As reported last fall on TLP, Australian regulators are preparing to instutite national Internet filtering. And many Australians, including civil-rights activists, engineers, Internet providers and politicians from opposition parties, are increasing their protests against the plan. Hundreds of free-speech supporters rallied in each of Australian’s state capitals in recent weeks to protest the plan, which they assail as blatant censorship.

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A new study of spam ‘demographics’ reveals that the amount of personalized spam is increasing alarmingly.

Moreover, these new spam and phishing messages are targeted to specific recipients, according to their interests and previous buying habits.

It’s the difference between snail mail addressed to ‘Occupant’ and unsolicited pitches that come addressed you — because somebody you did business with sold a mailing list with your name on it to a third party.

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Internet security leader McAfee Inc. has released a major update of its popular free Site Advisor application which, “helps consumers know what is safe and what may be risky on the Web.”

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The U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) today reversed a decision made earlier this week which effectively cut off the majority of British Internet users to the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

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It seems that Wikipedia, the ultra-popular user-generated online encyclopedia, has been placed on the Internet Watch Foundation black list.

The IWF, based in the UK, bills itself as: “The UK Hotline for reporting illegal content, specifically: Child sexual abuse content hosted worldwide and criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK.”

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The U.S. federal Communications Commission (FCC) will consider a proposal this month to bring no-cost, porn-free wireless Internet service to all Americans.

Sounds great in principle but free speech, wireless industry and consumer groups are up in arms over the plan — which would include mandatory filtering of some content.

Read the full story at TECHLifePost.com