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Nearly a year after announcing the plan, new Federal Trade Commission rules prohibiting most robocalls are set to take effect Tuesday, Sept. 1.

With the rules, prerecorded commercial telemarketing robocalls will be prohibited, unless the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such calls. Hopefully the rules will go a long way to helping consumers eat dinner in peace without being interrupted by amazingly annoying telemarketer blather or in this case prerecorded blather.

Well this is getting kind of predictable. The Federal Trade Commission this week has delayed for the third time in less than a year the deadline for companies to enact its identity theft rules known as Red Flags, which were set to become practice Aug. 1.

Originally set to become required practice Nov. 1, 2008, the Red Flags program is touted as being one of the major ways the government plans to fight the growing identity theft blight. Under the Red Flags rules, all entities that regularly permit deferred payments for goods or services, including entities such as health care providers, attorneys, and other professionals, as well as retailers and a wide range of businesses that invoice their customers must develop a written program that identifies and detects the relevant warning signs - or "red flags" - of identity theft. These may include, for example, unusual account activity, fraud alerts on a consumer report, or attempted use of suspicious account application documents. The program must also describe appropriate responses that would prevent and mitigate the crime and detail a plan to update the program.

The Federal Trade Commission had a rogue Internet Service Provider that recruits, knowingly hosts, and actively participates in the distribution of spam, child pornography, and other harmful electronic junk shut down by a district court judge.

The FTC order shuts off Pricewert LLC, which does business under a variety of names including Triple Fiber Network (3FN) and APS Telecom, a company it said actively recruit and collude with criminals seeking to distribute a whole host of nastiness including child pornography, spyware, viruses, trojan horses, phishing, botnet command and control servers, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest. The FTC said Pricewert advertised its services in the darkest corners of the Internet, including a forum established to facilitate communication between criminals.

Robocalls are a scourge and the Federal Trade Commission today took action against them by asking a federal court to shut down companies that have been bombarding consumers with hundreds of millions of allegedly deceptive robocalls in an effort to sell vehicle service contracts.

According to the FTC, the robocalls have prompted tens of thousands of complaints from consumers who are either on the Do Not Call Registry or asked not to be called. Five telephone numbers associated with the defendants have generated a total of 30,000 Do Not Call complaints. Consumers received the robocalls at home, work, and on their cell phones, sometimes several times in one day. Businesses, government offices and even 911 dispatchers also have been subjected to the calls, the FTC said.

Global Positioning Systems have become ubiquitous, with support for the satellite-based system in everything from cell phones to cars. The system too has become a vital part of day-to-day activities from coordinating Coast Guard rescues and 911 calls to scheduling intercontinental flights. But don't take it for granted too long as its ubiquity might go away in the next few years.

That's because the US Air Force, which is responsible for the GPS system, is in the process of modernizing it and may not be able to upgrade the systems before some degradation of services happens, according to a report issued this week by the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office.

After weeks of controversy NASA last night told Steven Colbert it wouldn't be naming its new space module after him, but did say it would identify a treadmill after the Comedy Central comedian.

The Federal Trade Commission today chalked up two more Do Not Call rule victories as it won fines against Comcast and Directv for not only violating that rule but for re-calling consumers who specifically had told the companies not to call them again.

Under the settlements announced today, Directv has agreed to pay $2.31 million to settle the FTC's charges that it violated the Do Not Call provisions and, as a result, violated a 2005 court order barring it from such conduct. Combined with the $5.3 million DIRECTV paid under the earlier 2005 Do Not Call order, the company has now agreed to pay a total of more than $7.6 million for Do Not Call violations, the FTC said

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center today warned that anyone looking for a job on-line needs to be particularly vigilant against growing work-at-home scams.

The IC3 said it continues to receive numerous complaints from individuals who have fallen victim to the scammers. Often hired to "process payments", "transfer funds" or "reship products" scammers involve the victims receiving and cashing fraudulent checks, transferring illegally obtained funds for the criminals, or receiving stolen merchandise and shipping it to the criminals, the IC3 stated.

We sure do throw out a lot of electronic junk. The Environmental Protection Agency today said its recycling program, eCycling, collected and recycled close to 67 million pounds of used electronics in 2008, nearly a 30% increase over 2007.

New tools to battle the ever-present telemarketing drivel take effect today. The main weapon is the requirement that telemarketers must now include a prerecorded message that offers a quick and easy way to opt-out of receiving future calls. The opt-out must work for consumers who answer these calls in person and for those whose answering machines or voicemail services receive the calls, the Federal Trade Commission stated.

Once the person has opted out, his or her phone number must be automatically added to the in-house Do Not Call list of the calling seller or fundraiser. Then the call immediately must be disconnected so that the consumer's line is cleared, the FTC said.

Here's one the lawyers probably aren't too happy about.  IBM said today it will buy the company-most-like-a-thorn-in-its-side,  Platform Solutions, Inc. (PSI), a privately held company with whom Big Blue was trading lawsuits with over mainframe technology the past few years.