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I have recently switched to DSL and need to cancel my dial-up service (MSN). I've researched and researched, but I can't find a definitive answer to this question: When I cancel my dial-up service, what happens to my email account (msn.com address)? Will I still be able to access my old email account via Hotmail? How to proceed? Recommendations?

Communications firms warn of unprecedented extension of state powers Wednesday, August 5, 2009 A group of over 300 internet service providers and telecommunications firms is fighting back against the British government’s plans to monitor all emails, phone calls and internet activity nationwide. The London Internet Exchange (LINX), which represents some 330 companies, including BT, Virgin and Carphone Warehouse, says that the government is misleading the public about the extent to which it plans to monitor their communications and internet activity. LINX has described the Government’s surveillance proposals as an “unwarranted” invasion of people’s privacy. A statement from the group to...

WASHINGTON -- Obama administration officials will announce rules Wednesday for handing out $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds, but some companies already are raising concerns about how long it could take to award the money. Officials are expected to detail how they plan to distribute $4.7 billion in broadband money from the Commerce Department in grants and $2.5 billion from the Agriculture Department in grants or loans.

WebWithout provides safe online protection for your family or workplace. It is done by providing a free, simple and easy to use service that filters out the less desirable aspects of the Internet. Once you use the WebWithout service, you can be confident in the knowledge that your user experience will be free of items such as pornography, Phishing, violence, racial hatred and such like.

An anonymous reader writes "What happens when a new ISP is started somewhere in the United States that completely blows out of the water all the other ISPs in the area, in terms of price and performance? Apparently, that question is being answered in North Carolina, where Greenlight Inc., a company started by a city government, is trying to offer faster, more reliable, and cheaper Internet service to the local residents. Time Warner and Embarq can't compete. So they are not only lobbying the state government to destroy the upstart competition, but are now using push polling methods to gain...

Broadband operator Bahnhof is continuing to destroy the IP address details of its customers in an open and fully legal bid to undermine Sweden's new anti-file sharing laws. Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung, a vociferous opponent of the measures that came into force on April 1st, has said he is determined to protect the company's clients. The new file sharing law is based on the European Union's Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) and allows courts to order internet operators to hand over details that identify suspected illegal file sharers. As such, the law enables Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to retain...

Will your ISP block your Internet if you are accused of file sharing?That is exactly what the Recording Industry Association of America has asked Internet providers to do. Apparently, some are willing to cooperate. Under this plan, if the RIAA accuses you of illegal file sharing, you will have your Internet service terminated after receiving warnings. This practice is already underway in some other countries. Illegal file sharing is wrong, but having the RIAA as the judge and jury is a violation of American's rights. This plan would only be fair if businesses in the music industry have their Internet...

Under pressure from the big record labels, several countries around the world are cracking down hard on illegal file-sharers with a "three strikes, you're out" policy — and the United States may be next. The basics are simple: Get caught three times sharing files illegally, and your Internet access gets cut off. But in a day and age when Internet access is almost as essential as a cell phone or electricity, should the music industry or Internet service providers [ISPs] have the power to determine who can and can't get online, particularly without criminal charges being filed? And what if...

Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations. The legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates. "While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and...

US Senator Dianne Feinstein hopes to update President Barack Obama's $838bn economic stimulus package so that American ISPs can deter child pornography, copyright infringement, and other unlawful activity by way of "reasonable network management." Clearly, a lobbyist whispering in Feinstein's ear has taken Comcast's now famous euphemism even further into the realm of nonsense. According to Public Knowledge, Feinstein's network management amendment did not find a home in the stimulus bill that landed on the Senate floor. But lobbyists speaking with the Washington DC-based internet watchdog said that California's senior Senator is now hoping to insert this language via conference...

WASHINGTON — A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion, is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when Americans’ private communications may be involved, according to a person with knowledge of the opinion.

I have a question regarding the modem on my PC. My OS is Windows Vista and my IP is NetZero. When someone tries to call on my phone, it won't disconnect my Internet dial-up service. Instead, callers listen to my line ringing and ringing. How can I fix my modem software so that incoming calls will get through (IOW, my phone will ring)? I went to the control panel and can't figure it out. Than you!

A Canadian actress and playwright has been charged with holding a technical support member hostage after losing her internet connection. Carol Sinclair lost her connection with ISP Aliant and, by her own account, spent days trying to get the line fixed. "I was polite the first 20 times I talked to them. But each one gave me the same routine: 'Is the modem connected? Are the lights blipping?'," she told The Globe and Mail. "And then each one would say: 'It should be working. The problem must be with your computer.' I was a little stressed. I had six days...

HD Moore has been owned. That's hacker talk, meaning that Moore, the creator of the popular Metasploit hacking toolkit, has become the victim of a computer attack. It happened on Tuesday morning, when Moore's company, BreakingPoint, had some of its Internet traffic redirected to a fake Google page that was being run by a scammer. According to Moore, the hacker was able to do this by launching what's known as a cache poisoning attack on a DNS server on AT&T's network that was serving the Austin, Texas, area. One of BreakingPoint's servers was forwarding DNS traffic to the AT&T server,...

SAN FRANCISCO, US - DEFENDANTS and plaintiffs in two related copyright infringement lawsuits against YouTube have reached a deal to protect the privacy of millions of YouTube watchers during evidence discovery, a spokesman for Google Inc said on Monday. Earlier in July, a New York federal judge ordered Google to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom Inc and other plaintiffs to help them to prepare a confidential study of what they argue are vast piracy violations on the video-sharing site. Google said it had agreed to provide plaintiffs' attorneys for Viacom and a class action group led by the...

So who cares if my Internet service provider tracks my Web surfing behavior or e-mailing to better target advertising? After all, won't that result in a more relevant user experience? Well, not exactly and here's why. The lines between content, context and advertising are becoming increasingly blurred, and as a result the consumer is caught dead in the middle with increasingly less and less control over the Internet's most prized commodity: his own information. I'm referring to the growing reality that a process called deep packet inspection (DPI) is being used to build revenue streams based on your discreet —...

The Illinois State Police are using vans with cameras and radar guns to photograph motorists and other drivers who speed through highway construction zones, and are enforcing strict penalties for alleged offenders. Citations for a first offense are $375, and a second offense can cost $1,000 and a 90-day suspension of driver’s license. State Police officials said four white vans, which are equipped with radar guns, cameras and a monitor to show drivers their speed, have been deployed at different construction zones in the state. As of Thursday, June 5, those vans are deployed at the widening project on the...

Utah Internet service providers could earn a state-approved "G-rating" for filtering content and insuring that users could not access pornography under provisions in a bill heard by a House committee on Monday.

Paul McGuinness, long-time manager of rock band U2, on Monday launched a verbal attack against illegal music downloaders, as well as internet service providers, device makers, Silicon Valley and even hippies in a speech at a conference in France. McGuinness blamed these forces for "destroying the recorded music industry," with illegal downloading through peer-to-peer file-sharing networks the single biggest reason for why the business is in decline. ISPs have for years profited from that illegal downloading, which occurs on their networks, and their arguments that it isn't their job to police the internet are no longer valid, he said. The...

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Increasingly worried over Internet providers' behavior, a nonprofit has released software that helps determine whether online glitches are innocent hiccups or evidence of deliberate traffic tampering. The San Francisco-based digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation hopes the program, released Wednesday, will help uncover "data discrimination" - efforts by Internet providers to disrupt some uses of their services - in addition to the cases reported separately by EFF, The Associated Press and other sources. "People have all sorts of problems, and they don't know whether to attribute that to some sort of misconfiguration, or deliberate behavior...

ISPs in the U.S. experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire. TeliaSonera, which lost the northern leg of its U.S. network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot. "Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable," said Anders Olausson, a TeliaSonera spokesman. The damage affected a large span of cable, more than two-thirds of a mile [1.1 km] long, near Cleveland, TeliaSonera said. The company...

Rudy Giuliani quit an elite Iraq study panel last spring after he failed to show up for a single official group meeting, citing "previous time commitments” – a speaking tour that brought in $11.4 million in 14 months. The 10-member panel, known as the Baker-Hamilton commission, was chartered by Congress and encouraged by President Bush to explore U.S. policy in Iraq. On May 18, 2006, when the panel gathered in Washington, Giuliani gave a $100,000 speech on leadership at a business awards breakfast in Atlanta, Newsday reports. The month before, he skipped another panel session to deliver the keynote speech...

SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) -- A court in San Francisco ruled that a roommate-matching Web site may be held accountable for what users say about their preferences. A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court ruled in favor of two California fair housing groups that brought the complaint against Roommate.com, saying the Web site violates the Fair Housing Act by allowing users to specify roommate preferences based on sex, race, religion and sexual orientation, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The ruling took away the main argument of the defense: that a 1996 ruling granting immunity to Internet service providers that...

I have posted several times in the past about this topic, this is just an update for you techheads who might be interesetd...oh, and anyone who uses the internet... which is...everyone. Most people have no idea what CALEA is. It is a law to assist law enforcement's ability to intercept phone calls. It was written and passed and signed into law in 1994 by Congress. It mandated that digital switching equipment technology be required to have certain specific capabilities which would make tapping a person's phone calls, and making the call history easier to get. Congress ante'd up millions to...

Test your internet connection speed and post it here, for fun, bragging rights and to see if you are getting the speed you really pay for.

SAN FRANCISCO — Cellular subscribers are paying hundreds of millions of dollars each year to subsidize landline telephone service, enriching big telecommunications companies while providing little or no benefit to cell phone users. The subsidies are intended to reimburse the companies for providing traditional phone service in rough terrain and rural areas where stringing lines can be costly. But rampant development has transformed some of these backwaters into booming subdivisions, with no real adjustment to the distribution formula; others, like the oceanfront celebrity playground of Malibu, are receiving subsidies simply because of their difficult topography. Outdated formulas for tabulating the...

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday called on Internet service providers to record their customers' online activities, a move that anticipates a fierce debate over privacy and law enforcement in Washington next year. "Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms," Mueller said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Boston. "All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims,"...

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday called on Internet service providers to record their customers' online activities, a move that anticipates a fierce debate over privacy and law enforcement in Washington next year. "Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms," Mueller said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Boston. "All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims,"...

I've searched extensively online for a new ISP. No luck. I think I'll have better luck with recommendations from my FReeper FRiends. Requirements: 1) It must be cheap. No more than $140-$180 a year ($15 a month max) or not much higher. 2)It must be faster than 46.6 kbps. (That's the fastest speed I can log on at now.) Would prefer 50.6 kbps or higher. Thank you for any recommendations.

In a radical departure from earlier statements, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said that requiring Internet service providers to save records of their customers' online activities is necessary in the fight against terrorism, CNET News.com has learned. Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller privately met with representatives of AOL, Comcast, Google, Microsoft and Verizon last week and said that Internet providers--and perhaps search engines--must retain data for two years to aid in anti-terrorism prosecutions, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity on Tuesday. "We want this for terrorism," Gonzales said, according to one...

A BigMac and large chocolate shake will cost you more than $5.00.Two gallons of gas will cost you more than $5.00.A pack of cigarettes, around $5.00A movie tickets will cost more than $5.00 Most of us blow five bucks on crap several times a month.If everyone gave 5.00 a month to FR, we wouldn't need Freepathons any longer.Heck, it's worth five bucks a month just to be IBTZ.Help keep FR up and running.

The U.S. Department of Justice has gone far beyond Google, MSN, and AOL in its quest to justify the anti-pornography Child Online Protection Act: The DOJ actually subpoenaed at least 34 Internet service providers, search companies, and security software firms. InformationWeek obtained copies of the subpoenas, replies, and other supporting documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. (You can download the subpoenas here at Information Week)

AOL filed three civil lawsuits yesterday against "several major phishing gangs". The lawsuits are the first by a major ISP to cite Virginia's anti-phishing statute, the first in the US, adopted in July 2005. The suits also cite applicable Federal laws, including the Lanham (Trademark) Act, and the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act. AOL is seeking total damages of $18m in the series of lawsuits which allege that the phishing gangs victimised AOL and CompuServe members through emails that attempted to drive them to bogus websites. The three lawsuits, filed in the US Court for the Eastern District of Virginia,...

After many months of not being able to login to FR from my west Texas server, everything now seems to be okay. For many months, whenever I typed in my user name and password at FR and clicked on the "Log In" button, I got only a "dead" response from the server. After trying MANY things, i.e., reformatting, changing my op system, and even changing PCs, I finally wrote to my ISP asking if they had the FR site blocked. After checking, my ISP decided the problem was their "Intrusion Detection" (software?) which was blocking perl script access. The problem...

No way? Really? Who'd have imagined. Sometimes I just have to check the date on a news story to make sure it's even the correct decade! Israeli Defense Officials Say US Internet Providers Hosting Islamic Jihad Sites Report by Hagay Huberman: "US Internet Providers Host Islamic Jihad Websites" Hatzofe Monday, January 2, 2006 The terrorist organization Islamic Jihad, which was responsible for most of the recent terrorist attacks, and which figures on the lists of terrorist organizations compiled by the United States and the EU, runs Internet sites that are hosted by US-based Internet service providers (ISPs). This was disclosed...

Murder 'infidels', Mukhlas urgesSian Powell,  The Australian, December 19, 2005BALI bombings commander Mukhlas has written a fanatical call-to-arms from his death-row prison cell, exhorting Muslims to kill Westerners. Published on a website on the orders of notorious terror chief Noordin Mohammed Top, the polemic demonstrates the undiminished fervour of Mukhlas, who has been sentenced to death for commanding the Bali bomb blasts in 2002 that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. "You who still have a shred of faith in your hearts, have you forgotten that to kill infidels and the enemies of Islam is a deed that has a...

A senior telecommunications executive said yesterday that Internet service providers should be allowed to strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users, a controversial system that would significantly change how the Internet operates. William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.

An Online "University" for Jihad By Stephen Ulph In an interesting new development, the al-Qaeda network is making strides to present itself as a permanent cultural--as well as military--phenomenon. An October 7 posting on the al-Farouq jihadi forum (www.al-farouq.com) by Ahmad al-Wathiq bi-Llah, the "deputy general emir" of the Global Islamic Media Front, announced what it referred to as an "al-Qaeda University of Jihad Studies." The accompanying statement explained that "al-Qaeda is an organization, a state and a university, this is a fact which cannot be denied." Readers, it noted, might be amused by the headline, but the writer simply...

Thousands of Internet users struggled to send e-mail and keep their Web sites running Thursday after a dispute between two service providers left large portions of the Internet unable to talk to each other. Computer technicians scrambled to shore up their networks after Level 3 Communications Inc. refused to accept traffic from rival Cogent Communications Group Inc., rendering large portions of the Internet unreachable by others.

These French Jehadist sites, inciting thousands of Muslims around the world to jehad and murder, actually could be considered American Web sites: stcom.net is hosted in Jacksonville Florida at DNS Services. The registrant and administrator is in London but its technical contact is in Virginia, USA.ribaat.com is hosted in Loveland Colorado at WeHostWebSites.com It's Administrator is in Paris, France -- Johnathan R. Galt __________________________________________________ Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center THE PROJECT FOR THE RESEARCH OF ISLAMIST MOVEMENTS (PRISM) OCCASIONAL PAPERS Volume 3 (2005), Number 6 (September 2005), Director and Editor: Reuven Paz. French Islamist Web Sites FRANCOPHONE INTERNET...

LaPorte County, IN - About 3,000 to 5,000 marijuana plants, some the size of Christmas trees, have been found about a half mile north of State Road 4 between 600 and 700 East in LaPorte County, just west of Fish Lake. Officials are calling it the largest outdoor marijuana bust in Indiana since the 1980s. The plants are growing in three to five clusters, hidden on the ground in a two-acre plot full of trees. Police discovered the hidden plants over a week ago but it wasn’t until yesterday that they decided to bust up the drug ring. Police say...

Enemy at the door ... al-Muhajiroun propaganda   Hackers fight terrorists By PETE BELL Sun OnlineTHE INTERNET has become the latest frontline in the war against terror. With the world wide web increasingly used as the main instrument of propaganda and communication for extreme religious groups like al-Qaeda, MI5 and patriotic hackers have formed an unlikely alliance to close down their sites.Prime Minister Tony Blair announced this morning the Government would be looking at options to tackle the problem.Alarmingly, experts believe al-Qaeda’s master hacker is running the terrorist group’s central communications hub from the UK.Impressionable youngsters are targeted through...

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that cable companies are under no legal obligation to share their lines with smaller Internet service providers, dealing a major blow to independent ISPs, extending the power of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, and opening up the possibility of extensive deregulation in the telecommunications world. The Court's 6-3 ruling in Federal Communications Commission vs. Brand X Internet upheld an earlier FCC decision saying cable operators were exempt from common-carrier regulations that apply to phone companies. Because their transmissions are classified as "telecommunications services," phone companies such as SBC Communications (nyse: SBC - news -...

HOUSTON BASED INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER TOUTS COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT WHILE APPARENTLY HOSTING TERROR, PORN, AND SPAM SITES  Jeremy Reynalds, June  20, 2005, JoyJunction.com __________ Houston-based Internet service provider Everyone's Internet could be regarded as an example of the American dream come true.        Founded by brothers Robert Marsh and Roy Marsh III, and Randy Williams, EV1 began operating on Dec.1 1998. By 2002 the company was bringing in over $32.2 million. Current income was not immediately available.        However, it appears that EV1, which touts its community generosity, has a darker side. It seems that the company is hosting terror,...

Comcast, the top U.S. cable TV network operator, is being sued by a Seattle-area woman for disclosing her name and contact information, court records showed Thursday. In a lawsuit filed in King County, Wash., Dawnell Leadbetter said that she was contacted by a debt collection agency in January and told to pay a $4,500 for downloading copyright-protected music or face a lawsuit for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Leadbetter, a mother of two teenage children, was a customer of Comcast's high-speed Internet access service. The company, Settlement Support Center, based in Washington state, was using information that the Recording Industry...

Bellevue firm tied to pro-Hamas Web siteBy Peter LewisSeattle Times staff reporter, April 23, 2005 A Bellevue company has helped support a Web site dedicated to advancing Hamas, an Islamic organization the U.S. government considers a terrorist group. The site features videos of Humvees blowing up and U.S. soldiers being killed. The site was down temporarily yesterday but was working again last evening. Content included a training video of the "Mujahideen Army" and a message to the American people that said in part they had "elected criminals and are responsible for their actions." The Bellevue company, eNom, apparently is...

COMPUTER criminals are coming up with ever stealthier ways to make money. Rather than attack PCs or email inboxes, their latest trick is to subvert the very infrastructure of the internet, the domain name system (DNS) that routes all net traffic. In doing so, they redirect internet users to bogus websites, where visitors could have their passwords and credit details stolen, be forced to download malicious software, or be directed to links to pay-per-click adverts. This kind of attack is called DNS cache poisoning or polluting. It was first done by pranksters in the early years of the internet, but...

During the past year, investigators in America and Europe watched as a business called 357Hosting, based near Utrecht, the Netherlands, became the officially registered Internet host for several notorious militant Islamic Web pages and bulletin boards, including sites that disseminated videos of beheadings of foreign hostages in Iraq and messages from Qaeda leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. The public prosecutor's office in Utrecht tells NEWSWEEK that it has opened a criminal investigation into possible Internet hate crimes. One site hosted by 357, Albasrah.net, today features what purport to be daily news bulletins from Iraqi terrorists; other sites 357 has hosted include...

White Supremacist Group Offers Friendship & Support To Terror GroupsBy Jeremy Reynalds (03/09/05) In a letter posted on its Web site the head of the white supremacist group Aryan Nations offers his thanks to radical Islamic terrorists and extends the group's hand of friendship. Aryan Nations National Director August Kreis writes (www.aryan-nations.org), "We as an organization will also endeavor to aid all those who subvert, disrupt and are (sic) malignant in nature to our enemies. Therefore I offer my most sincere best-wishes to those who wage holy Jihad against the infrastructure of the decadent, weak and Judaic-influenced societal infrastructure...

<p>America Online, Inc. has quietly updated the terms of service for its AIM instant messaging application, making several changes that is sure to raise the hackles of Internet privacy advocates.</p> <p>The revamped terms of service, which apply only to users who downloaded the free AIM software on or after Feb. 5, 2004, gives AOL the right to "reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote" all content distributed across the chat network by users.</p>