Microsoft has introduced a computer system designed to let police agencies share information for tracking online child predators. The Child Exploitation Tracking System, or CETS, was fashioned in collaboration with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Toronto Police Service, Microsoft said on Thursday. It has already resulted in the November 2004 arrest of one alleged Toronto child pornographer, who was identified and targeted during beta testing of the database and investigation system, the company said.

A new campaign by malicious hackers uses a Web site designed to look like Microsoft’s Windows Update page to trick unwitting Internet users into infecting their computers with a Trojan horse remote access program, according to antivirus experts at Sophos. The scam uses e-mail messages that appear to come from Microsoft to get recipients to visit a Web page that uploads the malicious program.

Pope John Paul II will be remembered as a great communicator not only for his language skills, but also for his use of modern technologies to reach his followers. John Paul is credited with bringing the Vatican into the Information Age. He used the Vatican’s official Web site, launched in 1995, to publish his sermons and speeches. Word that the pope had died was first reported via SMS message from the Vatican to journalists. An e-mail was then sent to provide follow-up information.

The company behind those floating ads that dance across Web pages has developed a way to restore the data profiles that many privacy-conscious users try to delete from their computers. United Virtualities calls the product Persistent Identification Element. It taps a separate profile system that’s found in Macromedia’s Flash and that’s not generally affected by antispyware programs.

On Thursday, Microsoft announced plans to release eight security bulletins on April 12, including "critical" fixes for flaws in several widely deployed applications. As part of its advance notice mechanism, the software giant said five high-priority patches would deal only with flaws in the Windows operating system. Three more bulletins with a maximum severity rating of "critical" will include fixes for the Microsoft Office suite, the MSN Messenger chat program, and Microsoft Exchange.

A federal judge in Maine sentenced a man to more than six years in prison for conducting Internet scams on eBay. U.S. District Judge George Singal rejected on Monday a plea bargain from Charles Stergios, 21, because of the man’s failure to attempt to make restitution with his victims, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Halsey Frank, who represented the state of Maine in the case. Stergios, who has been in jail on related charges since May 2004, admitted in earlier court proceedings that he had defrauded 50 individuals of at least $200,000 in cash and purchased goods through schemes executed over online auction site eBay.

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled new versions of its instant messaging and blogging services with beefed-up community, video, search and advertising features. In partnership with Logitech, MSN Messenger now offers full-screen video conferencing capabilities with new technology that promises to establish connections between two people more easily, including across firewalls.

Microsoft’s chief financial officer, who had already announced plans to leave the company, stepped down at the end of last week, the company disclosed on Wednesday. In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said that CFO John Connors’ resignation was effective March 31. Connors announced in January that he planned to leave Microsoft and join venture capital firm Ignition Partners. At the time, Connors did not announce a departure date and said he would "assist in the transition." However, Microsoft said Wednesday that it has yet to hire his replacement.

The Yankee Group has hit back at critics in the Linux community who have claimed that its surveys comparing Linux and Microsoft Windows are not impartial. Its latest survey, published on Monday, reported that Microsoft Windows Server 2003 is at least as good if not better than Linux, in terms of quality, performance and reliability. Laura DiDio, an analyst at the Yankee Group who has been at the receiving end of much of the criticism from Linux advocates, claimed the radical elements of the community could damage the reputation of open source software.

Canada’s long-standing practice of barring news organizations from disclosing what’s happening in certain court proceedings is being tested by Internet bloggers. A Canadian commission that’s investigating charges of high-level wrongdoing in the nation’s Liberal Party has ordered news organizations not to reveal details from the proceedings, which are open to the public. But Ed Morrissey, a conservative Web logger in Minneapolis, has been gleefully violating the ban by posting detailed reports of the verboten "Adscam" testimony. Public revelation of Adscam, which involves allegations of corruption and illegal campaign contributions, could end the Liberal Party’s precarious grasp on power and force new elections this summer.