According to latest findings from Kasperksy, the United States has taken the lead as the country with the most malicious servers within its borders.  The number one spot was held by China as late as the last quarter of 2009.

The U.S. now hosts 28% of the world’s malicious servers, with Russia at number 2.  Russia formerly had the smallest share of the pie.  China’s abrupt decrease may be due to the fact that anyone buying domains in China must now provide detailed information and submit lengthy applications to the the government.  In just a few short months since implementing this police, Chinese malicious servers have dropped by half.

While I am not a huge fan of government getting their noses in where they don’t belong, there seems to be something to be said for asking for legitimate personal verification whenever someone registers a domain name.  If the U.S. is going to be a leader in something, shouldn’t it be in something a bit less dubious than being the country that hosts the most malicious servers in the world?

How many of you are using Yahoo?  I’m not talking about the search engine, which I rarely use for anything.  I’m talking about Yahoo mail, which I do use, and YahooGroups, which is an invaluable tool for me these days.  I run, and participate in, over 30 YahooGroups.  It’s an easy, web-based listserv system that most users of all levels can understand and use easily.  I also still use Yahoo Instant Messenger on a daily basis.  Groups and Messenger are the main reasons I want do not wnat Yahoo to die.

Anyway, did you know that they are getting ready to change their privacy details to start allowing a measure of “sharing” that they have not done in the past?  Following the lead of Digg, Facebook, and others, they are allowing automatic “sharing” of statuses and activities unless you turn it off.  The only thing different about how they are doing it and how Facebook did it is that they are doing their best to inform users ahead of time of the change, and making it easy to turn off the automatic sharing.  I have seen several announcements about it, and now a glut of news articles trying to get the word out about the Yahoo privacy functions to its users so there is no “I’ve been violated” pushback from users when the sharing change happens in a few days.

If you have a Yahoo account, you can turn off the sharing function easily using any ONE of the following steps:

• From Mail.Yahoo.com:  log into your mail account, click on Options, Mail Options (upper right corner).  Deselect the check in the “Enable Updates” checkbox, save changes, and you’re good to go.
• From the Yahoo.com Home Page:  log into your account.  Click on profile, then the update tab, then the manage my updates sub-tab.  Deselect the “Enable Updates” checkbox, save changes, and you’re good to go.
• From My.Yahoo.com:  log into your account.  Click on your name in the upper right-hand corner, which will bring up your profile.  Choose the update tab, then the manage my updates sub-tab.  Deselect the “enable Updates” checkbox, save changes, and you’re good to go.
• From Groups.Yahoo.com: log into your account.  Click on your name in the upper right-hand corner, which will bring up your profile.  Choose the update tab, then manage my updates sub-tab.  Deselect “enable Updates” checkbox, save changes, and you’re good to go.
• From your Yahoo Instant Messenger Window:  log in, then choose Messenger, Privacy Options.  Near the bottom of the window, click on Manage the Updates I Broadcast, which will load the updates/manage my updates sub-tab in your browser window.  Deselect the Enable Updates” checkbox, save changes, and you’re good to go.

“And just 3% of AT&T’s smartphone customers account for as much as 40% of its data traffic, contributing to slow transmissions and dropped calls.”

Quotes like this just make me want to scream!  This came from an article in USAToday about ATT’s intention to start charging new customers on a tiered basis for their wireless data usage.  The last part of that quote, “contributing to slow transmissions and dropped calls” is the thing that bothers me the most.  Really, are they going to blame users for using the service they are buying, the service that ATT is selling?

When are these providers going to get off their hind-ends and start beefing up their networks?  And this doesn’t just apply to wireless, in my book.  It applies to any ISP offering broadband of any kind, including DSL and Cable.  The ability of these networks to provide increased bandwidth has not changed in years.  And in some cases, the user’s experience is decreasing as more users are added to the already overloaded networks and neighborhood pipes. The same pipe that served 10 households five years ago is now serving 200 households.  The experience degrades for everyone.

Wake up, ATT, Verizon, Sprint, etc.  It’s not the users’ fault that the network can’t take the traffic.  It’s time to invest those billions of dollars you’re making in profits back into your network architecture, instead of complaining that we’re using up what you’re offering.  Do you really think that if you don’t make any changes to your network infrastructure, that you’ll get more users?  Aren’t you proving, by statements just like this, that you don’t have room for more users?