Two years of compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act have shored up corporate accounting practices, but the costs haven't balanced out with the benefits gained. That's the general consensus of a wide range of business executives and auditors who gathered in Washington for an all-day roundtable hosted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The SEC and PCAOB arranged the roundtable to solicit feedback about Section 404 of the legislation, which requires companies to attest to the effectiveness of internal controls put in place to protect financial reporting systems and processes.

Kodak settles spam charges

Kodak Imaging Network Inc., an online photo-sharing service once known as Ofoto, has agreed to pay US$26,331 in penalties for violating the federal CAN-SPAM Act. The Federal Trade Commission charged that the company violated the law by sending 2 million messages that didn't provide a physical postal address or a means of opting out of receiving future e-mail.

Searchers often hit malicious sites

A study from McAfee Inc. found that users visit malicious sites some 285 million times a month by clicking on results returned by the five major search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com and AOL. The study also found that sponsored links are nearly three times as likely to bring users to malicious sites as regular search results.