‘The French parliament has buckled under pressure and approved the Sarkozy government’s authoritarian plans to censor the Internet. The government opposed all objections to its plans to filter Internet sites, which have been controversial throughout French society. Today La Quadrature du Net, a French openness group, said that the action would give the government total control over its citizens’ access to the Internet. It added that Nicholas Sarkozy was using excuses to clear a path for his rules, whch ultimately would come at the expense of liberty.’ Read more…

Popularity: 18% [?]

‘Privacy campaigners expressed shock last night after it emerged that large amounts of confidential personal information held about British citizens on a giant computer network spanning the European Union could be accessed by more than 500,000 terminals.

The figure was revealed in a Council of the European Union document examining proposals to establish a new agency, based in France, that would manage much of the 27 EU member states’ shared data. But the sheer number of access points to the Schengen Information System (SIS) – which holds information regarding immigration status, arrest ­warrants, entries on the police national ­computer and a multitude of personal details – has triggered concerns about the security of the data.’

‘The world needs a treaty to prevent cyber attacks becoming an all-out war, the head of the main UN communications and technology agency warned Saturday. International Telcommunications Union secretary general Hamadoun Toure gave his warning at a World Economic Forum debate where experts said nations must now consider when a cyber attack becomes a declaration of war.

He also called for a “driver’s license” for internet users. “If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance”.’

‘Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist, is to make the largest ever single charitable donation with a pledge of $10 billion (£6 billion) for vaccine work over the next decade. Mr Gates said that he hoped the coming ten years would be the “decade of the vaccineâ€� to reduce dramatically child mortality in the world’s poorest countries. It is calculated that his pledge could save more than 8 million lives.’

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Popularity: 17% [?]

I did an important post on this blog a few months ago about the importance of having a decent virus checker, spyware checker and firewall installed on your PC. Some viruses can be particularly stubborn, and are tricky to remove to say the least.