Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Playing at becoming your fantasy character online has proven to be an innovative and lucrative business for Linden Lab, the company which created a fast growing website which has become a phenomenon called Second Life. Unfortunately, for the estimated 650,000 registered users of Second Life, idyllic fantasy has met ugly reality in the form of a cyber hacker.
Second Life users take on animated avatar personnas who interact with
other virtual characters in quasi real life situations where they do
business deals and make and lose virtual money.
The site has been such a success that real life top shelf businesses
have become involved setting up virtual offices from which they do real
life business with users, selling their wares to Second Life users.
It's the ultimate online reality game dressed up in a fantasy world
setting.
Because of the business involvement, real life commercial transactions
take place and those credit card details and personal details of users
are kept on Linden Lab databases.
Unfortunately as many users of online services are increasingly finding
out, their data sitting on another company's server can never be 100%
guaranteed to be safe from the devious methods of experienced hackers.
Such has been the case for Second Life users, who were told last week
by Linden Lab that their names, address and sensitive data such as
passwords and credit card details had been hacked into.
From reports of the incident, it is probably fortunate for the users
that their most sensitive data, such as credit card payments and
passwords are probably safe, as are their credit card details, which
are housed on a separate database.
However, it must be disconcerting to know that your name and address has been stolen by criminal elements.
Linden Lab has issued an advisory to all users that they must request a
new password. However, it does seem a little like locking the stable
after the horse has bolted.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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