Zango's at it again

Looks like there's another example of spyware publishers desperately trying to protect their business model using the courts as a bludgeon. Zango seems to have a knack for finding the little guys in the community (in this case, a single individual effort, not for profit) and threatening them with all kinds of nastiness. Granted, in this case the domain in question is http://zingozango.com which might, if you squint real hard, and you knock your ruby slippers together three times, and dance naked under the harvest moon, and said moon is in the fifth house of Aquarius with a retrograde Mercury, potentially be misinterpreted as use of Zango's legitimately registered trademark. More than likely, it's simply fair use. Here is something I found on the web that relates to the case, at least obliquely; it refers to cases in which companies have used the courts to attempt to silence critics on the web.

Posted on Sunbelt's blog first. *shakes fist* You're too quick for the rest of us, Alex.

TJX to take $118 million charge for data breach

Personally, I think they're getting off easy. These folks lost 45.6 million credit and debit card accounts from their customers, so that works out to about $2.59 per lost account. That won't even cover a late charge for each person affected.

While strictly speaking this isn't spyware-related news, from time to time I'll be posting security related items that I think are significant. TJX is based here in Framingham, and is responsible for employing a whole lot of people.

What I kind of find unbelieveable is the fact that TJX's profits were actually UP 31% over the same quarter last year. You would think people would want to avoid doing business with a company that doesn't look out for its customers' personal information. Looks like we've all got a lot of work to do educating people.