Google introduced a calendar and contacts sync offering for Windows Mobile, iPhone and Symbian users.

The announcement follows a leak that emerged on Friday describing a somewhat similar service to come from Microsoft.

The new Google Sync offering, launched in beta, will let phone users sync the calendar and contacts lists on their phones with their Gmail contacts lists and Google Calendar.

When users add a new item on their Google calendars from their computers, for example, that change will be pushed out to their phones. The reverse also works, where a person adds or deletes a contact from the contacts list on their phone and that change is automatically made to their Gmail contacts list.

The service is similar, although narrower, than one that will come from Microsoft. On Friday, Microsoft accidentally published a Web site for a forthcoming My Phone service. It later confirmed that the service is in the works and that it will reveal more about it and open a limited beta in a week or so.

My Phone will also let users sync calendar and contacts lists between Windows Mobile phones and the Web, but it will also back up other phone data including photos, videos, text messages, music, documents and tasks. Users will be able to store data like photos and videos online and share it with friends. It is limited to Windows Mobile users.

Neither Google nor Microsoft will charge for the services, unlike Apple with its similar service. Apple’s MobileMe syncs calendars, contacts and e-mail between iPhones and PCs or Macintosh computers, and lets users share photos from their phones on an online site. MobileMe costs US$99 per year.

Microsoft was quick to point out on Monday that Google’s license of Microsoft’s ActiveSync enables the sync with Windows Mobile devices.

For devices like Symbian phones that support it, Google used the SyncML protocol to facilitate the sync. SyncML is a standard protocol for data synchronization maintained by the Open Mobile Alliance.

In a blog post announcing Google Sync, Marcus Foster, product manager at Google Mobile, noted a couple of caveats. Google Apps users will require their administrators to enable Google Sync in order to use it.

He also warns users that Google Sync will initially replace all existing contacts and calendar information on the phone. His advice is for users to back up that information first.- PC World

1) Be wary of e-mails asking for your personal information.

Any e-mail asking for your name, birth date, e-mail username, e-mail password, or any other type of personal information, no matter who the e-mail appears to be from, is almost certainly a scam.

If you have any reason to believe it may be legitimate, do not reply to the e-mail or click any hyperlinks; instead copy and paste the web URL or go to that company’s website for contact information. Don’t hesitate to contact the company’s support channel to confirm legitimacy.

2) Carefully read e-mails that appear suspicious.

E-mails that are poorly worded, have typos, or have phrases such as “this is not a joke” or “forward this message to your friends” are generally scam e-mails. Sometimes company names or brands are misspelled or inaccurate; such as saying Windows Hotmail (instead of Windows Live™ Hotmail).

3) Protect your Hotmail password.

Create a strong password for your Hotmail account by using more than 7 characters and having a combination of upper and lower case characters, numbers, and special characters, like the @ or # symbols. It’s also a good idea to change your password on a regular basis. Learn More.

If you receive a notification from Microsoft Customer Support confirming your request to change your password, as I did this past week, and you haven’t recently changed your password, that’s a signal that someone else may be trying to gain access to your Hotmail account, and you should immediately change your password. To do so, either go to http://account.live.com, or within Hotmail, click Options, then View and Edit your Personal Information. You will be prompted to log in again. Once you do, look for “Password reset information” under your name at the top. Change both your password and your Secret Question/Secret Answer as both may have been compromised.

4) Take action!

If you think someone has accessed your Hotmail account, that the Windows Live ID sign-in page looks fraudulent, or you receive a suspicious e-mail that tries to confirm a password change you didn’t authorise, change your password immediately via the instructions above, or go to: http://account.live.com.

5) Help us identify new scams.

If you’re using the Full version of Hotmail, you can select the dropdown next to “Junk”, then select “Report phishing scam”. Whatever you do, do not reply back to the sender.

Yahoo Inc. has finally started to roll out new features designed to make its e-mail service more like the popular online hangouts Facebook and MySpace, following through on a promise made nearly a year ago.

With the additions announced Monday, Yahoo’s roughly 275 million e-mail users will have the option of setting up their accounts so they can highlight communications from other people with whom they have formed an online connection. The concept mirrors a premise that has turned privately held Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace into two of the Web’s hot spots for socializing over the past three years — a period that has coincided with a wrenching downturn at Yahoo.

After registering their profiles on Facebook and MySpace, people can use the sites to form online bonds with their friends and family so they can share personal information and keep track of each other’s activities.

Yahoo also is copying Facebook and MySpace by opening its e-mail service to applications created by outside programmers. In a test that started Monday among a small number of e-mail users, Yahoo began offering applications developed for finding photos stored in their mailboxes, transferring information to blogs and sharing tips about movies.

The changes will turn Yahoo’s e-mail service into a “scrapbook for your life,” said John Kremer, a company vice president. “We hope opening up Yahoo mail will have a game-changing influence on the industry.”

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang offered the first glimpse at the Sunnyvale-based company’s broader e-mail ambitions during a presentation at a consumer electronics show held in January.

Introducing the changes took time because Yahoo wanted to ensure it got the technology right and hoped to minimize disruption for users, said Ash Patel, who heads up the company’s products. “We are very deliberate in the way we roll things out,” he said.

The e-mail overhaul took so long to complete that Yang is now on the way out as Yahoo’s chief executive. With Yahoo’s stock price and earnings eroding under his leadership, Yang plans to step down as soon as a new CEO is found.

Besides tweaking its e-mail service, Yahoo plans to upgrade its toolbar for Web browsers. The improvements include the ability to check new messages coming into Yahoo e-mail and competing services as well as to receive notifications about their online connections’ latest activities.

As it introduces new twists to its Web site, Yahoo also is planning to phase out less popular services as part of an effort to reduce its annual expenses by $400 million. Yahoo is reaping most of the savings by laying off 1,500 workers in a purge that began last week.

Patel on Monday declined to discuss which services Yahoo will eliminate, saying more information will be passed on next year.-AP

Be extra cautious the next time you receive an e-mail addressed specifically to you. You may be a potential victim that has been targeted by cybercriminals, said Finnish IT security solutions provider F-Secure Corp.

It said cyberattackers are also being more diligent in picking their victims in order to steal personal information.

F-Secure security response programme manager Chia Wing Fei said there has been an increase in the number of targetted attacks over the last six months.

“It is becoming very prevalent and we have seen many more cases this year compared to just a handful last year,” he said during F-Secure’s First Half-Yearly Wrap Up 2008 Report at the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission headquarters here on Tuesday.

He said such targeted attacks are rarely reported in the press because victims are either too embarassed or want to avoid the publicity. Sometimes, the victims do not even know that they have been attacked, he added.

Unlike typical spam messages, targeted attack messages are designed to look authentic and the attackers, Chia said, spend a considerable amount of time studying and profiling victims before sending the messages out.

These messages contain malware (malicious software) that attaches itself to the victim’s computer and steals confidential data stored in the system.

Chia said the method can be used to attack key individuals in a company or organisation, or even for political and military motives.

“During the recent Tibet-China disagreement, many groups, organisations and individuals were attacked with carefully targeted and technically-advanced e-mail-based malware aimed at infecting the computers or spying on the owners,” he claimed.

If successful, victims of an attack won’t even suspect that they have lost important data until it is too late, said Chia. And if such attacks go unchecked, he added, this number could hit 1.5 million cases by year end.

“It is a big challenge for us (at F-Secure) to trace (and stop) such attacks because its unlike other types of malware … but we don’t give up,” Chia said.

Phones, too

He said mobile phones will be also become susceptible to mobile malware over the next two years, as more cellphone users resort to tweaking their phones to enable more features.

Though this may be fun, such activities will enable mobile malware — such as Cabir, CommWarrior or Beselo — to run on these hacked devices, especially those running the Symbian operating system.

“So, although third-edition Symbian phones may be secure, once they are modified, some strains of malware will be able to infect them,” Chia said.

He said users need to take proper measures to protect themselves against such malware, as well as follow a few other rules.

“You should regularly update or patch all your applications — such as Skype, Instant Messenger and web browser — to guard against any software vulnerabilities that could be used by hackers,” he said.

Chia also advised users to not use public PCs for online banking or purchases and to make sure that they regularly update the security of their home or office machines.

F-Secure analyses all malware threats that show up on the Internet and comes out with a report over six-month periods.-TheStar

Google just took away one of the world’s largest Outlook/Exchange installations for 1.5 million students at Australian schools, and replaced it with Gmail.

It is the largest single deployment of Gmail in the world.

More here.

If you thought spam on your computer was a bother, brace yourself: spammers want to find you on your cellphone.

Cellphones have become consumers’ most personal technological devices. Some industry executives, along with consumer groups and security experts, are concerned that unwanted text messages on phones will be an even greater headache than unwanted computer messages.

Cellphone spam is particularly annoying to its recipients because it is more invasive — announcing itself with a beep — and can be costly.

Taber Lightfoot, an assistant director for new media at the Yale School of Management, is among those who have paid for the privilege of receiving cellphone spam.

“I was at work and I got so annoyed,” she said of the first burst of three messages she received. She got another burst two days later.

“That is when I called Verizon and demanded they reimburse me $1.60 for eight text messages,” Ms. Lightfoot said. “It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was my money.”

American consumers are expected to receive an estimated 1.5 billion unsolicited text messages in 2008, according to Ferris Research, based in San Francisco, which tracks mobile messaging trends. That is nearly double what they received in 2006.

Of course that is a small percentage of the overall number of messages: an industry survey showed that consumers in the United States sent and received about 48 billion text messages in December alone. But for many people who are charged as much as 20 cents for an incoming message or are interrupted in the middle of dinner, even one is too many.

“The reason this really burns people up is because they have to pay for messages they don’t want, and they shouldn’t have to,” said Chris Murray, senior counsel for Consumers Union, a nonprofit group.

Now some consumers, like Ms. Lightfoot, are monitoring their cellphones more aggressively for unwanted messages and, in some cases, demanding refunds. Computer security companies have developed products to help fight mobile spam. And AT&T, Verizon and others are making it easier for customers to block unsolicited messages and keep spammers at bay.

The fees that customers pay to receive messages are a source of profit for the phone companies. It is hard to estimate how much they make. Many consumers pay for a monthly plan that allows them to send and receive large numbers of messages. But for those without a plan, getting as few as 10 unsolicited text messages a month at 20 cents each would cost an extra $24 a year.

Communications companies say they are not interested in spam as a profit center. They want to one day exploit the power of customized advertising on mobile phones, and tawdry spam pitches threaten to make their customers hostile toward all commercial messages. The companies are trying to head off the problem before consumers revolt.

The carriers regularly adjust spam filters to block offending messages. At Sprint, more than 65 percent of all text messages sent over its network are identified and blocked as spam before they reach customers.

The companies use legal weapons as well. Verizon said it had filed eight lawsuits against spammers since 2004.

“Even if Verizon or AT&T are not the ones sending text messages to customers, there is the perception that the operator is to blame,” said Seamus McAteer, a senior analyst at M:Metrics, which tracks mobile phone advertising. “It is not in the companies’ best interest to have customers calling and complaining about their bills all the time.”

Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T’s wireless unit, said wireless companies recently agreed to quickly share information about the sources of spam to fight it more effectively.

Most phone spam is actually e-mail that comes through gateways linking the Internet and cellphone networks, industry executives said.

Most wireless phones have a dedicated e-mail address. At AT&T, for example, it is a customer’s cellphone number followed by @text.att.net. Using computers, spammers create millions of possible number combinations, then send messages to those addresses.

One day in March, Anthony Melone, Verizon Wireless’s chief technology officer, began getting complaints from customers in the Northeast and Midwest about a wave of unsolicited text messages that were flooding its network. Mr. Melone said Verizon technicians tracked down the source and found the messages were coming from someone using e-mail accounts at Microsoft’s Internet portal, msn.com.

It took a day to quell the assault because the spammers kept changing their e-mail addresses and the Web sites they were promoting. By then, nearly five million messages had made it past the network’s anti-spam filters, resulting in grumbling and demands for refunds from customers like Ms. Lightfoot.

“Even when you find them, spammers know how to keep it below the radar,” Mr. Melone said.

Christopher Siracusa, a 24-year-old medical student in Brooklyn, said he gets about one or two spam messages a week, usually from pornographic sites with come-ons like, “Hey Sweetie, we talked last night.” As a result, he disregards any text message from a number not programmed into his cellphone.

This, though, has caused miscommunication more than once with people he actually wanted to reach. Recently, he said, he got a text message from a female friend who wrote, “I have a new number, call me.” Mr. Siracusa did not, thinking the message was spam, and he later had to explain the problem to her.

But inconvenience is not the only downside; there is also the threat of viruses as phones become more like personal computers. Some companies are already preparing for this.

Last winter, Symantec, a maker of security software, introduced a product for smartphones that connect with the Internet to detect mobile threats, check for viruses and automatically delete spam or corral suspect texts in a folder.

Khoi Nguyen, a product manager for mobile security at Symantec, said the company developed the software mainly for Asia and Europe, where creative spammers try to steal credit card information or banking data through phones. He said he expected to see the same trend here in the next 6 to 12 months.

“There has been a transition from annoying spam to threatening spam,” he said.

Michael Zaruba, an AT&T customer who works in Chicago as an editor and producer, recently received unsolicited texts from “Rose,” asking him to visit a Web site. He said he did not visit the site, but it made him question whether his 12-year-old brother, who just got a new cellphone, would.

“Nowadays phones come equipped with access to the Internet,” Mr. Zaruba said. “It’s another way to mess with your computer. I can see people getting viruses on their phones.”

All major communications companies give consumers the ability to thwart spam by changing the easily guessed e-mail addresses for their phones, or completely blocking messages coming from the Internet. They can do this by logging onto the company’s Web site and changing their preferences.

“I did that six months ago and I have not received any spam,” Mr. Melone of Verizon said. “No one, not even me, wants their cellphone to ring at 2 in the morning.”-NYTimes

Are you a Hotmail/Windows Live user? Ever wonder how to download your hotmails into your Microsoft Outlook email client?

Use Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, it allows emails from your paid/free hotmail account to be downloaded to your PC(Microsoft Outlook).

Outlook Connector enables you to use your Live Hotmail accounts within Outlook:

• Read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages.
• Manage your Live Mail Contacts.
• Use advanced options for blocking junk e-mail messages.
• Manage multiple e-mail accounts in one place.

With a paid subscription, Outlook Connector enables these additional features:

• Manage, share, and synchronize your Windows Live Calendar in Outlook.
• Access your Tasks and Notes.

Download here(Link does not need Windows Validation, as normally required)

Note: This download works with the following Office programs:

• Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007