over a computer -- for 25 cents a minute -- sometimes until 5 a.m. It was here that Tim Smith (his pseudonym, as he asked to remain anonymous) dreamed of striking it rich, and ultimately where he bottomed out. -
CNN
July 20:
He dreamed that with the next game, the next jackpot, the next click of his mouse, he would solve all his problems. But as he got sucked deeper into the anonymous world of online gambling, his problems only got worse. "There was no boundary between me and what was going on inside the computer screen," said the recovering gambling addict, who asked not to be identified. "I was ill with a compulsion, even though I was losing $5,000 and $10,000 and $15,000." -
CNN
July 19:
When it comes to reaching their youngest consumers, food companies are not kidding around. Their sophisticated online marketing efforts are drawing children into playing hundreds of free Internet games featuring their favorite foods, such as Chips Ahoy Soccer Shootout, Pop-Tart Slalom and Cheetos Cowtapult, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study -
CNN
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Instant Message / Chat / Social Web Sites 
July 13:
Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. said on Wednesday they have begun a limited public test to allow users of the companies' respective instant messaging programs to trade messages with one another. The agreement to work together, first announced last October, marks a long-awaited breakthrough among major instant messaging services, which include AOL's pioneering AIM service, Microsoft and Yahoo, along with more recent upstarts including eBay Inc.'s Skype and Google's Google Talk -
Reuters
June 20:
New security measures for young users of MySpace.com won't be enough to stop online child predators, safety experts warned today. Starting next week, MySpace will restrict adult access to the information teenagers post about themselves. MySpace users who are 18 or over could no longer request to be on a 14- or 15-year-old's friends' list unless they already know either the youth's e-mail address or full name. That means they won't have access to personal information on their profiles.'
Houston Chronicle
June 20:
A 14-year-old girl who says she was sexually assaulted by another user of MySpace.com sued the social networking Web site Monday, claiming it does not take sufficient steps to protect underage members. The girl says a 19-year-old man lied in his profile about being a senior on a football team to gain her trust and phone number.'
CBS News
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Law 
July 18:
Federal officials on Monday charged 11 people, including the CEO of a big gambling Web site, alleging they committed conspiracy, racketeering and fraud in taking sports bets from U.S. residents. The Justice Department is seeking the forfeiture of $4.5 billion, cars and computers from the defendants, including BetOnSports PLC and three other companies -
CBS News
June 20:
A 14-year-old girl who says she was sexually assaulted by another user of MySpace.com sued the social networking Web site Monday, claiming it does not take sufficient steps to protect underage members. The girl says a 19-year-old man lied in his profile about being a senior on a football team to gain her trust and phone number. -
CBS News
June 7:
A major wrestling match in Congress over control of the Internet features some strange tag teams -- rockers and evangelists vs. phone companies and the Bells' usually biggest adversary, cable TV companies. The most far-reaching telecommunications bill in a decade has as its main purpose making it easier for phone companies to compete against cable companies in offering the equivalent of cable TV, and streamlining the approval process for both. The promise to consumers is lower prices and more choices -
CNN
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Music / Video 
July 27:
The company that distributed software called "Kazaa," which made it simple for millions of computer users to download music and movies over the Internet, has settled global lawsuits brought by the entertainment industry, the industry said Thursday -
CNN
July 19:
Online movie service CinemaNow Inc. will begin selling movies for downloading and viewing on standard DVD players, marking a first for mainstream films bought over the Internet -
CBS News
June 20:
Federal authorities have met -- and in some cases exceeded -- the goals set out for them two years ago when the Bush administration ordered a more aggressive response to intellectual property crimes, according to a progress report the Department of Justice is set to release Tuesday. Under the leadership of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the Justice Department said it has implemented each of the 31 recommendations made by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in March 2004. Beyond that, authorities said they have taken at least eight additional steps to combat these crimes, which include the counterfeit trading and online piracy of movies, music and video games
Reuters
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Pornography 
July 10:
Web pages that use innocent words like "Barbie" or "Furby" but actually feature sexual content will be subject to felony charges, thanks to a bill the U.S. Senate approved Thursday. Anyone who includes misleading words or images intended to confuse a minor into viewing a possibly harmful Web site could be imprisoned for up to 20 years and fined, the legislation says -
CNet News
July 10:
As if porn sites and pedophiles in chat rooms weren't frustrating enough for parents whose children use the Internet, now online postings of amateur video featuring skin and violence are raising concerns. The explosion in online video-sharing sites, where clips of any nature can be easily uploaded for the world to see, has become the latest challenge for parents trying to protect their children and for Web sites coping with obscene submittals -
CNN
June 28:
Five leading online service providers will jointly build a database of child-pornography images and develop other tools to help network operators and law enforcement better prevent distribution of the images. The companies pledged $1 million among them Tuesday to set up a technology coalition as part of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They aim to create the database by year's end, though many details remain unsettled. -
CNN
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Privacy / Security 
July 21:
A man who prosecutors say lured underage girls he met on a vampire-related Internet site to suburban cemeteries was ordered held on $350,000 bail after pleading not guilty to rape and sodomy charges -
CBS News
July 18:
A worm is targeting MySpace users, compromising their "About me" pages and infecting visitors to them, Symantec has warned. When a logged-in MySpace user goes to another member's "About me" page affected by the ACTS.Spaceflash worm, they are quietly redirected to a URL that holds a malicious Macromedia Flash file, the security company said in an advisory on Spaceflash Tuesday. That file, in turn, will replace the visitor's own "About me" page with one that is compromised -
CNet News
June 18:
In the past 15 months, corporations, universities and other organizations alerted more than 85 million U.S. consumers that their personal or financial data might have been exposed through electronic breaches, disgruntled employees or just plain incompetence. While consumer data leaks don't automatically result in financial losses or identity theft, experts say your chances of becoming a victim depend on how well you know your rights and how quickly you spring into action -
Washington Post
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Tools 
July 16:
YouTube, the leader in Internet video search, said on Sunday viewers have are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its "snack-sized" video fare. Since springing from out of nowhere late last year, YouTube has come to hold the leading position in online video with 29 percent of the U.S. multimedia entertainment market, according to the latest weekly data from Web measurement site Hitwise -
Reuters
July 6:
Time Warner Inc.'s AOL LLC online unit is considering giving away more of its services, including e-mail, to customers who already have a high-speed Internet connection, a person familiar with the discussions said Thursday -
CNN
June 20:
The major Web browsers are getting facelifts as they increasingly become the focal point for handling business transactions and running programs over the Internet rather than simply displaying Web sites. The upgrades are the latest skirmish in the browser war that started in the mid-1990s and led to Microsoft's triumph over Netscape. The battles reignited in 2004, when Mozilla's Firefox launched and revealed new avenues of development
CNN
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Miscellaneous 
July 26:
Google, owner of the most-used Internet search engine, is now disclosing to advertisers the number of clicks on ads that it deems are invalid in a bid to assuage concerns over "click fraud." Advertisers can see how many clicks on ads are excluded from their bills, Shuman Ghosemajumder, a Google business product manager, said this week. Clients will be able to see information on clicks going back to the beginning of the year -
Houston Chronicle
July 19:
Many people see Web journals or "blogs" as alternatives to the mainstream media, but most Americans who run them do so as a hobby rather than a vocation, according to a report released on Wednesday. About 77 percent of blog authors, or "bloggers," said they post to express themselves creatively rather to get noticed or paid, according to the report, released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project -
Reuters
July 12:
Online hangout MySpace.com has overtaken Yahoo Inc.'s e-mail gateway as the single most-visited U.S. Web site, although Yahoo's network of sites retains a broader audience, according to a report issued on Tuesday -
CNN
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