Once again, the physical space in which you can expect (or even hope) to avoid being relentlessly marketed at contracts in a dying spasm… that’s right, not even your car is a scared space any more, as
Lexus has announced plans to send targeted messages to owners of its cars based on the buyer’s zip code and vehicle type. Knowing how dependent on customer goodwill the luxury car brands are, I’ll be very surprised if this plan actually makes it to market. [via SlashDot]; image by SecondPrint Productions]

Speaking of spam, computer security researchers in Germany reckon they’ve found a serious chink in the Storm botnet’s armour that means it’s nowhere near as impregnable as previously thought. So why haven’t they smashed it up like a box of cheap crockery, then?

The team has not yet taken the final step of putting the whole thing into action with a genuine Storm Worm botnet in the wild. From a legal point of view, that could involve many problems. Any unauthorised access to third-party computers could be regarded as tampering with data, which is punishable under paragraph § 303a of the German Penal Code. That paragraph threatens up to two years’ imprisonment for unlawfully deleting, suppressing, making unusable or changing third-party data.

Oh, the irony. [also via SlashDot]