Instead, they're registering at more Web sites because they like the benefits of doing so -- and creating multiple e-mail addresses to outrun junk mail, according to a new survey conducted by market-research firm NFO WorldGroup.

The survey also found about a third of all U.S. e-mail addresses are abandoned annually, with most users changing accounts to go with a preferred, often cheaper, Internet service provider, and others trying to escape spam.

For consumers, the cost of switching to a new address is nil, except in terms of lost contact with friends or colleagues, but for businesses eager to keep track of customers, the expense of losing an acquired customer can run high.

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Despite privacy concerns, online surfers are increasingly willing to share their personal information with Web sites. Online consumers now register with an average of 12 Web sites, up from eight in 2000, the survey of 1,015 users found.

Eighty-three percent of those surveyed registered with six or more Web sites.

While not everyone registers out of choice -- one in five did so because a site required it -- others find a benefit in the exchange of information.

Twenty-four percent said they like to receive confirmation of orders, while 22 percent are eager for coupons and discounts.

Still, some consumers are more willing to get information than share it: 14 percent used a phony e-mail address, and that number jumped to 26 percent among the 18- to 34-year-old set. The survey had an error rate of +/- 2.6.

Computerworld - Navy searching for hundreds of missing computers.

At least 595 laptops and desktops belonging to the Navy's Pacific Command in Hawaii have been potentially lost or compromised, according to an internal report that detailed the service's inability to account for hundreds of computers, some of which contained classified data.

The audit, conducted in July by the Naval Audit Service, concluded that the mishap poses a "threat to national security." It was obtained last week by Defense Week, a defense industry trade magazine, despite Navy efforts to block its release.

The report identifies failures and breakdowns in the Navy's system for tracking sensitive equipment deployed aboard Navy ships and submarines -- a system that remains largely paper-based and manual.

This isn't the first time the military has lost computers containing sensitive data. For example, in August, two laptop computers classified at the top-secret level disappeared from a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) run by the U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. The only reason those laptops were discovered to be missing was that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had ordered investigators to look into how plans for an invasion of Iraq had leaked to the media.

School News from Wired News - Bringing Society to Cyberspace.

Palaver Tree, an online project pairing kids with seniors who were involved in the Civil Rights movement, takes the stage at the annual PopTech conference.

New York Times - free registration required An End to Cellphone Telemarketing?

Direct Marketing Association, a trade group, plans to announce a plan today to prevent telemarketers from calling people on their cellphones.

A federal law passed in 1991 already bans most commercial calls to wireless phones, but as some mobile numbers have become hard to distinguish from landline numbers, marketers have found screening cellphones from their call lists difficult.

As a result, consumers have increasingly complained about answering their cellphones only to hear sales pitches, and marketers are worried about being fined or sued for inadvertently calling wireless numbers.

So the Direct Marketing Association, the trade group for direct mailers and telemarketers, has identified 280 million existing and prospective wireless numbers and will try to have marketers eliminate them from their lists.

The association, which has 4,700 member firms, says that the 1991 ban on auto-dialed or prerecorded telemarketing to cellphones makes it almost mandatory for marketers to participate. (Technically, manually dialed telemarketing calls to cellphones are still legal, but nearly all telemarketers rely on auto-dialers.)

Slashdot | Felten Follower Examines Crippled Music Disks.

D4C5CE writes "Following in the footsteps of his famous professor, in his paper "Evaluating New Copy-Prevention Techniques for Audio CDs" (yes, that's pure PS), which is one of many interesting contributions to the 2002 ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management, Princeton student Alex Halderman takes apart (bit by bit, literally) the "tricks on tracks" employed by the music industry to frustrate fair use."

BBC NEWS | Technology | Looking forward to a spam-free future. What is the best way to rid the internet of the nuisance of spam asks Bill Thompson