George C. Dimitriou

According to Google’s AdPlanner stats, Facebook is the no 1 most-visited destination on the web. With 570 billion page views and 540 million users, the ubiquitous social network outranks every other non-Google site, taking more than 35% of all web traffic measured.

The stats, which do not include data from Google.com and YouTube, detail the categories, users and page views for each of the top 1,000 sites on the Internet. They also tell which sites have advertising. Wikipedia and Mozilla.com are the only two sites in the top 10 that remain ad-free.

When it comes to non-Facebook social media properties, Twitter ranks 18th with 5.4 billion page views, Flickr is 31st with 1.8 billion views and LinkedIn sits in 56th place at 1.7 billion views.

Study Reveals Sources of Spam
India and South Korea were the top Asian sources of global junk mail in the first quarter of the year, while China has pulled itself out of the “dirty dozen” list, a study revealed. The United States remained the number one source of junk, or spam, emails accounting for 13.1 percent of the total sent during the three-month period, the survey by computer security firm Sophos said.
Continue reading

China: Cyber-Spying Network Targeting India
Reports of a China-based cyber spy network targeting the Indian military and the consequent alert sounded by Army authorities may be only the tip of the iceberg – investigations have revealed a fully dedicated India- specific espionage system aimed at business, diplomatic, strategic and academic interests.
Continue reading

Internet Users in China Reaches 404 Million
The number of Internet users in China, already the largest in the world, has surpassed 400 million and accounts for almost a third of the country’s population, state media reported on Saturday. The online population in the world’s most populous nation has reached 404 million, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the State Council Information Office.
Continue reading

Cellphone Payments – An Alternative to Paying with Cash
You have won a bet, but the loser does not have enough cash on him to settle it. If he has a credit card, and most people usually do, there is finally a solution. A number of big and small companies – including eBay’s PayPal unit, Intuit, VeriFone and Square – are creating innovative ways for individuals to avoid cash and checks and settle all debts, public and private, using their cell phones.
Continue reading

Most Young Adults Routinely Engage in Risky Online Behavior
Despite possessing a high level of awareness about threats lurking on the Internet, young adults routinely engage in risky online behavior, says a report from RSA, the security division of EMC, based on a TRU Research survey of 1,000 18- to 24-year-olds.
Continue reading

Eurozone states and the IMF have agreed a three-year lending package for Greece worth €110 billion. The decision taken by euro area finance ministers in Brussels on Sunday evening (2 May) follows months of market turmoil, during which Greece’s borrowing costs have risen to record highs, sparking fears of a sovereign debt default and breakup of the single currency area.

Eurozone governments will provide €80 billion under the three-year deal (2010-12), with the first disbursement to be ready before a crucial debt deadline on 19 May when Athens is due to pay back roughly €8.5 billion to bond holders. EU economy commissioner Olli Rehn said installments will be subject to a system of “quarterly reviews”.

The agreement comes after ten days of talks between EU, IMF and Greek officials regarding the lending terms were wrapped up in Athens on Saturday, with the centre-left Greek government subsequently announcing a fresh round of tax increases and spending cuts as part of its bid to bring the budget deficit to below three percent by 2014. The deficit currently stands at 13.6 percent.

The measures include the scrapping of bonus payments for public sector workers, an end to increases in public sector salaries and pensions for at least three years, raising VAT from 21 percent to 23 percent, and increasing taxes on fuel, alcohol and tobacco by 10 percent.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), released the 2009 annual report about fraudulent activity on the Internet.

Online crime complaints increased substantially once again last year, according to the report. The IC3 received a total of 336,655 complaints, a 22.3 percent increase from 2008. The total loss linked to online fraud was $559.7 million; this is up from $265 million in 2008.

The 2009 Internet Crime Report details information related to the volume and scope of complaints, complainant and perpetrator characteristics, geographical data, most frequently reported scams and results of IC3 referrals.

The report is posted in its entirety on the IC3 website.

BBC News has a nice interactive chart up, showing how Internet had grown from 1998 to 2008 in various parts of the world.

Moving the slider below the charts forward into future, you can see how quickly Western Europe adopted the Internet, with over 31% of people being online in most European countries by 2008.

About one year ago Twitter reached a huge milestone: one billion tweets. Four months ago, 5 billion tweets were served. And today Twitter should reach another important milestone: 10 billion tweets.

Counting tweets is actually quite easy: just look at the URL of any tweet. The number at the end of the URL seems to be the number of that tweet, and at this moment the number of one of the latest tweets is 9962204067. If this seems like a long way to go before we reach 10 billion, check out this counter.

Article from Newsweek in 1995. It lists all the reasons the Internet will fail!?

Read the rest of this post on the original site