Microsoft to sue ‘scareware’ security vendors Microsoft and Washington state are cracking down on scammers who bombard computer users with fake warning messages in hopes of selling them useless software. The state’s attorney general and lawyers from Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement team are expectd to announce today several lawsuits against so-called ‘scareware’ vendors, who are being charged under Washington state’s Computer Spyware Act. The vendors targeted by the lawsuits have not been named yet, but the Washington attorney general (AG) referred to them in a media alert sent out on Friday as “aggressive marketers of scareware – useless computer programs that bilk consumers by using pop-up ads to warn about nonexistent, yet urgent-sounding, computer flaws”....

Traditional antivirus will die in the next two years For the vast majority of users, at least, the current model of paying for and installing separate online security software products for each device, OS and transaction environment is on the way out. It has to die. Why? Look at the way the kids use Google, and then look to the future. Increasingly, users expect to be able to communicate and transact across a variety of devices....

Bloomberg accidentally kills Apple CEO Steve Jobs In an error that could have cost Apple investors millions of dollars the Bloomberg financial newswire accidentally published a 17-page obituary of Apple CEO Steve Jobs yesterday. Media gossip blog Gawker.com has thefull Steve Jobs obituary, recently updated. It is common media practice to keep obituaries of the famous on file even when they are healthy, so that the obituary can be published at a moment’s notice when the sad event occurs....

Web servers produce 632kg of CO2 per year Hosting firmAmenworldsays web servers are needlessly wasting energy and contributing to excessive CO2 emissions. The company’s study of over 3,500 dedicated servers found that on average servers needlessly used 1000 kWh of energy, producing an excess of 632kg of CO2 per server per year. “Like other industries, the hosting industry has a role in the global effort to reduce levels of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere,” said Amenworld’s UK country manager Olivier Djidjelli....

Fake Facebook profile author fined £22,000 A social networker who set up a fakeFacebookprofile and posted false information has been fined £22,000. Mathew Firsht, managing director atApplause Store Productions, which finds audiences for TV shows such as Top Gear and the Big Brother evictions, sued former school friend Grant Raphael for libel and misuse of private information after he created a Facebook profile for Firsht containing fake information regarding his sexual and political preferences....