Surfers pick Jacko's nose

Many of us devote hours each week to surfing the Web for useful information.
Now search sites Google, Yahoo! and Lycos have revealed what their 350million customers spend most time looking for.

There has been a surge in Internet queries about Michael Jackson's nose, while interest in the Bible appears to have fallen off.

Web users remain loyal to Pamela Anderson. She is still more popular than Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears or Halle Berry - except in Canada, where Spears has overtaken her.

Ignoring straightforward - and not so straightforward - searches about sex, which form most requests, the most searched-for topic on Google's UK site in October was Ulrika Jonsson, closely followed by Tesco, John Leslie, the Tube - and This is London, the online version of the Evening Standard.

BBC2's lesbian drama Tipping The Velvet also aroused interest. Eminem was the most requested celebrity, ahead of Jennifer Lopez, Nelly, Tupac Shakur, Ja Rule and Jay-Z. Harry Potter was the second most searched-for 'celebrity', while Michael Jackson was ninth. Search engines are able to compile popularity charts because every mouse-click is logged on a central database.

However, there are fears salesmen and security agencies will target and track individuals by using the data.

Yahoo!, which calls its database the Buzz Index, tells potential clients it could become 'the most potent weapon in your marketing arsenal'.

The Pentagon is planning to store and cross-reference information held about all US citizens to fight terrorism.

Those junk e-mails clogging your in-tray are probably the work of only a handful of 'spammers'. Ninety per cent of the 1.5trillion spam messages sent each year are mailed by just 150 people, according to a new study.