The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) released its new spam report which looks at spam budgets, impact of spam and spam management.

The survey targeted email service providers of different types and sizes, and received replies from 100 respondents from 30 different countries, throughout the EU (26/27 EU Member States); and 80 million mailboxes managed. The survey analyses how e-mail service providers combat spam in their networks, and identifies the state of art in the fight against spam.

Some of the key findings are:

* Less than 5% of all email traffic is delivered to mailboxes. This means the main bulk of mails, 95%, is spam. This is a very minor change, from 6%, in earlier ENISA reports.

Most of the uproar over full-body scanners has focused on privacy concerns. There’s one larger question, however, that hasn’t received much scrutiny by the chattering classes: do the damnable things work?

One German TV station says “Nein.”

By way of Americablog comes a video of a man easily concealing the makings of high-temperature combustibles in a manner that evaded a full-body scanner. As the blogger writes: “Even if you don’t understand German, it’s easy enough to follow how this physicist beat the system.”

A celebrated Android hacker has released software that greatly enhances Google’s Nexus One smartphone, endowing it for the first time with the same coveted multitouch features that grace Apple’s iPhone.

Operating under the moniker Cyanogen, the hacker released the updates on Wednesday. The hack came as Google formally made the Nexus One operating system, Android version 2.1, open source, paving the way for much more advanced modifications of the phone.

Introduced and trademarked by Apple, multitouch gives users the ability to use two or more fingers directly on a device screen to enlarge images and carry out similar actions. While it’s been on the iPhone since day one, certain aspects of the technology were noticeably absent from official releases of Android devices. Google axed the feature at the request of Apple, an unnamed person has told Venture Beat.

Microsoft has dodged a potentially-expensive legal fight after a case against Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) was denied class-action status.

This means lawyers cannot represent individuals as a group of defendants in the case, and that’s likely a cost saver for Microsoft. Class-action status can push case costs and any final settlements into the multi-million-dollar range.

The dismissal is a victory for Microsoft, whose lawyers last year slammed the three-year-old case as “fictional,” “demonstrably false,” and from an “alternate universe.”

The case alleged that WGA breached privacy because it was spyware used to gather information about users Windows XP machines and accused Microsoft of making false claims about the software

A security research firm said it discovered another set of vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, a day after Microsoft Corp patched the Web browser following a high-profile cyber attack on Google in China.

Microsoft Corp. took the unusual step of issuing an unscheduled fix Thursday for security holes in its Internet Explorer browser that played a role in the recent computer attacks that led Google to threaten to leave China.

The updates are for all supported versions of Internet Explorer, from IE 5.01 up through the newest IE 8.

People who have their computers set to install security updates automatically will get the fix. PC users who don’t automatically get updates should go to http://www.microsoft.com/security to download the patch.

Space station resident Timothy (TJ) Creamer had been working with flight controllers to establish Internet access from his orbital post ever since he moved in last month. On Friday, his effort paid off. He posted the first live Twitter post truly from space.

“Hello Twitterverse!” he wrote. “We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station — the 1st live tweet from Space! More soon, send your ?s”

Before, orbiting astronauts had to send such Twitter updates by e-mail to Mission Control in Houston. Then controllers posted the tweets.

The International Space Station crew can now use an on-board laptop to reach a desktop computer at Mission Control, and thereby browse the Web. This remote Internet access is possible whenever there is a solid high-speed communication link.

Judge Michael Davis is the senior federal jurist in Minnesota. He presides over the gleaming 15th floor courtroom where, earlier this year, P2P user Jammie Thomas-Rasset was slapped with $1.92 million in damages for sharing 24 songs. Davis made no comment on the amount of the award and showed no emotion as it was read out.

But now we know how he rely feels about the jury’s work in that case: it led to a “monstrous and shocking” damage award that veered into “the realm of gross injustice.”

Davis used his power of remittitur today to slash the damage award by 97.2 percent, from $1.92 million down to $54,000—and he suggested that even this lower amount was too high.

Popular video site, YouTube holds many of music videos, as more and more users compile play lists and use YouTube as a music player, YouTube debut a new section called Disco, where you can search for music by artist, mix and create play lists with a push of a button.

Another interesting feature which compete directly with streaming music sites such as Pandora and Last.fm is the related artist tab where you can discover and find new similar artists to the one you like.

As Mozilla released a new version of the popular open source browser, Firefox 3.6 many add-ons will stop working. Previous workarounds to enable extensions may not work. However there are two new workarounds that will make your favorite plugins work with the new version of Firefox.

The first one is an extension called Add-on Compatibility Reporter After installing the Add-on Compatibility Reporter, your incompatible extensions will become enabled for you to test whether they still work with the version of Firefox or Thunderbird that you’re using. If you notice that one of your add-ons doesn’t seem to be working the same way it did in previous versions of the application, just open the Add-ons Manager and click Compatibility next to that add-on to send a report to Mozilla.

Another method is to simply add a new configuration to Firefox. Here is how its done:

In the address bar type: about:config
Right click on the setting page and select: New->Boolean
Type: extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6 and set the value to false

For those small business owners who choose to do their own taxes this year, there are more software choices than ever to help them file. Indeed, tax prep software companies, like banks and credit card companies before them, are now increasingly targeting small businesses. And recognizing that many small business owners seamlessly blend their personal and professional lives, some software companies are now bundling their individual and small business tax return products together to save you time and money as well.

But sorting through the many different product tiers, price structures, and claims can be confusing, so here’s a quick rundown of what three popular tax prep software companies are offering this year.

The Internet’s most popular video channel will make its debut as a rental outlet Friday to help promote some of the movies that will be shown at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

It’s part of a test that YouTube hopes will encourage more studios to rent movies through its site, eventually creating a new financial stream to supplement the Internet ads that bring in most of its revenue.

The first five films available to rent through YouTube will cost $3.99 for a 48-hour viewing period. Movie studios will be able to set their own prices, with rental viewing windows ranging from one to 90 days. YouTube will get an unspecified commission from each rental.