McWhortle Enterprises, Inc., "an established and well-known manufacturer of biological defence mechanisms", has a new exciting product on the market that greedy investors should consider.

The company's new Bio-Hazard Alert Detector promises to be a hit. But before you invest in the company or attempt to buy the product, you should know that the company, its press release, and its Internet site is a fake, set up by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The SEC launched the site as a warning to investors about scams on the Internet. The site received 150,000 hits within the first three days of launching. The scam is revealed when unsuspecting visitors click on a link to get in on a 'pre-IPO' investment programme offering 217 percent annualised profit.

The investors were drawn to the site (www.mcwhortle.com) by a fake press release issued on PRNewswire on January 25. On the site potential marks could hear a recorded interview with CEO and President Thomas J. McWhortle and read testimonials.

"We created this site because we've all seen an increase in the number of investment scams preying on our fears of anthrax and other bio-hazards," the SEC states. It's worth visiting the site because after clicking through the SEC provides links to warnings about how to spot these investment scams.

Remember: promises of fast and high profits, with little or no risk, are classic red flags of fraud.

"Israeli troops shot dead three Palestinians during a raid in the Gaza Strip and stormed into a West Bank refugee camp just hours after Israel vowed to "put the brakes on Palestinian terror.

"Dozens of Israeli tanks and military vehicles moved into the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank before dawn, sparking heavy street fighting with local gunmen in the second raid there in less than a week, sources from both sides said. A lone Palestinian sniper armed with an antiquated rifle opened fire on an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank early today, killing ten people, seven of them soldiers, and dealing a sharp blow to Israel ' s most revered institution, its army."

Not bad for a news summary, huh? The entire summary was written and generated by a computer. However, journalists have nothing to fear from Columbia University's Newsblaster, billed as "a new tool for journalists, executives or even average news consumers that could help them manage information overload".

Newsblaster (www.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/newsblaster) uses artificial intelligence techniques to author leads by culling online news reports, sorting them and summarising them. The summary quoted above is a summary from about 30 stories sourced from about six news organisations. Newsblaster does a great job as you can see at the site, and carries hundreds of summaries updated daily. What's useful is the listing below the summary of the news sources so that the visitor can get the full versions if they want.

New research from StatMarket.com has found that, compared to a year ago, web users are more likely to find web sites through direct navigation rather than by surfing.

StatMarket reported the majority of Internet surfers worldwide are using direct navigation and bookmarks to locate web sites, rather than relying on search engines and Internet links.

As of February 6, 2002, nearly 52 percent of Internet users arrived at sites by direct navigation and bookmarks, compared to about 46 percent only a year ago, according to the researcher. "This trend indicates that branding is indeed taking hold on the Web," the company stated.

"More and more, Internet users seem to know exactly where they want to go." This means that budding Internet entrepreneurs and ones that haven't quite flowered yet need to ensure that they are branding their services effectively.

People remember sites and bookmark them when they believe they may need a particular service. It helps to have an Internet name that's easily remembered.

Getting yourself listed properly on search engines is going to remain key. Search Engine Watch has just put out a new expanded manual for getting listed properly on search engines. It is an excellent resource for the person who wants their news fast: http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/submit.html.

4 "If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, then you will be hacked. What's more, you deserve to be hacked." Said by Richard Clarke, the special adviser to US president George W. Bush on cybersecurity.

In a speech to the RSA Conference 2002, Mr. Clarke told security experts, statistics indicate that less than 0.0025 percent of corporate revenue on average is spent on information-technology security. His remarks are backed up by a study released this week by ICSA Labs, which showed that viruses continue to swarm US corporations, with about 1.2 million incidents occurring in a 20-month period.

ICSA surveyed 200 organisations between January 2000 and August 2001. The attacks work out to about 113 encounters per 1,000 machines per month.

Twenty-eight percent of companies were hit with a virus "disaster", which affects 25 or more servers or PCs. In last year's study, almost all companies surveyed reported incomplete or no protection for network services such as firewalls, proxy servers and e-mail servers.

In the current study, 84 percent of those surveyed said they have protected all their e-mail servers, 51 percent said they put in place firewalls and 45 percent said they put antivirus protection on their proxy servers.

I wonder how many of them update their virus protection at least once a week?

Tech Tattle deals with topics relating to technology. You can contact Ahmed at editoroffshoreon.com or (33) 467901474.