account

Cybercriminals buy and sell stolen information using a vast network of online stores, forums, and even social-networking accounts, according to a report released yesterday by PandaLabs.

Posing as a cybercriminal to gain access to this online black market, PandaLabs researchers uncovered a world where the bad guys work together to buy and sell stolen bank account information, credit card numbers, passwords, and other products. Much of this illegal enterprise is done through online stores and forums, but PandaLabs found criminals using Facebook and Twitter accounts to set up shop as well.

Though this black market is relatively open, the security … Read more

The name Express Accounts Free Accounting Software pretty much sums up this freeware from NCH: it's a basic but flexible accounting package suitable for small businesses and organizations, and even some that are not so small. It integrates with other NCH business software, and it's also available, at a cost, in a Pro version that offers extra features. However, Express Accounts Free does what most users need most often, such as create and manage invoices, payments, and receipts; report income and earnings; create balance sheets; track orders and supplies; and manage customer contacts.

During installation, a wizard walked … Read more

New York City, the nation's largest city and its true media capital, is telling citizens that "piracy doesn't work" as part of a new publicly funded antipiracy ad campaign.

The message to New Yorkers is that downloading music and movies without paying for them "kills jobs" in the city. The ads will appear at bus shelters, movie theaters, on the Web and on the video screens found in taxicabs, according to Katherine Oliver, commissioner of media and entertainment for the city of New York.

The costs of running the campaign are minimal because the … Read more

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

A new augmented-reality app lets you see what around you is for sale on eBay as you walk down the street

Google lets you manage multiple Gmail accounts from one Gmail login

Microsoft's Kin gets canned by Verizon, finally

Google purchases a company called Zetawire that allows mobile phone payments using near field communication technology

Google Voice will learn your speech patterns better using personalized recognition on Android phones

Google Voice also comes to the iPad

POS stands for point of sale, but small-business owners who have struggled to implement PC-based POS systems sometimes use a more colorful phrase. Retail Man POS from Ezisolutions aims to answer the many shortcomings of other POS suites, chief among them the confusion they cause in the owner who sets them up and the employees who use them. Retail Main POS features descriptive icon images and pop-up labels that help clarify just what each icon does, be it sales, inventory, payments, or contacts. It's a full-featured POS system, too, with invoices, inventories, balance sheets, reporting, and even barcode printing.… Read more

Windows Live Hotmail has a new trick up its sleeve--one that's aimed directly at getting users with e-mail accounts on other services to use it exclusively, even if they keep that address.

That trick, which begins rolling out to Hotmail users today, lets them add accounts from other Web mail services that can be read and sent from within the Hotmail Web client.

As Hotmail's group program manager Dick Craddock writes on the Inside Windows Live blog, this functionality is something that's long been available in the Outlook software client, but not on the Web. Craddock also … Read more

The new FaceTime for OS X application that allows for videoconferencing with iOS devices has come with a couple of security concerns involving the way account information is handled by the new program.

When the program is run and you've logged in to your account, the program will show information about you in a window next to the video display. This will make it easier to change account information for that user, since it shows birthdate information as well as the security question and answer needed to change the account information. All this can be shown without requiring a … Read more

Anyone who uses the Web for a while knows that login information starts to pile up quickly. With online e-mail accounts, login information for online banking, and countless forums, most users start to use the same passwords for everything. It's pretty easy to see how this is a bad security practice.

Fortunately, you can download 1Password, which remembers all your passwords so you don't have to. Simply come up with a secure master password and then train 1Password to log in to sites for you. It integrates seamlessly with Apple's Mac OS X Keychain and generates complex … Read more

In an attempt to make money from more parts of its service, Twitter is rolling out a new form of advertising called "promoted accounts." In short, it will let advertisers buy a spot on Twitter's sidebar with a suggestion of Twitter accounts you should follow--that is, if it's relevant to accounts the user is already following.

Such a feature was first rumored in July, though it had originally been suggested that it was going to be aimed at individuals. This program--at least in its beginnings--is being launched with businesses in mind.

A blog post about the … Read more