Internet scams run by Nigerian crime rings have been rising in frequency, prompting the Secret Service to establish a presence in Nigeria to help fight the fraud, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The scams originate in e-mail messages that appear to be from a high-ranking government official, businessman or other VIP. The message then makes a plea for help, saying that the recipient should provide telephone numbers, bank account numbers, or other personal information. The Secret Service estimates that despite the general awareness of Internet fraud in the United States, about 1 percent of recipients of such messages fall for them. In 2001, the scams accounted for about $100 million in losses to Americans, reports the Chronicle. The price can be deadly, too: In December, a Finnish businessman was kidnapped, beaten and held for ransom by a Nigerian crime ring operating in South Africa. The criminals already had bilked him out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in "advance fees." At least 15 people have been murdered in connection with the scams in the past decade, according to the Chronicle.

Congress wants to hear from ICANN

The Internet's domain-name regulator will have to explain its recent turmoil to Congress, according to Wired News. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is holding a key meeting this week in Accra, Ghana, has faced widespread criticism for how it operates. The concern for 
ICANN's stability increased with the recent release of a proposal by its president, M. Stuart Lynn, who said the organization's experiment with democracy had been a failure. He called for more involvement from governments, abolishing elections to the body and giving it more power over the Internet's naming system. The backlash to Lynn's writings has caught the ear of Congress. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., called for hearings into the matter, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee has agreed to hold them. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is also 
considering such action, according to Wired News. "More fundamental questions also need to be addressed, such as whether ICANN is even the most appropriate organization to be tasked with such a critical mission, which is central toour national security," Burns wrote in a letter calling for hearings.

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Colleges learning to accept file swapping

U.S. universities are not fighting student use of file-swapping networks as much as they were a few years ago, according to CNET News.com. During the heyday of Napster, many schools blocked student access to the service because rampant music-file downloading was gumming up campus computer 
networks. Napster has been tamed, and times have changed. New technologies that smooth the way for large amounts of file swapping are giving schools more control over the traffic on their networks. Until the legal issues with peer-to-peer music trading are settled, many universities are simply 
urging students to respect copyrights. Oregon State University, for instance, installed a traffic manager called Packeteer. Jon Dolan, the university's manager of network engineering, told CNET that the program forces file-swapping to "take a backseat when other things are going on." He added: 
"We simply reiterated to all our students that they need to respect copyright material. The danger with these applications is that we can't tell what's copyright-protected and what's not."

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Survey names Sweden top info environment

Sweden has the world's top "information economy," according to a new survey that measures the ability of a country's citizenry to exchange information. International Data Corp., which conducted the survey, praised Sweden's highly developed info-tech infrastructure, advanced educational systems and commitment to developing business clusters -- such as its 
"Wireless Valley" and "Telematics Valley" -- for different technologies. Also, 74 percent of Swedes have mobile phones and the Scandinavian nation has cheap broadband service that is available to a large segment of the population.

Population could give China high-tech edge

China's vast population might be the one factor that allows the Asian giant to keep making strides in the high-tech industry, according to the Wall Street Journal. Because there is so much competition for jobs, the pay scales for 
sophisticated work have remained relatively low. In most developing nations that doesn't happen because there are fewer skilled workers, according to the Journal. In China's case, it is much easier to find properly trained employees 
who will accept what companies are offering. The scenario is a threat to countries such as Pakistan, where pay usually jumps, as workers get smarter, and companies pack up and leave when they realize they can find cheaper labor somewhere else. Ash Bhardwaj, president for the Asia-Pacific region for Flextronics, a contract manufacturer, told the Journal: "I tell my customers we don't have to worry about China for the next 10 years. There's enough talent in the poor interior that prices will stay really low."

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Asian job sites see rise in visitors

The Asian economic downturn is probably one reason why traffic to Asian employment Web sites is booming, according to Internet research firm NetValue Ltd. In January, job site visits in Korea were up 8.9 percent to 1.8 million users and Hong Kong saw a 35 percent increase to 407,420 users. Max Hwang, NetValue country manager in Korea, noted that students 
traditionally look for jobs in December before they graduate from school. This year's January surge could indicate that those job hunts were not as successful this December as they were last December. Singapore was one of the only countries with a drop in online job seekers, falling off about 3 percent.

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