PCIN.net Update

From TechRepublic:

Your child wants to learn more about Martin Luther King Jr. You might consider consulting a librarian instead of Google, AOL or Microsoft search engines.

Using the keywords “Martin Luther King,” the first result on Google and AOL–whose search is powered by Google–and the second result on Microsoft Windows Live search is a Web site created by a white supremacists group that purports to provide “a true historical examination” of the civil rights leader.

Granted, there are sponsored links above the result on all three sites and a “snapshot” of links to related content on AOL above the link on that Web site. But given that many people rely on the information they get in the top few results, someone could come away with a skewed perception of the man.

That’s where librarians come in.

From the Globe and Mail:

In the cyber underworld’s never-ending quest for weak spots, home computers are coming under increased attack as businesses tighten their defences, according to the latest Symantec Internet security threat report.

“What really surprises is the way that attackers are moving,” says Dean Turner, Calgary-based editor of the twice-yearly threat report. “They’re moving in a totally new direction.”

In the past, he says, hackers focused mainly on vulnerabilities in computer networks and their components. But the advent of sophisticated firewalls and warning systems have made them harder targets.

“They’re now starting to target home users quite heavily primarily because home users are the weakest link in the security chain,” says Turner.

From BusinessWeek:

Martin Fleischmann put his faith in online advertising. He used it to build his Atlanta company, MostChoice.com, which offers consumers rate quotes and other information on insurance and mortgages. Last year he paid Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO )and Google Inc. (GOOG ) a total of $2 million in advertising fees. The 40-year-old entrepreneur believed the celebrated promise of Internet marketing: You pay only when prospective customers click on your ads.

Now, Fleischmann’s faith has been shaken. Over the past three years, he has noticed a growing number of puzzling clicks coming from such places as Botswana, Mongolia, and Syria. This seemed strange, since MostChoice steers customers to insurance and mortgage brokers only in the U.S. Fleischmann, who has an economics degree from Yale University and an MBA from Wharton, has used specially designed software to discover that the MostChoice ads being clicked from distant shores had appeared not on pages of Google or Yahoo but on curious Web sites with names like insurance1472.com and insurance060.com. He smelled a swindle, and he calculates it has cost his business more than $100,000 since 2003.