Microsoft : War against phising !!

Microsoft is ramping up its fight against phishing, not just by continuing to improve Internet Explorer's phishing filter, but also by taking phishers to court. Announced today, the company is filing 129 lawsuits in the name of anti-phishing across Europe and the Middle East. According to a BetaNews report, Microsoft can file these suits because the phishers are damaging the company's image.

Because many of the defendants in the suits are young people as in teenagers, Microsoft is willing to accept settlements for the likes of 1,000 to 2,000 euros. Nevertheless, a recent criminal suit that dealt with phishing sent a Turkish man to prison for two and a half years. Other criminal suits were filed in Germany and France while most of the civil suits were filed in Britain.

The first lawsuit against a phisher was filed by the Federal Trade Commission in January of '04 against a 17-year old Californian teen that used a webpage resembling America Online to steal credit card numbers. The teen's punishment was a lifetime ban from sending spam and a US$3,500 fine.

Windows VISTA beta 2 - An exciting beta you can use !!

Micorsoft for a change has opened its Windows vista beta 2 to all users, and they even provide you with trial product key.Ok lets forget it all and come down to business, I installed vista ultimate edition last week and seriously didnt find anything discerning.

The beta is as smooth as any normal version, cool features wonderful new concepts.And it really looks like one for the future. The Collaboration tool and also IE and support for both 32 bit and 64 bit applications, and ability to run IE in both 32bit and 64 bit mode are real cool. The inbuilt phising filter,antispyware and Firewall have beefed up heavily.The security features have improved vastly.And cooler vista doesnt allow any software to run in admin mode without ur permission...so virtually denying spywares any control at all.

I got nVidia drivers for vista (yes most hw manufacturers already provide vista beta drivers).Even if vista installs ur driver I recommend you to download from hw manufacturer.Most XP drivers will do for Vista as well. Diagonistic tool in system menu recommends ur hw changes and driver updates and also suggests reasons why your PC is slower.

My recommendation for Vista (minimal)

Any P 4 or AMD XP or AMD 64

atleast 512 MB RAM(if you have a good ie 128MB or above graphics card)

(or)

1GB RAM

128MB or above graphics card(aero compatible)

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