Two weeks ago e-mail marketing firms Themutual.net and KeepAhead merged to exploit a combined database of 500, 000 subscribers.

BBC: Barclaycard ditches IndigoSquare

Since 1998 Icann, a policy-making group, has controlled domain registration on the Net, logging new sites in an open database called Whois, but the data isn't verified, and even gobbledygook triggers no alarms.

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