Verizon Wireless, MTV And Real Networks

Identity Theft, 5 Indicted Five men have been indicted on charges of participating in an identity theft ring targeting wealthy Americans. The defendants – four of whom were arrested today and are in custody in Michigan, Texas, Florida and Kentucky -- have been charged with stealing $1.5 million and attempting to steal another $10.7 million from their victims’ financial accounts. Another defendant was arrested in May and is in custody in New York.
Internet Addiction Is your first craving in the morning for your computer mouse? Do you obsessively check email in the middle of the night? If so, you may be among the ten percent of all Internet surfers afflicted with “Internet addiction disorder,” a pathological condition that can lead to anxiety and severe depression. To better diagnose and treat Internet addiction, Dr. Pinhas Dannon, a psychiatrist from Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, recommends that it be grouped with other extreme addictive disorders such as gambling, sex addiction, and kleptomania.
Internet Safety and Security in Schools The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) has called upon state leaders across the United States to work with their states' education leaders to ensure cyber security, safety and ethics lessons are integrated in every classroom. The “No Child Left Behind Act” requires students to be technology literate upon completion of the 8 th grade. Accordingly, the National School Boards Association reports that 96 percent of school districts say that at least some of their teachers assign homework requiring Internet use. However, there is still no formal education on how to stay safe, secure and ethical online.
DIRECTV and CURRENT DIRECTV, Inc. and CURRENT Group have a wholesale distribution agreement that will enable DIRECTV to offer its customers CURRENT’s BPL (Broadband Over Powerline) high-speed Internet service and VoIP services at the end of 2007/beginning of 2008. DIRECTV customers will be able to access the Internet by plugging a BPL modem into virtually any outlet in their home.
Unauthorized Web Site Services Charges on Phone Bills Operators who allegedly crammed unauthorized charges for Web site services onto the phone bills of hundreds of thousands of small businesses and non-profits will pay more than $1.2 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that their operations violated federal law. The settlements also will bar the unlawful practices the defendants used to bilk the businesses. In June 2006, the FTC charged a group of interrelated businesses and individual defendants with cramming unauthorized charges onto the phone bills of small businesses and nonprofits for Web site services that, in many cases, they did not know they had and did not request. The agency alleged that the operators used telemarketers to make cold calls to small businesses and non-profits, and offered a “free” 15-day trial of a Web site design. The consumers were told there was no charge or obligation, and that the Web site would be cancelled automatically if it was not approved by the consumers. The defendants made “verification recordings” that implied that the consumer agreed to be billed for the offer after the free trial, when they did not. Whether the consumers agreed or not, often their phone bills were charged. When consumers called to dispute the charges, the operators told them they had “verification recordings” of an employee authorizing the charges.