Communications Technology

You won’t find them lurking around Westminster Abbey and they definitely didn’t receive an invite in the mail, but these unwanted guests are trying to crash next week’s royal wedding.

Cybercriminals looking to cash in on Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s big day have already begun targeting Australian internet users, hiding viruses and malicious software within emails falsely claiming to be royally relevant.

Internet security group Norton on Tuesday warned wedding watchers to be alert for online spam emails or dodgy websites promising juicy royal gossip, such as details of the wedding dress or photos of Prince William’s bachelor party.

It’s found that after television, the most common place for Australians to seek information about the April 29 wedding is online.

Three times as many people are expected to follow the event online as in newspapers, five times as many than in magazines and ten times as much as those over radio, Norton’s research shows.

“Potentially one in five Australians who plan on following the royal wedding are at risk of becoming a victim of cybercrime,” Norton said in its report.

Internet usage spikes in the lead up to major international events and cybercrims began circulating viruses masked as leaked footage, scandalous images or other intriguing content as recently as March.

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Manila authorities are putting up pictures of speeding vehicles on an official website in an usual attempt to stop drivers breaking the law on the Philippine capital’s sometimes hairy roads.

The snapshots, along with a listing of the speed of the vehicles and the time and date the photographs were taken, are designed to shame or even scare people into better driving.

The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority website shows a succession of cars, vans and buses, with licence plates visible, as they are caught by anti-speeding cameras.

The chairman of the authority, Francis Tolentino, said in a statement the pictures were part of a new automated system where drivers are sent their speeding tickets later rather than being apprehended on the scene.

“Once captured by our cameras, there is no escape,” Tolentino said.

More than 7000 drivers have been caught on camera and sent tickets for exceeding the 60 kilometre per hour limit at that part of the metropolis, he added.

There has been a drop in the number of accidents on the highway as a result, he said without elaborating.

The automated picture system is only in force along the 12-kilometre Commonwealth Avenue, site of frequent accidents due to speeding.

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People surfing European websites will be able to turn off the cookies used to spy on their internet habits under rules hammered out by the region’s online advertisers, an industry body said yesterday.

The European web advertising industry’s self-regulation pledge comes a month before a European Union directive takes effect, requiring websites to obtain a user’s consent before installing a tracking cookie.

“It will change significantly how the internet will look and how people interact with ads,” said Kimon Zorbas, vice president of Brussels-based Internet Advertising Bureau Europe, the industry group that developed the new rules.

Web companies monitor people’s online activities through tracking software called cookies, so they can send targeted advertising based on their potential interests or previous site visits - a process called behavioral advertising.

Under the agreement, web ads will carry a clickable icon labeled “AdChoices” that will let users change their privacy settings so they are no longer profiled for advertising purposes.

Companies including Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and AOL are among those which have have agreed to use the icons on their online display ads in Europe.

Policymakers in the EU and elsewhere have been concerned users have little control over the use of cookies to track their activity — and are often unaware it is taking place.

Those involved in developing the code of conduct say it is not a response to the EU directive, but was inspired by a similar self-regulatory movement in the United States.

Zorbas said the industry body had made adjustments to the code based on feedback from the European Commission.

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