An MSN upgrade snafu re-programmed the MSN dialup number for hundreds of North Carolina customers, sending them to a long distance number in Raleigh without their knowledge. Customers became aware of the problem when their phone bills arrived in February with hundreds of dollars in long distance charges.

ISP shakeout continues

Nasdaq halted trading of troubled ISP PSINet on Tuesday. Wired asks a timely question: what happens to PSINet Stadium in Baltimore if PSINet goes under? As reported last week, PSI may be out of business soon, despite wide-eyed wishes to the contrary.

F*ckedcompany.com reports a rumor that within two weeks Juno will file for bankruptcy and announce layoffs. The company's stock was trading at less than $1/share this morning.

DSL Provider Rhythms NetConnections may be delisted from the Nasdaq. Its shares have fallen 99 percent in the last year. Moody's rated the company's unsecured debt as Caa1, where C indicates a junk-grade bond. Rhythms has about 175,000 DSL customers.

The California Public Utility Commission has ordered NorthPoint Communications to continue providing DSL service to customers until it serves out a 30-day notice. NorthPoint filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January and announced plans to shut down its service last week.

Reuters wraps up the DSL landscape and has this quote of the week from Golman Sachs:"We have no evidence of a company that can succeed in making a DSL-only strategy successful and profitable."

Satellite phone company Globalstar may file for bankruptcy protection, and is facing Nasdaq delisting.

TheStreet.com looks at the troubled landscape of debt-ridden telcos.

Computer security and privacy

A new Internet Explorer 5.0 and 5.5 vulnerability was discovered that could allow an attacker web site to take control of your computer. But that's only half of the story.

<Wait an appropriate pause before continuing to read.>

And now, the rest of the story. Microsoft released a patch to fix the bug, but the IE security patch doesn't work correctly. Many users (yours truly included) downloaded the patch, ran it, and got a message saying "This update does not need to be installed on this system." For the fix to work properly, you must download the version of IE 5.0 or 5.5 available on the Microsoft web site, then apply the patch.

The year 2000 saw an increasing number of subpoenas to reveal the identity of anonymous posters.

Police in the Netherlands have a new way to fight cell phone theft: every three minutes they send an SMS (Short Message Service) to the stolen phone with the text: "This handset was nicked, buying or selling is a crime. The police."

New anti-virus company GateKeeper is being criticized for sponsoring a virus-writing contest.

A hacker identiying himself as a 16 year old from the Netherlands says he stole the personal and credit card information of 46,000 ADDR.com customers. MSNBC has verified that some of the customers have noticed fraudulent charges to their credit cards. ADDR.com provides web hosting services.

Wireless

Segue: The New York Times reports on security flaws in 802.11 wireless networking.

Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows will not support HomeRF or Bluetooth.The company is throwing its support behind 802.11

Likewise, Intel is dropping support for HomeRF in favor of 802.11.

EarthLink and 2Wire are partnering to offer wireless home networking to EarthLink customers.

The FCC has issued a letter to a wireless ISP in Dallas, because of interference to amateur radio in the area.

From the April Fool's edition

Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control have discovered a virus that isn't spread by Microsoft Outlook.

In a development that could set back computing for decades, Bitfabrikenworken Gesellschaft gmbh, the world's leading maker of binary digits for computers, declared bankruptcy.

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