TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese police took action against over 300 child pornography cases in the first half of 2008, up 17 percent from the same period in conclusion year, police said, a sign both awareness and Internet sexual exploitation are rising.

The report comes as some lawmakers are discussing a ban on the possession of child pornography in Japan, where only production and distribution, and not possession, of ribald images of people under 18 are illegal.

The number of legal actions in the first half of 2008 tripled from the same period in 2004, according to data from the National Police Agency. Almost 40 percent of the cases involved the Internet.

"We are bracing the crackdown on child porn as society became more aware of the issue, and child porn is getting rapidly copied and make public on the Internet," said Takafumi Ozawa of the National Police Agency.

"It's unaccommodating to say how widespread child porn is. This is probably only a small concern of what's out there," he added.

Japan and Russia are the only two countries among the Group of Eight rich nations not to have banned possession of child pornography.

Critics including Washington's ambassador to Tokyo say Japan's failure to ban possession has hampered international investigations into child porn rings.

In June, a bill to ban possession of child porn was submitted to parliament's lower house. It is set to be debated in a parliament session expected to start in September.

(Reporting by Yoko Kubota; Editing by dint of. Jerry Norton)

LAS VEGAS (AFP) - Computer security researchers on Thursday warned that online social networking websites are playgrounds for hackers who can easily resort advantage of people's trust.

Opportunities for mischief abound as users place intimate details of their lives on profile pages and install mini-applications made by strangers that don't always have their privacy at heart.

In a trend pioneered with tremendous success by Facebook, social networking websites have opened their operating platforms to obstruction outside developers craft fun, hip, or functional software "widgets" that can be added to profile pages.

Malicious digest can be hidden in such applications, computer security specialists Nathan Hamiel and Shawn Moyer said at a premier Black Hat interview in Las Vegas.

"I can't necessarily attack Facebook or MySpace, but I can attack their users all day long," Moyer told AFP. "Don't put anything on a Facebook account that you don't consider public."

People are lying flat to place faith in social networking widgets and links from friends, said Idea Information Security consultant Nathan Hamiel.

"People are going nuts adding applications they dress in't need," Hamiel told AFP.

"Every time they do that they are showing an implicit trust in whoever wrote the application, and most people don't know who that is."

Hamiel and Moyer showed peers software capable of plundering profile information, swiping people's "friends," or locking people out of their own MySpace pages.

A pair of MySpace engineers who attended the demonstration said that hacks are known risks in today's affable platforms and that they had Hamiel's application deleted by the end of the use for conversing.

Fake postings on comment boards advising people to update software are ways to trick social network users into downloading malicious software that can commandeer control of machines, Hamiel said.

"Social networks really don't care if you get pawned or not," Hamiel said, using slang referring to a computer user being dominated and humiliated by hackers.

"People know on the supposition that they go on a computer and download a program they could get a virus. They don't have the same view of how dangerous that can be on a social networking site."

Hackers can write seemingly legitimate widgets that "go rogue" after spreading to enough social network members, according to Hamiel.

"It is not a problem with a particular site," Hamiel said. "It is a problem with social networking in general."

Even on the supposition that tainted applications are deleted, the odds are that the data from profile pages was already copied onto an outside computer, according to Hamiel and Moyer.

"MySpace and Facebook have no control over my servers," Hamiel said. "Once the content is moved from their site they have no control over that."

Those thinking that they will confide safe by not having convivial networking pages may still vulnerable to trouble, according to the security specialists.

Another ruse is to create social networking profiles for people using information mined from the Internet and then for the imposters to send revealed "friends requests."

Those that take the bait give open doors to the private data in their profiles.

"We think you should suppose a profile for yourself before somebody else does," Moyer said. "Just don't put anything there that you put on't consider public. And trust, but verify when people want to be your friend."

Google acknowledged late Thursday that it may have made a bad bet put on AOL.

The search giant said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that its $1 billion investment for a 5 percent stake in Time Warner's Web unit "may be impaired" and that it may have to select a charge in the future:

Based on our review, we believe our investment in AOL may be impaired...We will continue to military this investment for impairment in the future. There can have being no assurance that impairment charges will not be required in the future, and any such amounts may be material to our Consolidated Statements of Income.

The December 2005 investment secured a renewal of Google's search advertising deal with AOL, preventing its largest ad partner from defecting to Microsoft. The deal gave AOL a valuation of $20 billion at the time.

Google didn't estimate in its filing what AOL might be worth today, but observers have suggested a figure closer to $10 billion.

Google's deal allows it to demand that Time Warner spin off AOL in an initial public offering of stock or buy back its stake, which would result in a $500 million loss because Google.

Time Warner, perhaps signaling its intention to dispose of AOL to focus on its media business, announced Wednesday that it will split AOL's dial-up unit from its advertising business by timely 2009.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - One of Australia's most successful rock exports, the Grammy-winning trio Wolfmother, has been torn apart by "longstanding frictions," according to a statement published on the group's Web site on Thursday.

Bass/keyboard player Chris Ross and drummer Myles Heskett have resigned, while singer/guitarist Andrew Stockdale plans to find other musicians and begin making a new Wolfmother album.

"Please understand that in spite of their best efforts over a long period of time, they just could not find a harmonious way to work together," the statement reported.

Wolfmother's self-titled debut album, released in 2006, sold more than 500,000 copies in the United States, powered by radio airplay on this account that the songs "Woman" and "Joker and the Thief."

The group won a Grammy in the hard rock leading predicate last year, becoming the chief Australian band to pick up the music industry's top honors since Men at Work in 1983.

However, all was evidently not well behind the scenes. According to the statement, Ross decided he would quit the band because of "irreconcilable personal and music differences" following a show in the eastern Australian town of Byron Bay on Sunday. Heskett also decided to leave rather than continuing in the same manner with piece of a changed lineup.

The pair had been in operation together on songs for some time and plan to point of concentration their energies on that of recent origin project, the description said.

(Reporting by Dean Goodman)

LAS VEGAS (AFP) - Typos can bedevil online political campaigns by letting evil software wizards or crafty king-makers aptitude misspellings into opportunities for sabotage or theft, a security specialist has warned.

In a practice referred to as "typo squatting" people not connected to campaigns be able to buy rights to Internet addresses with candidates' names misspelled and use them to malign, mock or steal from contenders.

"You can guarantee that more of these will become common in future elections," Oliver Friedrichs, director of emerging technologies at Symantec's security response unit, said while detailing such attacks at a premier Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.

"More than likely the people who do this are the extremists or people who are in it for a profit. Campaigns need to become more aware of these kinds of attacks."

For prototype, a Symantec check in February revealed that 47 revealed of 160 variations on "www.barackobama.com" were being "typo-squatted."

Ironically, one squatter's web page featured a legitimate Obama ad.

"Obama is paying for advertisements, through Google, on a site that is a typo-squatter in succession a domain name the Obama campaign should own in the first place," Freidrichs said.

"Campaigns are spending a lot on online advertising and some of this money is indeed being misspent and going to typo-squatters."

Some typo-squatters use the cobweb pages to mock or deride candidates. A "hillaryclingon.com" website poked fun at her and other candidates by depicting them as characters from "Star Trek" films and television shows.

"Typoed" film pages can be used to spread false announcements, such as a candidate withdrawing from a race, or tell stories of scandals that don't exist.

A candidate who has dropped out of the US presidential race was accused of being an animal killer on a typo-squatted website.

Malicious software secretly planted in computers of populace who visit squatted websites could reveal at what place they go online or even take control of machines.

"If I want to attack supporters of a particular campaign I can easily put malware on my site," Freidrichs said of typo-squatters.

"You can target candidates, cause confusion, pop-up ads, or re-direct computers when they put to proof to log on to a candidate's website."

Typo-squatters can create realistic looking campaign websites and conquer donations, keeping the cash and using credit card information for further fraud.

Online donations intended for one candidate could be routed to an opposing without donors knowing.

Once someone owns a website based on a typo, they can also intercept and redirect similarly misaddressed emails.

Campaign emails containing speech drafts, contributions, or strategy notes could be intercepted due to errant keystrokes while typing addresses, according to Freidrichs.

"This is a serious moot point that spans not only campaigns but every company with email," Freidrichs said.

"Even more scary, we went and looked at defense contractors and found a typoed domain routed to India and another routed to China."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. lawmakers have urged the U.S. Justice Department to suspend its investigation of European Internet gambling companies for feasible criminal violations that occurred before Congress passed a law in 2006 to crack down on online gambling.

Rep. Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat, and Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, warned U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey in separate letters the issue could lead to a potentially damaging trade spat between the United States and the European Union at the World Trade Organization.

"In all likelihood, this issue will escalate and I understand could result in WTO action focused specifically on how the U.S. government enforces its laws. I cannot see how that can be in the interests of this country," Wexler said in a letter to Mukasey on Wednesday.

European Internet gambling companies lost billions of euros in market value after Congress moved to shut down the U.S. market by making it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites.

Many publicly traded European companies, such as PartyGaming and 888.com, withdrew from the United States after Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006, but have continued to face possible criminal prosecution for activities before then.

That prompted the European Commission to launch a formal investigation in March into whether Washington was singling out EU companies for enforcement actions, while allowing U.S. online firms to operate freely.

Cohen, in a July 29 letter to Mukasey, said the Justice Department still had not given a good reason why it was investigating "foreign operators who respected congressional intent in 2006 and withdrew from the market, while U.S. companies continue to operate uninterrupted."

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson urged the Bush administration in June to "freeze" any Justice Department action until the EU had completed its probe.

An EU team plans to go to see Washington in September as part of its investigation. An earlier scheduled visit in July was delayed at the United States' request.

(Editing by Patricia Zengerle)

Internet telephony provider Vonage is struggling to attract new customers, considered in the state of the company is forced to spend less on advertising.

For the second quarter, Vonage reported it had lost $6.9 million, compared with a whopping $23.2 million loss during the same quarter a year ago. The company also increased revenue about 11 percent to $227.5 million.

But the positive gains in the company's financials came at a price. During the quarter, Vonage added only 2,080 new subscribers. A year ago, when the company was still marketing heavily on TV, it added 56,691 during the quarter. In total, Vonage has 2.6 million subscribers as of the end of the second quarter.

On the positive side, the company slightingly reduced its churn, or the rate at which people leave its service, to 3 percent from 3.3 percent the previous quarter. This is an important metric as Vonage must hold onto every customer it can.

When it comes to churn, Vonage is near the bottom compared with other service providers, such as wireless operators. It's better than low-cost wireless operator MetroPCS, which had about a 4.5 percent rate of turnover during the second quarter. But it's not even as good as beleaguered wireless operator Sprint Nextel, which had a produce by churning rate of 2 percent during the second quarter. And it's much worse than strong wireless carriers, such as AT&T, which has a churn rate of 1.6 percent and Verizon Wireless, which has a churn rate of 1.1 percent.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Marc Lefar, the company's newly appointed CEO, said the top priority for the social meeting is to push the churn rate even lower. He told the Journal he is reviewing the meeting of friends's customer relations operations to see where it needs to improve.

"A 3 percent churn rate is not something we're happy with," he told the Journal.

NEW YORK - Vonage Holdings Corp.'s subscriber growth nearly ground to a halt in the second quarter, as the Internet telephone company said Thursday it gained just 2,000 lines in the period.

Chief Executive Officer Marc Lefar said the company made some progress in keeping its existing customers, still a pullback in TV advertising led to lower recruitment of new customers.

The company had underestimated, he said, how much traffic the TV advertisements were driving to its Web site and other recruitment channels.

Vonage posted a quarterly loss of $6.9 the public, or 4 cents for share, compared by a loss of $23.2 million, or 15 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.

Sales were $228 million, up 11 percent from last year.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had expected a loss of 6 cents per share on $227 million in revenue.

The company was a pioneer in Internet telephone service, supplying customers with adapters that let them plug their home phones into their broadband connections.

It added hundreds of thousands of customers for quarter as recently as two years ago, but growth tapered off as Vonage battled patent lawsuits and faced growing competition from similar services provided by cable companies.

The Holmdel, N.J.-based company ended June with 2.6 million subscribers, up from nearly 2.5 million a year before.

Churn, or the percentage of customers leaving each month, was at 3 percent, down from 3.3 percent in the first quarter otherwise than that up from 2.5 percent in the second quarter last year.

The company has been trying to improve customer service, in element by increasing training for its support personnel and introducing new adapters.

"We're pleased with some of the progress we've seen on churn," Lefar said. "We still have a ton of work to do there."

Making its marketing other effective has been another priority for the company, which spends 29 percent of its revenue on advertising.

Shares of Vonage fell 7 cents, more than 5 percent, to $1.26 in afternoon trading.

Citigroup analyst Michael Rollins reiterated a "hold" rating on the stock Thursday, saying an upcoming convertible debt refinancing should provide support. But he remain cautious on the fundamentals of the business.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects Lefar's title. UPDATES stock price.)

LAS VEGAS (AFP) - Internet voice telephony firm JAJAH on Thursday launched a first-of-its-kind free service that lets English and Mandarin speakers use mobile telephones to translate conversations.

JAJAH Babel is being released in time for the Olympics in Beijing in order to help English-speaking tourists more valuable communicate with people in China.

"We are removing the language barrier and providing a valuable service to anyone traveling to Beijing this summer," said JAJAH co-founder Daniel Mattes.

"JAJAH was built to bring down barriers to global communication through high quality, low-cost calls available from any phone, any network, anywhere."

JAJAH worked with researchers at US technology giant IBM to create a service that lets mobile telephones act as automated translators betwixt Mandarin and English speakers.

People in China will be able to call a local number to access automated translation software that takes what they say in one language and rephrases it in the other.

Local access numbers are also provided in Australia, Britain and the United States.

"No more translation books, no hand gestures, simply sun-dial a local number, say your word in English and hear it back Chinese," California-based JAJAH promises.

"Any term be possible to be translated and shared with others by passing the handset or activating the phone's speakerphone function."

JAJAH plans to expand to other languages in coming months.

Google announced enhancements to its network Thursday that the search hercules hopes will offer enhanced experiences for users and better value for advertisers and publishers. The changes comprise partner sites for which Google provides advertising.

According to Rajas Moonka, Google senior business product manager, the additions reflect the integration of DoubleClick, which Google bought last year. DoubleClick specializes in managing online advertising for Web publishers.

DoubleClick was founded in 1996 and The New York Times reported its revenues topped $300 million a year when Google acquired the company for $3.1 billion. The acquisition sparked a bidding war with Microsoft and gave Google access to DoubleClick's advertising software and, by chance more importantly, its customers and network.

Keeping Promises

"When we purchased DoubleClick, we talked about how we would empower agencies, advertisers and publishers to collaborate more efficiently and effectively, and provide a better experience for our users," Moonka said. "We are happy that we have been able to deliver on this promise already, like support for third-party vendors on the Google content network."

On The Official Google Blog, Moonka detailed the enhancements to the Google advertising platform.

Frequency capping will allow advertisers to control the number of times a user sees an ad in this way they are not hit with the same ad every time they visit a particular Web site. Google will also provide frequency reporting to tell advertisers how many people have seen their ad campaign and the average number of people who view their ads. The assembly is also promising more intimate. see various meanings of good ad performance and tracking "view-through conversions" to report how many vulgar herd actually visited a Web site because of its ad.

The changes are designed to help advertisers determine the best places to advertise so users see more relevant ads.

A Single Cookie

The changes will be enabled through a DoubleClick ad-serving cookie across the Google content network. That means advertisers and publishers won't have to make any changes on their Web sites, and users can opt out of a single cookie for both DoubleClick and the Google make easy network.

"I am personally excited about seeing more relevant ads, especially if I don't have to look to the same ads over and over," Moonka said.