This morning I went to a government-dominated press conference, which is pretty unusual. I'm not all that used to mingling with ministers and senior officials from the Cabinet Office, not to mention Detective Chief Superintendent Sharon Lemon, who is head of the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit.
The hoohah was to launch not just a website, Get Safe Online, but a national campaign to reverse the tide of viruses, Trojans, phishing attacks and similar problems. I've reported it here, but our Technology section prefigured the launch in Maggie Brown's story 'We can no longer treat computers as toasters' last week.
The silicon.com website has revealed that The cost of joining Get Safe Online is "between £50,000 and £150,000," but there's nothing new or unusual about getting money from sponsors -- it's what sponsors are for -- in exchange for associated publicity. (The representative from Yell.com, for example, was just on the radio news.) If you have that sort of spare cash, you too can apply to Sponsor Get Safe Online.
Microsoft's sponsorship doesn't stop the site from saying,for example: "Firefox is a free, open-source web browser that can be used instead of (or in addition to) Internet Explorer. Many people prefer it because it has extra features like tabbed browsing but its growing popularity is mainly due to the fact that it is considered safer than Internet Explorer." And providing a link to Download Firefox.
