The hacker took the data from several governmentrun Web sites, then displayed the data for all to see.

According to this news story, a (so far) anonymous hacker was able to somehow mine data pertaining to about six million Chileans. The data included full names, street address, email, telephone numbers, social and educational backgrounds. The data allegedly was pilfered from each of the following government Web sites: Education Ministry, Electoral Service, and staterun telephone companies.

The Web sites allegedly were infiltrated over the weekend.

The hacker then posted the information on IT Web site "FayerWayer" and a community Web site called "ElAntro."

The El Mercurio story quoted the hackers reasoning for the breach and subsequent publishing of the private data:

"for the whole world to see ... (to) show...

Microsoft has blamed computer makers for the Windows XP service pack three (SP3) install debacle that has wreaked havoc on PCs.

The firm said today that the endless reboot thingyup reported by many XP customers after installing SP3 was not a new issue. In fact, Microsoft first identified the problem when Windows XP SP2 was released four years ago.

It said that the snafu, in part, relates to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) – understood to include the world’s biggest computer vendor HewlettPackard – loading the wrong "Sysprepped"* XP image on to machines with nonIntel chipsets.

“Microsoft is aware of a reboot issue experienced by some users who have attempted to install Windows XP SP3,” said a Microsoft spokesman. “While the root cause of this issue is complex, it results from OEMs improperly placing a Windows XP image created for...

A remotedesktop access feature found in some Macintoshes is being credited with leading police to two suspects in the burglary of an apartment in New York.

In addition to flatscreen TVs, iPods, and DVDs, the thieves made off with two laptops, one of which belonged to Kait Duplaga, an Apple store employee, according to a report in The New York Times on Saturday.

While police in White Plains, N.Y., were coming up empty with their investigation, Duplaga learned that her computer was being used on the Internet, and she turned on the Back to My Mac feature installed on her Mac from another Mac, according to the report.

The feature allowed Duplaga to see immediately how the computer was being used at the time, as well as operate it remotely. Recalling that she had a camera installed on the computer, the fastthinking Duplaga snapped images of...

A recent statement from antimalware and threatdetection software manufacturer PC Tools claims that Windows 2000 is a more secure operating system than Windows Vista. The companys claims, as covered by Infoworld, have attracted a good deal of coverage—no one wants to miss out on a good Microsoft bashing—but an examination of the companys methodology raises serious concerns about the validity of the conclusions.

According to company CEO Simon Clausen, "recent research conducted with statistics from over 1.4 million computers within the ThreatFire community has shown that Windows Vista is more susceptible to malware than the eight year old Windows 2000 operating system, and only 37 percent more secure than Windows XP." This certainly sounds dire, and at first glance, the companys numbers back its statements up. Data reports from the companys ThreatFire...

Google is expected to join the social network data portability crowd with "Friend Connect" on Monday. TechCrunch speculates that Friend Connect will be a set of "APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites."

Google will join Facebook and MySpace, which launched ways to port user data to partner sites this week. Facebook Connect will provide the hooks to let users port their friends, profile photos, event, and other data across the Web to partner sites. MySpace announced Data Availability, with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket and Twitter as initial partners for its effort to let members port their data.

Yahoo is partnering with the leading social networks so its users can take advantage of the freeing of user data, and it will also be crafting its own social network and APIs as part of its forthcoming...