OFT finds online travel offers misleading

As if the travel industry doesn't have enough to contend with, as people lose the travel bug in times of war and SARS, the OFT has found that 40 per cent of UK travel Web sites make potentially misleading claims over the deals on offer. If you needed any more reason not to travel, the Office of Fair Trading's travel site search identified more than one thousand sites globally (54 in the UK) that breached consumer legislation promoting deals that bear little resemblance to the prices of the holidays actually on offer. It quotes examples where flights to Australia were advertised 'from ?599', where the cheapest deal was ?891. ...more

Nildram joins capping ISPs

Nildram is the latest ISP to launch 'capped' 512Kbps broadband services, though it prefers the term 'pay as you go'. Two packages are available: 'dslSurf 500 PAYG time' which provides up to 50 hours connection time per month and 'dslSurf 500 PAYG data' which allows for 1Gbit of downstream traffic each month. Both cost 49, plus activation and modem, which does not appear particularly cheap. ...more

IE bug in Outlook lets in Bagle Q and R viruses

Reports are already flooding in to antivirus companies across the globe of new variants of the Bagle virus that spread without the recipient opening an attachment but through a hole in Internet Explorer. 'As the UK comes into work this morning there's a real danger that these Bagle worms will take off - we've already had a high number of reports from other parts of the world - particularly Korea, which is known for its uptake and use of technology,' said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant, Sophos. 'Exploiting a security loophole in the popular Microsoft Outlook email system means these worms have the potential to hit hard. ...more

Apple secures AirPort

Apple has released a security update that addresses flaws in its AirPort wireless networking software. The update fixes vulnerabilities that could result in arbitrary code execution, system crashes or privilege elevation. The first flaw (CVE-ID: CVE-2006-3507) results from two separate stack buffer overflows that exist in the AirPort wireless driver's handling of malformed frames. ...more

Google makes it easier to get together with Groups 2

The ever industrious Google has enhanced its Google Groups service with a range of new features Google Groups 2, is now a kind of cross between a blog and Usenet that allows users to create, search, and browse email mailing lists, and subscribe to and track favorite groups. Someone wishing to create a 'Google Group'can do so within minutes. Once someone has created their group, which can be public or by invitation only, topics can be created at the management level and comments can be made via email. ...more