AOL Time Warner's Road Runner cable-modem service has implemented a new policy to block suspected spammers and purveyors of malicious e-mail code. But the campaign has run over some innocent victims along the way.

Road Runner's new policy calls for the blocking of any incoming e-mails that contain contradictory domain-name routing information. That means Road Runner will block e-mails originating from people who have their own e-mail servers on top of an outside Internet service such as those offered by Verizon Communications, SBC Communications or Comcast.

The move is an attempt to thwart one technique used by spammers, who piggyback their own mail servers on top of a commercial broadband service such as Comcast or Verizon to more efficiently send out e-mail in bulk. The problem is that many legitimate small businesses also run their own mail servers on broadband connections, and are sometimes caught in the cross fire.

MIAMI -- Police thought facial recognition software could be a great way to spot criminals or missing children in crowds. Civil rights activists deplored it as "Big Brother" on the street.

Now police in Tampa, Florida, are removing the software, which is linked to street surveillance cameras, from the Ybor City entertainment district after the 2-year-old scheme, the first such deployment in the United States, failed to produce any arrests.

City Police Chief Bennie Holder said on Wednesday the department had decided not to renew its annual agreement with Identix on using the company's Facial Recognition Software.

"While the software proved reliable in testing, there have been no positive identifications or arrests attributed to the software," the department said in a statement.

Civil rights groups hailed the move. When Tampa installed the software in June 2001, they denounced it as an intrusion that went beyond simple surveillance cameras because it ran images past a police database and sought to match faces with criminals or missing people in the database.

"We're pleased they've decided to go ahead and remove the face recognition technology," Darlene Williams, who heads the Tampa branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said on Thursday. "Before, every person who walked down the street was subjected to an electronic police line-up without their consent."

Police spokesman Bob Guidara said the decision to end the test program -- which was paid for by the company -- was based on the fact it had not produced results, not on the privacy issues. (ed. emphasis added) He declined to comment on whether the lack of results was the fault of the software or the database used.

Data protection and privacy concerns are forcing retailers to rethink plans for the use of controversial product tracking tags.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags have been seen by many retailers as an ideal way of stepping up in-store security and preventing shoplifting.The tags, which emit radio frequencies capable of being picked up 90 feet away, are currently being trialled by supermarket Tesco.

One Cambridge store has been using the tags to photograph shoppers when they remove packets of Gillette razor blades from the shelf.

But now Gillette, an early user of RFID technology, has backtracked from using the tags on its commercial products. Instead it now plans to use the tags only on palettes, enabling it to track products through its supply chain.

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Gillette, which was unable to comment at the time of going to press, has not given a reason for its unexpected decision. But privacy experts have warned that the use of tags for both supply chain and security tracking raises data protection issues.

While RFID tags can be used for security purposes, data protection laws prevent the information collated from being used by other systems, such as loyalty cards, warned Simon Stokes, head of e-commerce at law firm Tarlo Lyons.

akb writes "Indymedia UK is reporting that after protests against the trial of RFID tags by Gillette at a Tesco store in Cambridge, increasing press coverage, a boycott, and the growing mobilisation of campaigners against the intrusive use of the technology, Gillette have withdrawn their trial. RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags are small tags containing a microchip which can be 'read' by radio sensors over short distances (for background see SchNEWS Feature / 2 part Guardian Article)."

Security experts said the virus seemed to be created by spammers to recruit innocent machines to act as untraceable relays for their unwanted messages.

An anonymous reader asks: "I have visibility to AUP complaints we receive at work, and we receive messages from a software vendor that make it obvious that their product is phoning home when it discovers it is running a cracked copy of itself." Apparently the software phones home, and then the publisher's legal department sends the administrator a e-mail. "The message goes on to detail the users IP, a timestamp, the product in question, the users PC name, username, and MAC address. This falls under -my- definition of 'spyware.' What are your thoughts?" --- Software has been making surreptitious checks for "piracy" for over a decade, yet these checks are usually limited to the software itself, and not data on the user's machine. Do you feel software publishers should have the right to peer into users data, if their software suspects foul play on the machine, or should it do the easy and intelligent thing and just stop working?