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To young workers drawing a pension seems a ‘million years away’, but that’s not stopping many from unrealistically believing they will retire with a comfortable income while making little effort to save for it. Almost a third of 25 to 34-year-olds surveyed by YouGov expect to retire on an annual pension income of £30,000, higher than the national average salary, seemingly unaware that to actually achieve their goal they will need to accumulate a pension pot of £600,000. And despite savers in this bracket putting away on average 18 per cent of their monthly disposable income – higher than any other age group – the majority of those focus on short-term saving, rather than for retirement. 

Only slightly more than one in ten of them - just 12 per cent - are actively saving into a pension. Tony Stenning, head of UK retail at BlackRock, which commissioned the survey, said: ‘Britons are facing a savings challenge. We’ve living longer and saving hard from an early age, but near term needs and uncertainty about the future mean that 79 per cent of those in their 30s are saving in cash and forgetting long-term financial security. Cash is a safety blanket but with record low interest rates, Britons could do more to protect their savings against the negative impact of inflation, and considering investing for a better return while understanding any potential risk of moving into other asset classes.’

Almost a third of younger adults who are putting aside a significant portion of their disposable income are doing so to buy a property, with 27 per cent saving for a holiday and 10 per cent for a new car. But in order to secure a retirement income of £30,000, people aged 25 today and retiring at 65 would need to put aside £4,950 a year to accumulate a pot of just under £600,000, assuming an annual return of five per cent.

If they wait until 35 to invest, they will have to save £9,000 a year to get the same rate of return. The survey found that just 12 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds are currently saving for retirement, and only four per cent of their money is being invested.

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New eavesdropping technology could allow government agencies to 'silently record' conversations on internet chat services like Skype in real time. Until now, so called voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services have been difficult for police to tap into, because of the way they send information over the web.

The services convert analogue audio signals into digital data packets, which are then sent 'peer-to-peer' in a way that is costly and complex for third parties to intercept. That has led some countries to block VoIP services on security grounds and led the FBI to push for powers to force internet chat providers to build in backdoors that its agents can use to wiretap suspects' conversations. But now a California businessman has obtained a patent for a 'legal intercept' technology he says 'would allow governments to "silently record" VoIP communications'

Dennis Chang, president of VoIP-PAL, an chat service similar to Skype, claims his system would allow authorities to identify and monitor suspects merely by accessing their username and subscriber data, Slate reports. According to the patent, they could also be tracked down by billing records that associate names and addresses with usernames. Such a capability would make not only audio conversations but 'any other data streams such as pure data and/or video or multimedia data' open for interception.

Internet users who are paranoid enough to use false subscriber data and services to mask their IP addresses could be able to circumvent the identification. But Mr Chang's patent would nevertheless restructure the way VoIP data is sent over the internet to make it much easier for authorities to track calls. Governments worldwide have been hunting for new ways to hack into their citizens' communications online, with the various online services severely hampering their ability to conduct surveillance. The expansion of 4G mobile networks, which can carry large amounts of data, have made it easier than ever for people to make cheap VoIP calls almost anywhere and the number of mobile users of such services is expected to reach 410million by 2015.

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