Internet usage

More than half of the people in the developing world are now cell phone subscribers, a U.N. report said Tuesday, highlighting strong global growth in telecommunications.

There were an estimated 4.6 billion mobile phone subscriptions at the end of last year, compared with about 1 billion in 2002, the International Telecommunication Union said in a report. In developing nations, 57 percent of people were signed up.

"The rate of progress remains remarkable," the U.N. agency said.

AT&T giveth and AT&T taketh away. The wireless service provider that has mastered all-you-can-eat monthly service packages for its mobile-phone customers is having second thoughts. Concerned that some customers are consuming more than their share of data over wireless networks, the company plans to offer some subscribers "incentives" to "reduce or modify their usage" of bandwidth, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said on Dec. 9. Analysts and consumer advocates say the changes may backfire.

A computer hacker accused of masterminding one of the largest cases of identity theft in U.S. history agreed Friday to plead guilty and serve up to 25 years in federal prison for his crimes.

Albert Gonzalez of Miami was charged with conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges in federal courts in New York and Boston. Court documents filed in federal court in Boston indicate the 28-year-old Gonzalez agreed to plead guilty to 19 counts and combine the two cases in federal court in Massachusetts.

For all the rumors and speculation about Dell's entry into the smartphone market in China, there's an unexplored angle: Why would Dell choose China as the entry point for a new wireless product line?

Dell has acknowledged that it is working with China Mobile, that country's largest mobile-phone carrier. The computer maker displayed a mini3i handset prototype at a China Mobile event in Beijing on Monday.

It's just a couple of minutes to check that stock I bought. Five minutes to check if my bid on eBay won. It won't hurt, right? And if I periodically check my Facebook or Yahoo! Sports page, there's no harm in that.

But all those minutes can add up throughout the day or week. In fact, 30 to 40 percent of Internet use in the workplace is not related to business, according to IDC, a Massachusetts-based provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology markets.

Web users, the meter is running. In a strategy that's likely to rankle consumers but be copied by competitors, Time Warner Cable is pressing ahead with a plan to charge Internet customers based on how much Web data they consume. Starting next month, the company will introduce tiered pricing in several markets.

The Middle East and North Africa, where Internet usage is relatively low compared to Europe and the U.S., could see a large growth in Internet penetration rates in 2010, said members of a Google delegation touring the region Thursday.

The four-member delegation is on a fact-finding mission in the Arab world to gauge business opportunities. They have already visited the West Bank and are currently in Lebanon in a tour that will also take them to Jordan, Egypt, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Microsoft is having quite a week. The company is seeing reports of vulnerabilities before Patch Tuesday, fixing data-corruption issues, and getting flooded with visitors trying to download the beta version of Windows 7.

First up, security. If you didn't patch for the Microsoft Windows Server RPC Handling Remote Code Execution Vulnerability last year, you could be targeted this year through a vulnerability that can be spread through USB ports.

Requirements that Internet cafés in a southern Chinese city install Chinese-developed operating systems are raising new concerns over cyber snooping by authorities, a U.S. government-funded radio station reported Wednesday.

The new rules that went into effect Nov. 5 are aimed at cracking down on the use of pirated software, said Hu Shenghua, a spokesman for the Culture Bureau in the city of Nanchang.

Google is seeking to draw clear distinctions between the methods it uses to target ad placements based on search queries and a controversial data-mining practice known as deep-packet inspection. The deep-packet technique gathers and stores information on an individual's Web-site visits and Internet usage without first obtaining the user's consent.