PCIN.net Update

From iTWire:

A new report from NPD says the average age children start using technology fell to 6.7 years old in 2007, as kids versions of tech gear becomes more common, too.

NPD’s new report, “Kids and Consumer Electronics Trends III”, is their third report since 2005 to see how consumer electronics and children are interacting with each other.

Anita Frazier, an industry analyst at The NPD Group said that: “Kids are drawn to the latest and greatest digital devices just as their parents are. They appear to have no fear of technology and adopt it easily and without fanfare, making these devices a part of their everyday lives.”

Back in 2005, children were on average 8.1 years old before they started using technology, but in 2007 this has dropped to 6.7 years. To me, these ages seem awfully old – I personally started using computers, thanks to the foresight of my father, way back in 1979 when I was only four years old, two years before the IBM PC was released onto the world market.

From USA Today:

The arrest of notorious spammer Robert Alan Soloway, 27, on criminal charges for continuing to spread junk e-mail raised cheers in the tech security community.

But Soloway’s arrest Wednesday in Seattle won’t slow down the tidal wave of spam. Unwanted commercial e-mail has become big business, backed by organized crime. Most of it originates from networks of compromised home PCs, called zombies.

The spam deluge includes record levels of unsolicited e-mail ads for subprime loans, herbal remedies and get-rich-quick schemes. It includes phishing mail that lures recipients into typing sensitive data on bogus websites. There’s also “pharm” spam pitching fake pharmaceutical drugs. And stock spam dupes recipients into helping drive up prices of moribund stocks.

“This is the modern face of the e-mail threat,” says Adam O’Donnell, director of emerging technology at message security firm Cloudmark. “Spam makes money.”