PayPal fined $150,000 by NY Attorney General

EBay subsidiary Paypal, which is emerging as one of the largest ways to contract payments via the Web, has been fined $150,000 in the US. The New York State Attorney General found that the PayPal User Agreement was misleading. In particular, the Attorney General took exception to the claim that PayPal extended 'the rights and privileges expected of a credit card transaction' to its customers when often it did nothing of the kind. ...more

Microsoft previews real-time corporate messaging

Microsoft is hoping the popularity of instant messaging will put a fire under its corporate communications version, which supports a number of encryption technologies as well as logging mechanisms. Hugely popular in the consumer space, AOL leads the instant messaging market with its AIM service, despite Microsoft's ability to bundle its version of instant messaging with other key products such as Windows XP. But with the first public beta of 'Greenwich', the company is hoping to tackle the enterprise market with a real-time messaging system that authenticates users, supports industry standard security protocols, including SSL encryption, Digest and Kerberos, and offers logging functions needs to comply with financial and securities regulations. ...more

Yahoo! admits 38 per cent drop in profits

Yahoo!'s share price took a severe knock on Wall Street after it announced a 38 per cent drop in its third quarter profits. Shares were down nearly five per cent at one point in Wednesday's trading at $22.95 compared with $24. ...more

03-11-2001 Essential news of the week

Brought neatly together and presented on a plate, here is a roundup of some of the week's main news stories from the world of IT. Microsoft settlement closer Ericsson reveals the best of all connections PC Pro Awards Ten Tiny points BT CEO to go Microsoft Works it out Off the top and bottom, for Intel and AMD cuts Creative gears up Titanium add-in cards Online Journalism Awards Don't forget, we welcome your comments. Just fill out the 'Comments' fields on the right-hand side of the screen. ...more

Yahoo! removes Nazi hate items but leaves stamps and coins

There is another twist in the long-running tale of Yahoo! auctions and Nazi memorabilia. While Yahoo! has removed Nazi "hate items" from its online auctions, it has decided to allow bids for Nazi-era German stamps and notes and coins. The basis for the decision is that such historical items were issued by the German government of the time. ...more