According to ComputerWorld, which has it from the IDG news service, Mastercard has revealed that up to forty million (40,000,000) credit card numbers may have been acquired by a malicious hacker attacking CardSystems Solutions Inc, a company that provides back end services for card companies. Of those 40 million, roughly 13.9 million may have been Mastercards so Mastercard are not the only company affected, they are just the only one thus far to warn the public about it.

The point of the article, seems to be that if you have a credit card, you should check your statements regularly either online or via your bank statements and be sure contest or charge back any payments you didn’t make if there are any. (But you’re doing that already right?)

In Mid April I wrote about the problem of security products actually hurting your security rather then helping as they are supposed to. BusinessWeekOline have an article that talks about a forthcoming report from the Yankee Group detailing how Anti-Virus/Spyware products together with other security products like Firewalls have had more flaws found in recent times then Microsoft’s own products. To even compete with Microsoft with regard to security flaws is amazing in itself, but when you consider that these products are actually supposed to protect you from external compromise it becomes a horrendous problem.

Security experts have long suggested to clients, that being protected by a current and actively updating Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and firewall product is part and parcel of staying secure online (for Windows users anyway, since Mac and Linux are mostly unaffected by such problems), but those very products themselves are in some instances being used as the attack vector used to get into your computers. A very dangerous state of affairs that requires an immediate response from the security vendors. It can’t be long before a company finds themselves beset by malicious software which was caused by a failure from a security product and that security company may find themselves in court being asked to explain themselves and pay damages.

As I intimated some time ago, the EU verses Microsoft case looks very much like being a case of Microsoft being found guilty and then getting to decide what it’s own punishment will be. In the same vein, Zdnet has said much the same thing (and much more eloquently then I). The fact that the “EU ordered” Windows XP without media player is being sold (or not sold as the case appears to be) at the same price as the normal version is a very good example of why it won’t work.

As ZDnet says, wouldn’t you like to be found guilty by a court of law then then asked to negotiate your punishment? Well worth the read if you ever find yourself in competition with Microsoft in Europe.

The Wall Street Journal reported (registration required.) on Friday that Google is looking to extend it’s revenue streams beyond advertising by starting an online payment system similar to and in competition with Paypal Inc.

No details were revealed about Google’s plan for this, but it seems likely that Google would want to create streams of revenue in addition to their advertising systems as everyone knows not to put all their eggs in one basket. Paypal don’t really have any international competition for their services so having Google compete with them will be good for both webmasters/storeowners and users alike.

The news does not bode as well for Ebay though as their Paypal unit accounts for a significant portion of their earnings. Obviously only time will tell how Google’s service will differentiate itself from Paypal’s but there is no doubt that Google will be the underdog in this market at least initially as Paypal have a huge head start and have millions upon millions of users already signed up for their service. That said however, Google showed with Gmail that they have the ability to create a revolutionary service that takes the industry by storm and to market that service in a way that competitors like Paypal can’t. In fact Ebay is a big advertiser utilizing Google’s Adwords network so the competition may actually hurt Google’s advertising revenue to some degree. Time will tell.

INSERT:
The rumours have been confirmed.

A rash is starting in the digital photo world around the denial of reproduction if your work is too good because ill informed and undertrained workers at chains like Walmart will deny your right to get prints made according to a recent AP Story. What strikes me as funny is that people are taking their high quality prints to a budget chain. Therein lies the problem. Establish a good relationship with your locally owned and operated photo store. When you have a hastle at Walmart it is because you just got what you are paying for, a cheap impersonal relationship by underpaid part time employees on a business model to drive the caring local stores our of business. Think about it … am I wrong?

Today Opera release an upgrade to the Windows and Linux version of it’s Version 8 Opera browser, labelled as 8.01. At the same time they released version 8 Opera browser for the Macintosh operating system. We don’t mind the Opera Browser to be honest, but find Firefox superior for our purposes for two reasons: (1) Firefox is free and Open Source versus Opera that is proprietary and either a purchased or advertisement supported and (2) we love the Firefox extension system. However, we certainly prefer Opera to Internet Explorer because of much tighter security and better W3C standards compliance. Some sites make a big deal that this is a security upgrade being quietly released. Frankly, all browser upgrades now include some security enhancements and unfortunately if they say that is a major cause of the release, people try to trumpet how they had flaws. Darned if they do and darned if they don’t. Recent and regular updates are the key — and of course they include security enhancements if it is a decent company.

In other browser news, AOL has released an update for Netscape 8 which fixes an IE XML problem and several bugs. You can download the free updated browser here. Microsoft also released a patch to IE in their last patch Tuesday which you should already have if you use XP, but if not you can get it via Windows Update.

According to the Apple Blog at News.com, the Queen of England now has her very own I-Pod. This makes me chuckle because of a recent ipod giveaway over at Mike Industries that had people juxtapose ipods into historical events. It was pretty comical, but now, it may be a case where he preceeded reality as well. Instead of the Queen just nodding off in boredom, you may suddenly realize she is not paying attention when her foot starts tapping on the floor.