Bytes

Banks in pilot scheme

The credit-card company Visa has announced that 38 banks in 16 European countries will cooperate in a pilot scheme for Internet secure fund transfer early next year. The pilot scheme, which will include Barclays, Lloyds/TSB, NatWest and Abbey National, is expected to last approximately six months.

Using Visa's Secure Electronic Commerce program, the banks will be able to offer payment card transactions. The encryption-based scheme will eventually allow customers to complete financial transaction on the Internet without fear of their payments being intercepted or their credit-card details being compromised. The full system is expected start operation on completion of the pilot scheme.

Cybersex at work

Employees at Apple, IBM and AT&T spent the equivalent of 1,631 eight- hour days, or more than 4.3 years, visiting the Penthouse magazineWeb site, according to a report in the computer trade journal Microscope.

Microscope also reports that several employees at Compaq were fired recently, after allegedly registering more than 1,000 visits each to sex-related Web sites. Sex and the Internet are obviously not a good mixture for employee productivity n