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In the wake of the browser choice screen in Europe, Opera Software is reporting a dramatic uptick in browser downloads. The company said more than half the European downloads of Opera 10.50 have come directly from Microsoft's choice screen since early March.

Microsoft used to configure Internet Explorer as the default browser for its Windows operating system, but under pressure from the European Commission, it agreed last October to test-market measures to give Europeans an option to download and install competing browsers like Opera, Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox.

European Windows users are getting a choice through a browser screen that is displayed automatically and lets users make any browser the default. Users can even turn Microsoft's Internet Explorer off, although Microsoft has said there's no need to do that to make another browser the default.

Doubling Downloads

"This confirms that when users are given a real choice on how they choose the most important piece of software on their computer, the browser, they will try out alternatives," said H?kon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera Software. "A multitude of browsers will make the web more standardized and easier to browse."

According to Opera, the increase represents more than a doubling from the normal download numbers -- even only after a short period with the choice screen. The choice screen rollout will continue well into May for existing Windows computers and for five more years on new Windows installations, giving Opera reason to believe it will continue to see more downloads.

Of course, Internet Explorer remains dominant with 61.58 percent of the browser market. But Opera is nevertheless rejoicing over the browser screen and has rolled out Opera 10.50, which it bills as the fastest-ever browser for Windows computers. Opera 10.50 also has a new design and private browsing.

Mobile Competition

Opera is also pressing to...

Cybercriminals have been busy this week running scams that target Facebook users, college basketball fans, and celebrity gossip watchers. Security experts are warning about recent attacks with nasty payloads.

One widespread attack was a common ploy security researchers call the Facebook Password Reset Scam. The cybercriminals send an e-mail addressed to "user of Facebook" that reads, "Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed. You can find your new password in the attached document."

McAfee reports that this scam is global. The attachment is malware with downloaders, password-stealing Trojans, fake antivirus software, or bots. The scam ranked six on McAfee's Global Virus Map Top 10, and accounted for as much as 10 percent of the infected e-mail that its software-as-a-service unit is witnessing.

"As we had previously discussed in our 2010 Threat Predictions, social-networking sites will continue to be a favorite social-engineering lure for cybercriminals to distribute malware," said David Marcus, research labs manager at McAfee. "Make sure you are protected and educated."

March Virus Madness

At a time when college basketball fans are going wild, cybercriminals are actively pursuing opportunities for scams. Basketball fans go online to fill out bracket selections, and when they do, hackers are also playing their own game of spamdexing, i.e. manipulating search results to promote sites, according to James Duldulao, a security researcher at McAfee. In this case, he explained, cybercriminals are spamdexing malware-infected sites.

This week, the top results for terms like "ncaa bracket" and "march madness predictions" were poisoned. McAfee reports that five out of the first 10 hot searches on Google Trends are being promoted by a network of legitimate sites that were hacked to serve malware. One site had an embedded Flash file that downloads malware from another site and installs it without user interaction.

"Who would have thought...

Apple is tapping into the social arena with plans to launch a social-networking application. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company has filed a patent with the U.S. Patent & Trade Office describing a social-network application dubbed iGroups.

The application for patent, made available on Thursday, reveals that Apple is working on an ad-hoc social network that would enable users to communicate with one another without using a central access point or mobile-device networks such as Bluetooth's personal area network (PAN) or piconet (an ad-hoc computer network that links a group of devices using Bluetooth technology).

Instead, iGroups would enable users to use the Bluetooth-enabled devices to communicate by setting the devices to a Token Exchange mode.

Targeted Content

While set in this mode, all device owners or group members within a geographic range of one another would be able to broadcast and receive tokens. Tokens can be exchanged using a communication link within limited range.

The tokens received by members are stored locally on the device or sent to a trusted service operating remotely on a network such as Apple's MobileMe.

"In some implementations, the tokens can be stored with corresponding time stamps to assist a trusted service in matching the tokens with tokens provided by other devices," writes Apple in its patent application. "The trusted service can perform an analysis on the tokens and time stamps to identify devices that were colocated at the geographic location at a given contact time, which can be determined by the time stamps."

Members would then be able to set up accounts with the service by registering through a portal or web site managed by the trusted service.

User interfaces, filters and search engines would let users search and manage groups. The groups can be used with various applications, including calendars, address books, e-mail, and instant messaging.

Apple...