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The threats usually begin with demands for small amounts, $20 or $30, but authorities say anyone who cooperates and pays may be subjected to demands for larger amounts later.

A British detective say the extortionist prey on "the nice secretary who wouldn't do anything wrong."

A Finnish security company say a Scandinavian university was hit early in December. That firm said the threatening e-mail appeared to have originated in Estonia.

In the past, most computer extortion was aimed at small companies, largely threatening to overwhelm a system with a flood of messages unless a ransom was paid. But authorities said the latest blackmail is harder to track and easier for criminals to use because it doesn't require anything more complicated than an e-mail.

That's according to interviews published in Handelsblatt, a German business newspaper. The paper quoted Chief Executive Michael Dell as expecting large companies to resume spending on information technology.

Chief Operating Officer Kevin Rollins was quoted as saying Dell's Christmas business had been good, but that major hopes were for an increase in buying by large companies. He said many companies had been deferring purchases, holding onto computers for an extra year or two rather than replacing them routinely after three years.

The virus arrives in an e-mail purporting to carry a warning of five pending terrorist attacks. But authorities said an imbedded link to a Web site supposedly giving information on the attacks actually unleashes a virus which tries to connect to three Internet sites that have already been compromised by vandals.

The law is the Electronic Waste Recycling Act, which governs company disposal of computers, copiers, fax machines and other electronic equipment. An estimated 500 million personal computers will have become obsolete in the decade from 1997 to 2007.

All contain metals and other materials which environmentalists object to seeing dumped into landfills and which could be recycled.

The tax break is an extra 50 percent "bonus deduction" for equipment bought between last May and the end of 2004. That's on top of a 30 percent writeoff most companies take the first year of any newly-purchased equipment.

The combination has spurred a number of new companies specializing in recycling old equipment. Most recondition and re-sell newer and still usable devices, then grind the rest up to have lead, copper, zinc and other metals retrieved and the remains disposed of properly.

The virus apparently began in Europe and spread first in Spain and Portugal. It affects all Windows operating systems but can be easily removed by any antivirus program.

Also spreading was a holiday-themed worm called Quis, which spreads through Microsoft Outlook using an e-mail with a destructive payload.

It comes with a "Merry Christmas" salutation and poses as a holiday screensaver.

Mitnick sent e-mail messages to security discussion groups and posted an offer on his Web site asking for tales about hacking exploits. He offered a $500 reward for the "most provocative story….your sexiest hack."

He wants the stories for a book he's writing.

He wants tales about attacks on high-profile targets, such as universities and government installations, and is looking for those with "an industrial espionage flavor." He apparently will pay for more than one story, in addition to publishing those he deems noteworthy - with the hacker's identity kept secret.

He also proposes to tell readers how to avoid such attacks.

Mitnick gained fame for his hacking exploits and served a prison term for his activities.

VoteHere Inc. of Bellevue, Wash., said the FBI is investigating the intrusion, which occurred in October but was just disclosed. Company officials said the intruder got into internal documents and possibly copied sensitive material about its programs.

Chief Executive Jim Adler said the company has identified the culprit and turned all its information over to authorities. He said the firm also has repaired the hole through which the intruder entered.

Alan Ralsky earned a reputation as a master of cyberdisguise and once sent 70 million messages a day from false addresses. His e-mail offers covered everything from debt repayment schemes to time-share vacations.

His operation was exactly the sort of bulk unsolicited e-mail, with fake names and addresses and no way to track the origin, that lawmakers had in mind when they created the CAN-SPAM law - Controlling the Assault on Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing. Among other things, that law requires bulk e-mailers to provide a real return address.

Ralsky says he'll comply with that when he cranks up again. "You would have to be stupid to try to violate this law," he said, noting its potential for fines up to $6 million and prison terms of five years.

The city buys about 150 computers a year, to replace older models. In the past, the old machines were stripped, reduced to piles of chips, keyboards and other components. Then the junk was loaded onto pallets and auctioned, usually for $50 to $100 per pallet.

But Tony St. Romaine, who buys computers for the city, knew of poor families who needed computers for their children or other purposes. He proposed recycling the old machines for city families who needed computers.

Bob Simms, director of the city's information system, agreed. His staff will delete all sensitive material or other city information from the computers, wipe their slates clean, then reinstall a basic Windows operating system. Then they'll be given to the city's Voluntary Action Center for distribution.

Simms said the city will begin with about 35 computers but eventually about 130 machines a year ought to funnel into the program.

In many previous cases, the e-mails asked recipients to re-enter their account numbers, passwords or other vital information. In the Bank of England case, the bogus e-mail instructs recipients to download a file attachment.

The Bank alerted authorities and advised all customers to delete the e-mail promptly, without downloading any file. The Bank said it had intercepted more than 100,000 phony e-mails.

Another fake site, involving Singapore's DBS Bank, does attempt to get bank account information from customers. That one surfaced in Hong Kong, the fourth such fake site in a month.

Tim Berners-Lee, who devised the system of Universal Resource Locator identifications to create Internet addresses, was named a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He came up with the idea for "global hypertext space" in 1989 and wrote a point and click hypertext editor which was released in 1991.

The combination of his ideas turned what had been largely a scientific and educational network into a global information and message system. He is still active with the consortium which oversees Web operations.

Passwords may be the weakest link in almost any corporate security chain.

Some companies store passwords in a master file which is accessible through the regular network. That means anybody who figures out the key to get into that file can steal not just one but every password in the company.

Some companies do not enforce regular changes of passwords. The problem here, of course, is much like the basic password policy - if you change too often or make changes too complex, users will write them down or store them where they are easily found.

But time spent in devising a chance policy that is easy enough for users to implement and follow but complex enough to confuse a casual intruder is time well spent.

Any password policy must be enforced to be effective. It's the old story: Any law is only as good as its enforcement.