[20 Jul 2011 | No Comment | 52 views] | Posted in Gadgets, News]

Members of Anonymous have been arrested over allegations that they were part of a DDoS attack on PayPal.

There isn't a day when Anonymous or its brethren LulzSec aren't in the news, but this time it is because 14 alleged members of the collective have been apprehended and their details released in a press statement.

The arrests were made in a number of countries, including the US, the Netherlands and the UK.

The member arrested in Britain has been named as Tflow, a 16-year-old male who is said to be a former member of LulzSec. The age of the people arrested range from 16 to 42.

Arrested development

The reason PayPal was a target of hackers in late 2010 was due to the online payment company announcing it was to stop processing money sent to Wikileaks.

Alongside PayPal, Mastercard and Visa was also the targeted.

This isn't the first time that members of Anonymous have been arrested. In June, arrests were made in Spain and over 30 members were detained in Turkey over charges of 'hacktivism'.

Anonymous announced this week that it was creating its own social network, after members of the group were kicked off of Google+.

After today's announcement, it may be some time before all its members can join the service.



[20 Jul 2011 | No Comment | 41 views] | Posted in Gadgets, News]

Rural areas are set to receive better value broadband thanks to a 12 per cent price reduction Ofcom is placing on what BT Wholesale can charge internet service providers (ISPs) in countrified areas.

While country customers probably won't get a smaller bill, they should end up getting a faster connection without a price hike as ISPs should use the money they've saved to invest in bandwidth.

The reason behind the lowered wholesale prices is to encourage ISPs to invest more heavily in bringing high-speed broadband to the countryside.

Old Macdonald had a broadband connection…

The independent regulator thinks this will benefit around three million homes and business in parts of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, South West England, Norfolk, Yorkshire, Cumbria and Northumberland.

The move will also mean that the differences between what the town mice and the country mice pay for their broadband will lessen – rural customers often end up paying more because getting the connection in the first place is more of a chore.

Ofcom is all about the broadband speeds at the moment, with its interactive map of the UK's connectivity painting a fairly bleak picture for the country dwellers.