The 50 most significant moments of Internet history

Finally, before we move on to our list of honourable mentions, we want to take a look at some organisational and technological disasters incurred online over the years. This topic alone could have 50 entries, but we've picked what we think are the most significant five of recent times.

As part of its war on honest customers, Sony BMG in 2005 surreptitiously installed malware on its customers' PCs, when they tried to play certain albums on their computer. It was technology called a rootkit, typically used by experienced hackers to infect unprotected machines. The installation left at least half a million computers vulnerable to malicious attack in over 150 countries.

If you were an AOL user in August 2006, searching for pictures of decapitated people and how to kill your wife, you may have been one of 650,000 AOL customers whose private search data, terms and sites visited, were accidentally made public by AOL, and scoured for personally identifiable information, potentially by millions of Web users.

In one of the most ironic mistakes in history, Apple's contracted iPod manufacturer accidentally shipped video iPods containing a Windows virus. It was a backdoor trojan known as RavMonE, and didn't pose any risk to Mac users. Apple said in a statement that it affected less than 1 per cent of iPods built after 12 September 2006, but it's likely those customers are now making up a large percentage of Microsoft's Zune userbase.

Just over a year ago, Viacom issued a DMCA take-down notice to YouTube asking it to remove a clip taken from its VH1 show Web Junk 2.0 -- a show that highlights amusing videos on the Web. Problem was, the clip focused on a YouTube video created by the user who uploaded the video Viacom was objecting to. Viacom had not sought permission to use the video in the first place, but still felt it was justified to issue a take-down notice when it was re-uploaded as part of one of its shows. Double standards don't come funnier than this.

In a leaflet delivered to hundreds of locals advising them on the best ways to protect their homes, police in Sussex misspelled their own domain name, pointing interested readers accidentally to a police-themed gay porn Web site. The link should have read www.sussex.police.uk, but was instead printed as www.sussexpolice.co.uk, which featured everyone's favourite gay police movie, Truncheon Meat. In 2003, CNET UK's sister site ZDNet UK reported another Sussex police tech fail, when their in-house computers were knocked offline by a computer worm.

• Previous
• Continue

• Share:
• 
• 
• 

• Tags:
• Dell,
• Microsoft,
• Apple,
• Sony,
• Oracle