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Preston Gralla, PC World

By Lucy Kellaway
Published: February 25 2007, FT

Two weeks ago a middle-aged brunette called Janet Hanson was interviewed on the CBS evening news by Katie Couric, the middle-aged, blonde newscaster.

The item was all about women helping each other to be more successful and its focus was a network founded eight years ago by Ms Hanson called 85 Broads. The name is a laboured pun on the HQ address of Goldman Sachs where she used to work, and initially the network consisted of her “gal pals” from there. Now it is much broader and includes 16,000 women of the “most exceptional women on the planet” who are “going to be the greatest leaders the world has ever seen”. They are going to be this by networking, which, says Ms Hanson is all about learning how to “stand on each other’s shoulders”.

Over a pot of tea, Ms Hanson told Ms Couric her own story: how depression and then breast cancer had spurred her on to help other women. The camera kept flitting to Ms Couric, nodding empathetically. “So, this isn't just about careers, it's about how to cope with – life?” she volunteered, misting up, thus giving a whopping, prime-time plug for Ms Hanson and her network. Yes, its founder whispered, voice hoarse with gratitude.

Back on the 85 Broads website, it's payback time, and now Ms Couric is riding on Ms Hanson's shoulders. “Katie Couric ROCKS! . . . ” writes Ms Hanson in her blog. “She's an incredibly warm and beautiful woman . . . she deserves the unanimous support of smart women all over the world.” She notes that Ms Couric had been getting some stick for bad ratings on her new evening slot and urged all members: “IF EVERYONE TIVO'S THE CBS EVENING NEWS WE CAN MAKE KATIE NUMBER ONE!”.

The image of these women on each other's shoulders makes me want to tell them to get down at once, before they do someone an injury. Why does Katie deserve the unanimous support of all smart women? Surely she deserves to present the CBS evening news only if she is good at doing that, and if viewers like watching her. Otherwise someone else should be asked to do it instead.

And why is Ms Hanson allowed on national television if she cannot say anything more sensible than: “Women cannot succeed unless they leverage each other's massive intellectual firepower”?

The trouble is that the merest mention of women's networks seems to turn intelligent women into politically correct, acquiescent fools.

This is because the very idea of these networks is so contradictory. Do they exist to give women opportunities not allowed to men? To do so is discrimination, and there are (rightly) laws against that. But if the networks don't help you get jobs then why would you want to join one? I have been to quite a few women's networking events and can tell you that they are both dull and tense.

The prevailing impression is similar to ante-natal classes, though without the promise of a baby at the end of it. There is the same supportive we're-in-this-together atmosphere that is made less supportive both by being compulsory and by the competition that lurks not far beneath the surface. Successful professional women want to compete with other successful women. There is nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with pretending they don't.

I had a long chat with a friend last week who is a member of a senior women's professional network. She described it as a witches' coven, where the air was filled with bonhomie laced with spite. At the crack of dawn the next day she sent me a panicky e-mail begging me not to quote her – fearing that her fellow networkers might do something truly nasty to her in the girls' toilets.

Perhaps it is the tension, this fear of offending the sisterhood, that makes women say such daft things about these networks. Visit the website of WACL – an exclusive club of 140 of the most senior women in advertising and communications in London. On its website is a little box that allows you to select the background colour on the website – pink? apple green? – presumably so that it can match your handbag.

“WACL puts you in touch with wise and sassy women who are as happy to share their experiences as their lip gloss,” says Sarah Gold, MD of an ad agency.

Not only is the word “sassy” loathsome, but sharing lip gloss is not a good idea as it spreads germs. And as for sharing experience, I fancy that can be overrated, too.

Yet it is this sharing of experience that is the stated benefit of most female network clubs. Endlessly women are expected to want to hear the career histories of successful women, and to learn from them. “Attending events like this are terrific opportunities to learn and grow personally and professionally,” goes a testimonial on the 85 Broads website.

But I've listened to many women's experiences at formal events and I've never grown an inch in any direction. They are worth hearing if told in a funny and interesting way, which they generally aren't. The female role models who do these things all the time have recounted their stories so often that any truth or freshness is long gone.

Yet such is the appetite to hear women's experience that even I sometimes get asked to speak at these events. I usually tell them the truth: that my gender has been a great blessing to me in my career. Being born female was the single smartest thing I ever did. They don't seem to agree, but as they are supportive women they smile politely and scurry off home afterwards.

By Maija Palmer,IT Correspondent
Tuesday, March 20, 2007. FT

Anyone looking for a new identity – a bank account, credit card, government identification number and date of birth – need look no further than the internet where one can be bought for as little as $14 (£7, �1).

A US credit card costs just $1, a UK credit card about $2 and access to someone else's online bank account can be had for $300, according to the latest security report from Symantec, the US internet security company.

The report sheds light on the thriving underground economy where stolen bank account and identity details are traded in internet chat rooms. A Symantec team monitored internet chats over the past six months to compile a rough price list. Dean Turner, senior researcher on the project, said there were “hundreds if not thousands” of internet chat sites where trades could be made. “We were looking at the tip of the iceberg. The problem is likely to be much worse than we can portray.”

Various hacking tools are bought and sold on the chat sites. Spammers can pick up a list of 29,000 e-mail addresses for $5. Details of a computer that has been hacked into and can be controlled externally by a hacker can be bought for between $6 and $20.

Some of the pricing uncovered by Symantec was surprising. Credit card details sold for just a few dollars while a PayPal account could cost up to $500. A Skype account cost $12 and even an account for the World of Warcraft online role-playing game could be sold for $10.

Mr Turner said the prices reflected how much use criminals were likely to get away with: financial institutions policed credit cards so tightly that a stolen card number was usable for a only few days or even hours.

An online game would not be subject to the same scrutiny. Role-playing games had a thriving economy of their own, where characters and their equipment were traded for real money. Hackers had started to target the sites, stealing passwords and selling virtual assets.

Theft of game passwords was rife in Asia, where online games were highly popular, he said. The Symantec report, to be published today, shows another rise in the stealing of confidential information. Attempts at information theft account for 45 per cent of the most serious internet attacks examined by Symantec, up from 23 per cent six months ago.

http://news.webhosting.info/t-4410/

16th February 2005

The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), operator of the .IN Registry, today announced the opening of the real-time registration for the recently lauched .IN TLD.

The registry has formulated new policies for the registration and administration of .in domain names, which includes the .in Sunrise Policy and the .in Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (INDRP). Within an hour of the land rush today, nearly 24,000 domain names were registered successfully.

NIXI, currently has accredited Directi, Net4India Limited, GoodLuck Domains, OnlineNIC, Netandhost.com (S.G.S.Technologies Private Limited), MPS Technosoft Ltd., Silicon House, Pioneer Online, Reseller SRS, InCyber Advertising, Ascio Technologies, eNom, Internetx, IP Mirror, Key-Systems GmbH, Silicon House, Sipence, Inc and Mobile Name Services, Inc to register .in domain names.

In addition the reigstry announced that National Informatics Centre (NIC) is the registrar for gov.in domains and ERNET is the registrar for res.in, edu.in and ac.in domains. The .in domain space, which was earlier restricted to third level domains only, will now allow second level domain registrations.

By Maija Palmer, IT Correspondent
Thursday, March 15, 2007

Cybersquatting is an old problem that has come back to haunt business in a new form.

Laws passed in 1999 were meant to stamp out the practice, whereby enterprising individuals would register trademarked names such as burgerking.com and virgin.com and sell them back to the trademark owners for extortionate sums.

Cybersquatting did not go away, however. Cybersquatters have just become smarter, says Anthony Gold, intellectual property lawyer at Eversheds, and are finding new ways to get around the laws.

For example, cybersquatters can cover their tracks by using privacy services that hide the details of who owns a website.

This makes suing them more complicated. In a lawsuit launched last August, Microsoft had to get court subpoenas to discover the owners of 217 websites it claimed were infringing its trademark.

Some are taking advantage of the sheer volume of new domain names on offer, as new “top-level domains” such as .mobi, .eu and .asia, come into existence alongside the old favourites .com and .net.

“There are more than 240 national registries in addition to the generic top-level domains such as .com and .net. Even if you want to register only your basic brands, a big company would easily have to register 3,000 to 4,000 domain names across the world,” said David Engel, intellectual property lawyer at Addleshaw Goddard.

Companies are increasingly struggling to police all the domain name variants available. Many are turning to specialists such as UK-based NetNames, which offers domain portfolio management services to companies such as Unilever, British Airways and Hilton Group.

Going through the courts and even arbitration can be costly. Arbitration costs about £1,000-£2,000, ($1,900-$3,800), with a court case likely to cost as much as £10,000. Although some companies such as Sony, Virgin and Hilton Group have made a point of never paying to get back domain names, for others it is simpler and cheaper to pay up when cybersquatters are not asking for exorbitant sums.

Cybersquatters are turning to new tactics such as “typosquatting”, where they register a domain name that is a misspelling of a popular brand – such as hotmai.com or myspac.com. These pages get a lot of traffic from less than perfect typists.

Some typos present enough of a grey area to make them difficult to pursue the perpetrators through the courts.

Microsoft was, for example, forced to settle a case with Canadian student Mike Rowe, who registered MikeRoweSoft.com as his domain name.

But the key reason the cybersquatting has made such as strong comeback recently is that “domaining” – buying, selling and making money from domain names – has become a very big business.

Most of this trade is perfectly legal. The names bought and sold are not subject to trademark, but generic names such as diamonds.com or sex.com.

But a lot of trademarked names are also getting caught in the frenzy.

Thanks to advertising programmes such as Google's Adsense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, any internet page can now make money. Owners of web pages can place adverts on them and get paid small sums each time a visitor clicks on one of the ads.

For those unwilling to set up the advertisements themselves, specialist “domain parking” companies such as Sedo.com and NameDrive.com, can organise this for a share of revenues.

Names that cost just a few dollars to register can be resold for millions. Sex.com is reported to have been sold for $12m last year, with diamond.com going for $7.5m and vodka.com selling for $3m.

Companies such as Sedo.com offer Ebay-like auction sites for buying and selling these names, and a whole industry has developed around “dropcatching”, or getting hold of a popular name that has been allowed to lapse.

Domainers in turn feel that some companies unfairly bully them to relinquish names that should not be subject to trademark. Many feel arbitration proceedings favour large companies over individuals.

Microsoft's new rush of lawsuits may inflame this controversy further still.