Finland's Ovi

Tens of thousands of Finnish network service passwords and usernames have been leaked onto the internet. Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation is currently investigating the situation.
 
The file contains information from chat rooms and social networking sites. Bank usernames are not part of the list.

Some of the usernames and passwords are used by individuals on many different sites.

The information security company F-Secure is urging people who visit such forums to change their passwords. The Finnish National Computer Emergency Response Team Cert-fi also issued a warning on Saturday. It said that passwords should be long and contain symbols.

The Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority announced on Saturday that about 80,000 Finnish network service usernames were floating around on the internet. It said Finnish usernames have never been revealed to such a wide extent in the past.

The police have asked foreign countries for assistance in finding those responsible for the leak.

Source: YLE

In order to alleviate the growing shortage of labour in certain branches in Finland, some companies have begun to use the recruitment services of advertising and communications agencies. The idea is to use consultants in order to improve the company image or to actually recruit new employees for the business.

Fazer, one of the largest corporations in the Finnish food and confectionery industry, is suffering from an acute shortage of labour. On Tuesday, the company offered bread and vacancies to passers-by at Helsinki’s Kamppi Center.

Those who were interested could complete an electronic application in a few minutes, informing Fazer of their competence.

Fazer had planned the event in cooperation with the GCI Finland communications agency. Within around 90 minutes, people on their way to work picked up a total of 2,400 sandwiches to go. For those who stopped at the stand, even other kinds of finger food were available.
The Fazer Group’s Finnish operations comprise the Fazer Amica catering services, Fazer bakeries, and the Candyking confectionery “shop-in-shop” concept. In total, they employ approximately 6,300 people.

The demand for new employees is great, particularly at Fazer Amica, as some 60 to 70 per cent of their present workforce will retire by 2015.

At present, Fazer has some 50 to 60 vacancies. The estimated number of the applications filled in at the Kamppi recruitment event was a couple of hundred. The campaign by Fazer also included an internet page, showing a woman “interviewing” an applicant, which was expected to appeal particularly to young people.

Teija Andersen, the Managing Director of Fazer Amica, believes that this is the right trend, while saying that there is still much to be done in terms of marketing. Many other Finnish companies find themselves in a similar situation, while not being willing to announce it publicly. They fear that they might be regarded as losers who are not even able to persuade people to work for them.

Nevertheless, they should recognise that they cannot leave it too long before they step in to the recruitment game: this week’s recruitment stunt may work, but sooner or later the public will tire of such things and ignore them.

In addition to public exercises using advertising and public relations firms, some companies are looking at directed searches via such online communities as Facebook or LinkedIn.

Other firms, despairing of ever finding the right people to fill vacancies from Finland, are turning their eyes abroad: professionals in the construction, metals, and HVAC trades are being sought from nearby countries, while there are efforts to secure the return of Finnish nurses from Sweden, Norway, and the UK.

Source: Helsingin Sanomat

Following a probe published by Helsingin Sanomat towards the end of August, Minister of the Interior Anne Holmlund (National Coalition Party) wanted to clear up whether or not Thai massage parlours in Helsinki are hosting criminal activities.

The newspaper’s report suggested that sex services are freely available at all parlours offering Thai massage in Helsinki.

Based on a detailed investigation into the capital’s Thai massage businesses, the Helsinki Police Department published its own report on Tuesday, confirming that sex services are indeed generally offered at all Thai massage parlours in the city.

Moreover, the special inquiry by police implied that there are individuals behind at least some of the businesses offering Thai massage who are responsible for the operation in several localities.

However, the Helsinki Police Department did not find any evidence that would point to human trafficking or professional operation. Hence there was no reason to launch any preliminary investigations for the time being.

Chief Police Inspector Matti Rinne from the Ministry of the Interior reports that in other parts of Finland there are areas where local police departments are in fact preparing preliminary inquiries into Thai massage businesses.
According to the police, there are some 200 Thai massage parlours in Finland, 54 of them located in Helsinki.

Anne Holmlund supports the view expressed by the police that cross-administrative investigations should be launched into the operations of those parlours where evidence points to some illegal activities. Such investigations should combine the efforts of the police, the Tax Administration, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior, the Directorate of Immigration, and the Finnish occupational safety districts.

“Such a project, conducted by public authorities, could bring us new information in order that we would possibly be able to launch a preliminary inquiry into the matter”, noted Police Commissioner Jukka Riikonen from the Helsinki Police Department. The police wish to take a role in the proceedings, but are not eager to be the main or only player.

The report indicated further that there is reason to suspect many Thai massage parlours in Finland of procurement, tax fraud, and accounting offences.
Human trafficking is not among those offences of which the Finnish Thai massage parlours are being suspected, as according to the interviews with the National Bureau of Investigation, the masseuses have been free to move from one place to another independently. Moreover, the offering of sex services has been voluntary.

“It is also worth noting that even though the official bookkeeping of the parlours show that their turnover is low, the number of such massage places is growing steadily”, says Matti Rinne.
As the results of the special investigation suggest that the businesses offering Thai massage must be profitable at least to some extent, the police are suspecting some Thai massage parlours of tax fraud and accounting offences.

When Helsingin Sanomat tested 30 Thai massage parlours in August, a receipt was given only in one place.

The Minister of the Interior is now calling for opportunities for the Thai masseuses to have alternative options to earn their living.

Source: Helsingin Sanomat

Nokia cuts the price of one of its top-selling phones in anticipation of the holiday shopping season.

HELSINKI — Nokia slashed this week around 15 percent off from the price of its 3G phone model E65, one of the top sales and profit generators for the world’s largest cellphone maker, market data showed on Friday.

Analysts said the price cut was deeper than usual, but they were not surprised by the timing as handset vendors are setting up their offerings for the upcoming Christmas sales season.

Nokia sold more than one million E65’s in the second quarter, making it one of the top three products for the firm. It will report July-September results on October 18, but analysts said all signs showed that good sales of the phone have continued.

Nokia said E65 price cut was part of its normal price adjustments after the phone has been on the market for more than 6 months. Its success helped to pull Nokia’s ailing enterprise unit to the black in the second quarter after years of losses.

“This is normal for any product, the price varies at different stages of the product life cycle,” said a Nokia spokeswoman.

After the price cut E65 competes in the same price category with rivals hit phones Samsung’s U600 and Sony Ericsson’s K810i.

Apple cut its iPhone price by one third just two months after it launched the phone, but later offered some rebates after phone owners’ uproar. Price cuts of up to 10 percent are normal in the industry after first few months of sales.

Nokia has also clearly lowered prices for its E61i, N73 and N73 Music phones this month, but not as sharply as E65.

“Nokia has been very aggressive with its pricing strategy during 2007,” said Ben Wood, head of research at consultancy CCS.

Source: Reuters

Google seems to be intent on making waves.

There’s speculation that Google could launch a Facebook-rivaling service on November 5th. Today the company announced that they’ve acquired Jaiku - the ‘what are you doing’ and presence service based in Helsinki, Finland.

Whilst there’s no mention of how much Google paid (all the terms remain confidential), it’s certainly something that’s going to weigh in the minds of rival services such as Twitter (particularly as Twitter has yet to establish its business model).

As for what’s next for Jaiku, all the founders will say is ‘Check back in a few months to see what we’ve developed.

Relevant Links: http://jaiku.com/help/google

Source: Nik Fletcher

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In Older News:

Yesterday (Oct. 10), search giant Google announced that it will be buying Jaiku, a Finnish startup company that specializes in enabling friends to keep in touch and share whatever they are doing at any given moment using mobile devices. However, the terms of the transaction were not disclosed when the deal was officially closed.

Jaiku, a Helsinki-based firm that was founded early last year is a social networking and mini-messaging service that enables people to keep track of each others; activities on-the-go using mobile devices.

The Mountain View, California-based Google believes that activity streams and mobile presence are important areas in which it can add a lot of value for its users.

Google also added that Jaiku’s technology and talented team would be a great addition to Google’s current application and mobile teams.

As it is Google seems to be making it a priority of following Internet users as they go mobile. In fact, a while ago, it was reported that Google was busy crafting the so-called “gphone” using an open-source software platform tailored to its online services.

Besides, last month, Google acquired Zingku, a mobile social networking firm targeted mainly at teenagers and the youth.
According to Google product manager Tony Hsieh, “Technology has made staying in touch with your friends and family both easier and harder. Living a fast-paced, on-the-go lifestyle is easier (and a lot of fun), but it’s more difficult to keep track of everyone when they’re running around at warp speed. That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve acquired Jaiku.”

Following the transaction, Jaiku will continue to support its existing user base. Jaiku users would be able to invite new friends but new user registrations have been closed for the time being.

By Terhi Kinnunen

Next time you complain about waiting in a queue, spare a thought for Pavel.

He has parked his truck in a line stretching for 5 km (3 miles) — and this is a good day at the Finnish-Russian border.

Russia’s economy is booming and its hunger for new cars, televisions and machinery means the transit routes through Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are clogged with trucks.

Because of this surging trans-border traffic, Finland is now as large a trading partner for Russia as the United States, but customs posts on the border are struggling to cope.

Pavel makes a return trip to Finland once a week: this time it was with a truck full of electronic equipment for Moscow.

Two weeks ago he spent 48 hours waiting to get back home. Last winter the queues stretched for more than 60 km.

While the vehicles are stuck at the border, retailers in Russia and the transport firms are losing money and local people are scared to drive on the roads with one lane blocked by trucks.

The Finns blame the Russians for the queues which are also a problem in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. “Last year we had queues on 300 days,” said Mika Poutiainen, head of Finnish customs at Vaalimaa, 186 km east of Helsinki.

Vaalimaa is Finland’s busiest border crossing to Russia, dealing with 700-800 trucks a day. Poutiainen says Finnish customs could double the amount of trucks that pass through because processing export papers takes only a couple of minutes.

“But because of the different kinds of procedures … the limit is set by the Russian side,” he said.

Russians prefer to import goods through Finland because Russian harbors near St Petersburg do not have enough unloading equipment or warehouses, and to minimize theft.

CROSSING POINTS

The amount of goods imported through Finland has doubled since 2002 to about 3 million tonnes in 2006 and Russia’s transport ministry admits its officials cannot handle the growing number of vehicles.

“Crossing points cannot manage as they are not big enough,” a ministry spokeswoman said. Finland’s transport minister says Russia could do more.

“They have promised to cut the number of officials (at the border) from seven to two. And they should also increase the number of staff,” Anu Vehvilainen said.

Russia’s relations with some of its nearest neighbors, especially from the former Soviet Union, have deteriorated lately amid mutual recriminations. Russia cut oil supplies and rail links to Estonia in a row over the relocation of a Soviet war memorial in the capital Talinn.

Finnish President Tarja Halonen, who met Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the end of September, said Russia had made decisions that would help improve border traffic but had not carried them out fully.

Earlier this month the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania called for Brussels to raise the problems at border crossings at the next EU-Russia Summit.

Latvia has queues of between 700 and 1,000 trucks regularly waiting at the two main crossing points to Russia, and processing takes between 60 and 72 hours. Last month trucks stood in a queue for more than a week in Estonia.

The situation in Latvia got so bad that in April a local region declared a state of emergency to draw central government’s attention to its infrastructure needs.

FUMES AND TRASH

People living near the border crossings are fed up with the exhaust fumes, feces and trash. “There are always bottles and cans,” said Tuomo Nurkka, who lives near the Nuijamaa border crossing in Lappeenranta, 247 km northeast of Helsinki.

“Trucks are standing in one lane and other traffic is using the other lane. It makes life interesting. It is dangerous especially in winter time and when the roads are icy.”

Poutiainen said electronic customs declaration would put an end to the queues.

“We don’t have the electronic declaration because the agreement would have to be made between the European Union and Russia, not between Finland and Russia. On the EU level we are still in talks to solve this problem.”

The Finnish government has raised the issue in the EU, minister Vehvilainen said.

However, it does not expect the problem to be solved anytime soon and has put aside 24 million euros ($34 million) to build a new waiting area for the trucks.
Source: Reuters
(Additional reporting by Sakari Suoninen and Tarmo Virki in Helsinki, Patrick Lannin in Riga)