Syniverse deals with technology & business solution related to the telecom industry has recently tagged with the largest operator in Japan i.e. NTT DOCOMO to provide excellent Wi-Fi & financial service. This relationship would embark a fully fledged relationship on the Syniverse Wi-Fi services.

This will help to release some pressure from NTT DOCOMO in terms of Wi-Fi roaming which in turn ease the pressure of internal operation like billing comprises both wholesale & retail.

The Wi-Fi Clearing Solution provides the data and financial clearing essential for end-to-end inter operator settlement between all types of wireless local area network (WLAN) providers as well as comprehensive reporting and extensive data storage.

The agreement with NTT DOCOMO is Syniverse first Wi-Fi services agreement in Asia Pacific.

Information Technology (IT) security and data protection compact, Sophos, lately published the latest ‘Dirty Dozen’ spam spread countries (covering the first quarter of 2012).

In the space of a year, India has overhauled the United States to happen to the top global provider of junk messages, being accountable for relaying one in ten spam emails.

Most spam comes from home computers that have been compromised by hackers. India’s rise to the top spot comes as the number of new internet users in the country is growing very rapidly, suggesting that computers in the country are not properly protected and that ISPs are not taking spam as seriously as they should.

At the same time last year, the UK resided in sixth place in the table, contributing 3.2% of global spam.  Since then, it has fallen off the Dirty Dozen entirely and, in terms of sheer numbers, UK spam has decreased by 47%.

Globally, email spam has decreased since Q1 2011, partly because of better work by ISPs around the world, but also reflecting a change in tactics by cybercriminals.  Spammers, who find traditional email spam ineffective, are turning to social networks to spread these kinds of marketing spam campaigns instead.

While basic marketing spam decreases, the amount of messages that spread malware or that represent more targeted attempts to phish usernames, passwords and personal information is increasing.

The top 12 spam-relaying countries for January to March 2012 are as follows-

1 India 9.3%
2 USA 8.3%
3 South Korea 5.7%
4 Indonesia 5.0%
5 Russia 5.0%
6 Italy 4.9%
7 Brazil 4.3%
8 Poland 3.9%
9 Pakistan 3.3%
10 Vietnam 3.2%
11 Taiwan 2.9%
12 Peru 2.5%
13 Others 41.7%

Informing about the upward swing in malicious spams emanating from India, Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant, Sophos, says, “While traditional marketing spam may appear to be no more than an annoyance, offering pills that have questionable claims or to get you rich quick, they can often to lead to more serious threats to your personal information.”

“The latest stats show that, as more first-time internet users get online in growing economies, they are not taking measures to block the malware infections that turn their PCs into spam-spewing zombies,” Cluley adds.

Zombies are the infected computers that form networks called botnets.  Botnets are used by cybercriminals to send spam, steal information and launch DDoS ‘denial of service’ attacks, in which all the zombie computers are told to access a single website at once, forcing it offline.

Top spam-relaying continents for January to March 2012 are as follows-

1 Asia 46.7%
2 Europe 26.9%
3 South America 11.9%
4 North America 10.9%
5 Africa 3.0%
6 Others 0.6%

Spammers are increasingly taking advantage of other platforms to spread their messages. Facebook and Twitter have for some time been targeted with campaigns but, most recently, hot new social network Pinterest has been used by spammers to distribute posts linking to webpages offering to sell goods, or earning commission for the spammers.

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For computer users, a little mouse click could signify the dissimilarity amid staying online and behind internet associations this summer. 

Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down.

The FBI is encouraging users to visit a website run by its security partner, http://www.dcwg.org , that will inform them whether they’re infected and explain how to fix the problem. After July 9, infected users won’t be able to connect to the internet.

Most victims don’t even know their computers have been infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their web surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.

Last November, the FBI and other authorities were preparing to take down a hacker ring that had been running an internet ad scam on a massive network of infected computers.

“We started to realize that we might have a little bit of a problem on our hands because … if we just pulled the plug on their criminal infrastructure and threw everybody in jail, the victims of this were going to be without internet service,” said Tom Grasso, an FBI supervisory special agent. “The average user would open up Internet Explorer and get ‘page not found’ and think the internet is broken.”

On the night of the arrests, the agency brought in Paul Vixie, chairman and founder of Internet Systems Consortium, to install two internet servers to take the place of the truckload of impounded rogue servers that infected computers were using. Federal officials planned to keep their servers online until March, giving everyone opportunity to clean their computers. But it wasn’t enough time. A federal judge in New York extended the deadline until July.

Now, said Grasso, “the full court press is on to get people to address this problem.” And it’s up to computer users to check their PCs.

This is what happened
Hackers infected a network of probably more than 570,000 computers worldwide. They took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system to install malicious software on the victim computers. This turned off antivirus updates and changed the way the computers reconcile website addresses behind the scenes on the internet’s domain name system.

The DNS system is a network of servers that translates a web address – such as www.ap.org – into the numerical addresses that computers use. Victim computers were reprogrammed to use rogueDNS servers owned by the attackers. This allowed the attackers to redirect computers to fraudulent versions of any website.

The hackers earned profits from advertisements that appeared on websites that victims were tricked into visiting. The scam netted the hackers at least $14 million, according to the FBI. It also made thousands of computers reliant on the rogue servers for their internet browsing.

When the FBI and others arrested six Estonians last November, the agency replaced the rogue servers with Vixie’s clean ones. Installing and running the two substitute servers for eight months is costing the federal government about $87,000.

The number of victims is hard to pinpoint, but the FBI believes that on the day of the arrests, at least 568,000 unique internet addresses were using the rogue servers. Five months later, FBI estimates that the number is down to at least 360,000. The US has the most, about 85,000, federal authorities said. Other countries with more than 20,000 each include Italy, India, England and Germany. Smaller numbers are online in Spain, France, Canada, China and Mexico.

Vixie said most of the victims are probably individual home users, rather than corporations that have technology staffs who routinely check the computers.

FBI officials said they organized an unusual system to avoid any appearance of government intrusion into the internet or private computers. And while this is the first time the FBI used it, it won’t be the last.

“This is the future of what we will be doing,” said Eric Strom, a unit chief in the FBI’s Cyber Division. “Until there is a change in legal system, both inside and outside the United States, to get up to speed with the cyber problem, we will have to go down these paths, trail-blazing if you will, on these types of investigations.”

Now, he said, every time the agency gets near the end of a cyber case, “we get to the point where we say, how are we going to do this, how are we going to clean the system” without creating a bigger mess than before.

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Internet market is predictable to reach Rs. 10.8 trillion by 2016, as the country’s expansion speed in this section is far ahead of numerous of the developing nations, says a report by Boston Consulting Group.

India’s Internet market to attain Rs. 10.8 trillion by 2016

According to a report in the Boston Consulting Group’s Connected World series, the Indian Internet economy contributed Rs. 3.2 trillion to the overall economy in 2010, representing 4.1% of GDP, and is projected to rise to Rs.10.8 trillion by 2016. Meanwhile, in the next four years, the total size of the G-20 Internet economy will be $4.2 trillion, up from $2.3 trillion in 2010.

The country’s Internet economy growth rate of 23% places it as the second fastest across the G-20 and ahead of many other developing nations in the G-20, which are growing at an average of 17.8%.

Projected growth rates elsewhere are: 24.3% in Argentina, 18.3% (Russia) and 15.6% (Mexico).

Interestingly, Internet has become so essential in everyday life that as many as 36% of Indian online consumers said they would forgo showering for a year in order to keep Internet access, around 64% said they would forgo chocolate; 63% coffee; and 70% would give up alcohol.

The report further said had it (Internet) been a sector, it would have been the eighth largest sector in India, larger than mining and utilities.

While, consumption is the principal driver of Internet GDP in most countries, the situation is somewhat different in case of India.

In India, Internet economy is driven especially by exports of IT services: net exports make up 59% of the Internet economy, while consumption is only 20%.

“China and India stand out for their enormous Internet related exports- China in goods, India in services which propel their Internet-economy rankings toward the top of the chart,” BCG Partner Arvind Subramanian said.

Commenting on the findings, Rajan Anandan, VP – Sales and Operations & managing director, Google India, said, “India is seeing one of the fastest rates of Internet adoption across the globe. We see emerging opportunities for innovation in areas like mobile, e-commerce and cloud.”

The BCG report noted “High web” companies in India ones that use the Internet for marketing, sales and interactions with customers and suppliers grew their revenues 19% over the past three years, compared to only 13% for those who made low or no use of the Internet.

“Around the world SMEs which embrace the Internet are growing faster and adding more jobs than those that don’t. By encouraging businesses to adopt the Internet, countries can improve their competitiveness and growth prospects,” said David Dean, BCG senior partner and co-author of the report.

The report covered 9,710 Internet users in 13 countries and used the loss aversion approach to measure the value of the Internet to consumers.

WASHINGTON: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with his three top leutinants, will get about $2 million in just salaries and bonuses, but cannot work on creating a rival to the social networking giant. This has been disclosed in Facebook’s amended registration document for its upcoming IPO.

The company’s employment agreement does not allow Zuckerberg to “assist any person or entity in competing with the Company, in preparing to compete with the Company or in hiring any employees or consultants of the Company”.

Similar clauses apply to chief operating officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg, chief financial officer David Ebersman and vice president (engineering) Mike Schroepfer, for the period these people are rendering their services to they are employed with Facebook.

The agreements are silent on whether these people, including Zuckerberg, can help create a rival of Facebook after leaving the company.

In addition to in-cash salary and bonus, the pay package of the top four Facebook executives includes millions of dollars in form of stock options, performance pay and other payments. Besides, the value of shares owned by Zuckerberg and many others at the company could also make them billionaires after the listing of Facebook, which is currently in the process of its $5billion IPO.The company said that Zuckerberg, as president and CEO, would get $500,000 of base salary and up to 45% of this amount as bonus every year. While the basic wage would be paid in two equal payments a month, he can “over-achieve” the bonus target pursuant to the company’s bonus plan.

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate has issued a foreign exchange violation notice to internet giant Google for alleged irregularities in transfer of funds to its foreign entities.

The Directorate has asked the Indian arm of the company to explain to it all the permissions the company has obtained from RBI in this regard and its source of income in the country along with I-T returns filed earlier.

“We have an obligation to our shareholders to set up a tax efficient structure and our present structure is compliant with the tax rules in all the countries where we operate. We make a very substantial contribution to local and national taxation and provide employment for close to 2,000 people in India,” a Google spokesperson said when contacted for comments over the latest ED action.

The ED, according to sources, is investigating if the internet search giant violated the norms laid down by the RBI with regard to transfer of funds abroad, including in Ireland and also receiving similar investments from foreign shores.

The agency has obtained relevant data in this regard from the RBI and would take up any possible penal action under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) after going through the documents.

Google India, along with other social networking websites, is embroiled in a raging controversy over monitoring the content on Internet and of those websites depending on user generated contents, which arose after Union Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal had asked the social networking websites to “screen” the contents.

Amazon.com one of the best online shopping site has step in the Indian Market with Junglee.com which help the customers to find and discover products from online and offline retailers in India. 

American online retail giant Amazon.com has made an entry into the Indian market withJunglee.com, an online shopping site powered by the $ 48 billion company. The site which went live on Thursday morning says that its an online shopping service by Amazon ”which enables customers to find and discover products from online and offline retailers in India and from Amazon.com.”

With e-commerce picking up in India, the third largest Internet market after US and China, the online retailer has been rumored to enter the country for some time now. Customers can find over 1.2 crore products and 14,000 brands, the website claims. The company is set to make an announcement on Thursday.

Amazon, founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos quickly grew to become the world’s largest online retailer selling books to electronics on its website largely to the American consumer. Kindle, the company’s popular e-book reader is also being sold on the site.

Earlier, PTI had reported that the world largest internet retailer Amazon will set up a facility in Hyderabad and employ over 3,000 people. According to the report, the Andhra Pradesh government had met with an Amazon delegation led by John Schoettler, VP (Global Real Estate and Facilities) in November after which the announcement was made.

The e-commerce market in India has more than doubled from a $ 4 bn in 2009 to nearly $ 10 bn in 2011. Nearly $ 350 mn has been poured into 40 Indian e-commerce startups till the end 2011 compared to $ 43 million in 11 companies in 2009.

Tikona Digital Networks, the secured wireless broadband service provider which has the largest outdoor Intelligent Wi-Fi Networks in the world rolled out its new marketing program “Broadband, Completely” centered around speed, savings, security and services for net users.

In a recent study by Internet and Mobile Association of India, India is adding 5 to 7 million Internet users every month, increasingly in small-towns. India is now home to more than 100 million internet users.

“With 3G now and other advanced wireless technologies based on 4G wireless technology standards this reality is set to become rampant on the broadband users radar. Unlike 3G which offers an average usable data transfer speed of 1-3 MBPS, our new broadband technology will offer speed of 4 MBPS complemented with features like bill limit guarantee, anti-virus for security and world class customer response services”, said Heramb Ranade, Head of Marketing, Tikona Digital Networks.

Tikona Digital Networks is bullish when it comes to providing cutting edge wireless broadband experience to home users and SO HO segment. With over 200,000 subscriber base the company is growing faster in tier-I and tier II cities. Though its important to note that internet usage needs are different from an urban metro users to users in cities and towns.

The new campaign will be supported by integrated activation comprising of outdoor, digital and radio.

The ideal way to access all the tools and resources is by using a broadband with high-speed and secured Internet connection. With the market moving ahead from fixed broadband to GPRS on mobile, customers are now looking at new age technology such as LTE or high-speed mobile or wireless broadband.

Last few years in India internet users are rapidly increase, not only on PC but also mobile internet user also, India is all set to have 121 million internet users by December 2011, a study by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB has said.

According to the annual I-Cube Report jointly published by IAMAI and IMRB, India’s internet population is expected to grow to 121 million users by December 2011 from 100 million in September this year.

Out of 121 million, 97 million are expected to be active Internet users, who access Internet at least once in a month.

“A 100 million internet users is considered a critical landmark for the country. With this internet use in India is expected to enter a critical period of growth with the possibility of becoming the largest internet using country in the world in in this decade,” the study said.