Thousands of people who used an online registration for an August 2001 Defense Department conference on health-care fraud are at risk, says the Pentagon.
Warning letters saying names, social security numbers, credit card numbers, employer identification and other personal information were entered into a computer database by conference attendees, states Defense Department spokeswoman Cynthia Smith, quoted by the Washington Post.

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The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), working on behalf of Sky, obtained criminal prosecutions against Alan Duffy, licensee of the Horseshoe Inn, Ormskirk and Gary Bennet, licensee of the Village Inn, Skelmersdale.

Both cases were heard at Ormskirk Magistrates Court on April 20, where the defendants pleaded guilty to the criminal offence of dishonest reception of a television transmission.

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Five U.S. residents face criminal copyright charges for their alleged participation in the online “warez” file-trading community, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced todaY.The charges come out of an ongoing DOJ crackdown against international online piracy groups that distribute copyrighted movies, software, games and music on the Internet. The five defendants are alleged to be leading members of the “warez scene,” groups of Internet users who illegally distribute copyrighted materials online.

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An Oregon man was fined $84,000 for scamming users with bogus security warnings that led them to a phony anti-spyware program, the Washington state attorney general said Tuesday.In January, both Microsoft Corp. and Attorney General Rob McKenna filed lawsuits against Secure Computer of White Plains, N.Y. for allegedly selling the bogus anti-spyware program Spyware Cleaner. Three men were also charged with advertising the software: Zhijian Chen, of Portland, Ore.; Seth Traub, of Portsmouth, N.H.; and Manoj Kumar, from Maharashtra, India.

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Microsoft has announced plans for legal action against more than 100 online fraudsters in Europe and surrounding regions. The action, part of the software giant’s Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative (GPEI), is part of a wider scheme to fight online scams through consumer protection, partnerships and prosecution.

The first 53 legal actions (due to be filed before the end of March) include cases against alleged phishers in Turkey, France, Spain, Morocco, the UK, Germany, Austria, Egypt and Sweden. This will be followed by at least 51 more cases throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa, against other suspected fraudsters. There is a planned total of seven UK cases.

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