St. Louis

Sprint Nextel Corp. is making a big push to help customers understand their phones, creating a formal program to make store employees available to explain their products and set them up for buyers.

The campaign to be announced Tuesday is the first official program for in-person help by a cell carrier, but is similar to moves in the wider consumer electronics industry to demystify gadgets through one-on-one contact.

A defense attorney for the Missouri woman charged in a MySpace hoax that allegedly led to a 13-year-old girl's suicide argued in court papers that prosecutors are bending a cybercrime statute to prosecute his client.

At issue is whether the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is relevant to the case against Lori Drew of O'Fallon, Mo. Prosecutors filed voluminous motions last week arguing the statute can be used to prosecute cyberbullying, though it has traditionally been used for crimes such as hacking into computers.

An attorney for a Missouri woman charged in a MySpace hoax that allegedly led a 13-year-old girl to commit suicide filed motions Wednesday to dismiss the federal case.

Three motions were filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of Lori Drew of the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, her attorney H. Dean Steward told The Associated Press.

Drew is accused of helping create a false-identity account on the MySpace social networking site to convince young neighbor Megan Meier she was chatting with a teenage boy.

Congress has asked Embarq Corp. about its work with a company that tracks online subscribers' Web traffic for advertising purposes, part of growing concern about Internet privacy.

Overland Park, Kan.-based Embarq is the nation's fourth-largest traditional telephone company with 1.34 million high-speed Internet subscribers in 14 states. It has been linked in the past with NebuAd Inc., a company that works with Internet service providers to tailor targeted ads based on what Web sites a particular subscriber visits.

Cable TV, phone and Internet service provider Charter Communications drew concern Friday from two congressmen and a privacy advocate over its plan to experiment with tracking its customers' Web use in collaboration with an online advertising firm.

Charter has told its high-speed Internet customers in four markets about the pilot, which will produce enough information for Web advertisers to target online advertising for individual customers based on their habits.

Cable TV, phone and Internet service provider Charter Communications drew concern Friday from two congressmen and a privacy advocate over its plan to experiment with tracking its customers' Web use in collaboration with an online advertising firm.

Charter has told its high-speed Internet customers in four markets about the pilot, which will produce enough information for Web advertisers to target online advertising for individual customers based on their habits.