There is more chance of catching a virus on the internet than finding true love according to the security bods at Websense.
Websense received thousands of malicious e-mails in its e-mail Honey Pot system. The e-mail claims that someone wants to show the user her pictures and videos, and lures the user into visiting the website set up by the attacker.
Downtime confesses to being less than amazed at these results from internet security firm Websense. After all, you cannot scare people into buying security software with love.
What the neutron bomb could not do, hackers hope malware will, judging from Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese, Russian and other cyber-spies have left viruses and Trojans all over the electricity grid, just in case of a hot war with the US.
Downtime reckons this could be the Pyrrhic victory of all time, seeing as knocking out the power would also knock out the internet, which we all now depend on, and then how would they be able to confirm orders for their oil and refrigerators to us? By yak-mail?
On the other hand, perhaps they were left by greenies who despaired that America would kick its CO2 habit.
Amazon's PR department must have had a busy couple of weeks.
Last week the online retailer was attacked from all sides when books with gay themes, along with books on erotica and sexual medicine, were dropped from sales rankings and search results.
This has been ascribed to an error with a new cataloguing system, but not before it attracted the ire of writers such as Gore Vidal, who asked, "Why don't they just burn the books?"
Not great publicity for the exemplar of the long tail business.
However, having painted itself as the enemy of free speech, it fared rather better on privacy with its public opt-out from advertising technology Phorm. Amazon is the first major website to respond to calls from privacy campaigners to stop the technology scanning its users' behaviour.
Ethically minded customers will be left confused, though less ethically minded consumers may just be relieved Amazon is shutting out the data snoops. After all, this is the same Amazon which has sold T-shirts emblazoned with "I Love Heinrich Himmler" and "I Love Hitler".
It seems that when you have a long tail, it is liable to get dirty.
Soon your braggings about your day-to-day activities on Facebook could be read with interest by benefit fraud investigators.
Councils are reportedly using the social networking website to catch fraudsters.
Downtime hopes they have a close look at that bloke from RBS who was recently made redundant.
News that the primary school curriculum could soon feature Twitter and Wikipedia has come as a shock to most, but not us.
Computer Weekly's journalists are fully versed in the world of Web 2.0, and cannot abide anyone who would suggest that Twitter is just the most irritating bit of Facebook, or that it will not fundamentally change the way the human race communicates, or, heaven forfend, that it is just a fad.
These sentiments make us very angry indeed, and we can only hope that children as young as five are taught to master the art of tweeting before it dies a death.
ITV has come under flak for its management of the one-time social network of choice Friends Reunited.
Friends Reunited, bought by ITV for £120m in 2005, has seen users decline from a peak of 5.5 million last year to 1.7 million in December.
ITV has fallen victim to more successful sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Web "experts" have criticised ITV for not keeping up with these rival sites - sites that will, no doubt, come under attack from the same critics for not keeping pace with Twitter, which will...
The result of all this is that ITV faces selling Friends Reunited at a £60m loss.
Downtime really has to wonder why it is Web 2.0 technologies are always assumed to be at the beginning of their arcs of success. A better lesson for investors might be: if you or anybody else wants to buy it, it is already dead.
People who trust their satellite navigations systems too much get a rough time of it. Downtime feels the derision that meets their wrong turnings is a little unfair given that if they knew where they were going they would not be using a sat nav at all.
However, it cannot be denied that a healthy dose of scepticism can avoid embarrassment, as Robert Jones found out when his sat nav led him and his BMW up a steep rocky path to the edge of a 100ft drop.
As Jones said, "I just trusted the sat nav. It kept insisting that the path was a road even as it was getting narrower and steeper."
He has since been charged with careless driving, which seems like a fair charge, not so much for the sat nav incident, but for the many other driving offences he has almost certainly committed in his BMW.
Robots can do some amazing things these days: clean houses, assemble cars, perform surgery... walk.
That's right: computer scientists in Japan have broken through the glass ceiling of robotics by producing a prototype robot that might one day perform the job of a supermodel.
For years supermodels have been paid modest seven-figure wages to perform their amazing ability to wear clothes and walk, but a robot designed by Japanese engineers could finally end their suffering.
Downtime could not find any supermodels willing to comment on the robot, showcased at Tokyo Fashion Week, presumably because they were in training, but has every faith they will put their remarkable talents to good use elsewhere.
Perhaps Naomi Campbell could move into the hospitality industry?
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