Internet & Technology

The Federal Trade Commission's Spam Summit was an occasion to celebrate the (limited) success of the CAN-SPAM Act and to discuss the latest criminal threats online.

The presidential hopefuls are using their web sites for unprecedented two-way communication with citizens. But what are voters learning here? Is it more than a way to bypass the media? A new PEJ study of 19 campaign sites finds Democrats are more interactive, Republicans are more likely to talk about “values,” and neither wants to talk about ideology.

Summary of Findings Short videos produced for the internet are becoming an important component of campaign news. In some cases, candidates themselves are producing videos and releasing them on their campaign websites. Candidates also are seeing their own gaffes or embarrassing moments packaged in a brief video and put up on the web for all […]

If today's essay on China piques your interest, check out some other dispatches from Deborah Fallows.

The typical citizen response to discovering that their computer is part of a botnet: "I thought it was running slow recently."

47% of adults have high-speed internet connections at home as of early March 2007, up five percentage points from a year earlier.

Older adults are less likely than younger adults to go online, but there are exceptions -- those who "feel" and "do" younger than their chronological age.

About a third of online teens say they have been targets of online harassement. Older girls and intense internet users are the most likely to report these experiences.

What forces will shape the internet in the next decade?

Older adults are still the least likely group to have basic internet access and broadband access at home. However, information specialists can design outreach plans that are targeted at certain groups dominated by people age 50+.