For chronic procrastinators distracted by the internet, Freedom (available for PC and Mac at macfreedom.com) can help. Users input the number of interruption-free minutes desired—between 15 minutes and eight hours. The program will shut down the computer’s internet connection until time is up…

Merry Christmas to your email inbox: On Christmas Eve, the world’s largest spamming operation—believed to be operated by Russians and dubbed the “Rustock botnet”—suddenly stopped sending spam, and two other botnets went quiet thereafter: “Lethic” on Dec. 28 and “Xarvester” on Dec. 31.

Rustock alone had sent nearly half the world’s spam, so the dip was remarkable: from 70 billion messages per day before Christmas to 30 billion. (Global spam traffic peaked in August at 200 billion messages per day—92.2 percent of all email.)

The reason for the botnets’ sudden disappearance is a mystery. A spam ring called SpamIt, which paid spammers to promote things like online pharmacies, shut down in late September after an investigation by Russian authorities, so perhaps the botnets ran out of business. Russian officials also recently arrested two spammers, so perhaps other spammers are scared.

But don’t celebrate your inbox’s liberation quite yet: Some speculate that the lull is simply the calm before the storm—the botnet operators might just be taking a vacation—and many internet security experts think the spammers will be back.

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http://www.worldmag.com/articles/17591