China riots lead to Twitter censorship

In today's podcast: China riots; Dell price problems; and BT says no to Phorm.

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Taiwanese investigators searched the offices at Acer's new smartphone subsidiary to collect evidence of insider stock trading by a former executive at the company. Investigators from the Taipei District Prosecutor's office on Friday entered buildings owned by E-Ten Information Systems, a smartphone maker Acer bought last year. Acer said the investigation will have no impact on its business. The Taipei District Prosecutor's office is looking for evidence of alleged insider stock trading against a former vice chairman of E-Ten

China appeared to block Twitter across the country and Internet access in a western province on Monday, after ethnic riots killed at least 140 people in the remote region. The moves were an apparent bid to staunch the flow of information out of Xinjiang province and to prevent further rioting there. Twitter became inaccessible in China around 3 p.m. local time Monday, according to complaints posted by users on the site. Users of Twitter and similar Chinese sites had been posting messages about the riots through the services. The Chinese sites were not blocked on Monday afternoon. China's telecommunications operators also appeared to block Internet access in Urumqi, the provincial capital where the riots occurred.

Dell was hit by another online pricing snafu in Taiwan on Sunday, prompting a strong reprimand from the island's Consumer Protection Commission. The company was ordered last week deliver 19-inch LCD monitors sold for 500 Taiwanese dollars, around 15 US dollars, after a pricing error on its Taiwanese site. It made similar pricing errors on laptop and desktop PCs for eight hours on Sunday, slashing an E4300 laptop 18,500 Taiwan dollars, less than a third of its usual price. The price cut prompted orders for over 40,000 of the devices, the Consumer Protection Commission said Monday.

BT, a British ISP, has said it will not deploy a controversial behavioral advertising system from Phorm, but is still interested in the technology. Phorm sells Webwise, a system for tracking surfers habits in order to targeting advertising. Many sites and advertising networks do this already for sites within their network, but Webwise goes beyond this by enlisting the ISP's help to track every site visited. BT caused controversy when it tested Phorm's system without informing customers. Earlier this year, the European Commission pressed the U.K. government to provide information about Phorm after concerns that the system may violate European regulations.

And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Peter Sayer in Paris. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.