Even though the chair of the FTC has clear financial interests in the merger of Google and Doubleclick AND she was on the board deciding if the deal could go through AND she refused to recluse herself, the merger has been approved and there's no sign of any accountability on the way. But it wasn't a unanimous decision. The Register tells of at least one dissenting member of the FTC who sees vast privacy implications in the future. No kidding. Add Deborah Platt-Majores to the list of "Enemies of American Freedom" right up there with Bush and his people. Tags: Accountability MIA, FTC, Google

There's been a recent report about the Typo-squatting problem where they talk about mistyping a popular website name can get you served with a fake site full of ads, Malware - Viruses, Worms, and Trojans (Oh My!), or porn. They mention the McAffee SiteAdvisor software that tries to alert you if you're on a site that probably isn't what you intended, but I offer this simple tool instead: Google. Set Google to your homepage and from now on, whenever you would normally type a site name into the address bar, hit the "home" button and type it into Google's search box instead. If you mispelled it, Google will correct it and the first or second link will probably be the page you meant. Substitute a different search engine if you must. Tags: Google