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The Battle Against Junk Mail and Spyware
wildfrontiersman writes "A New York Times editorial by Brent Staples, The Battle Against Junk Mail and Spyware on the Web, laments 'The story of technology is the story of noble aspirations overtaken by a hard-core huckster reality. This process is on vivid display in the debate about electronic junk mail, which makes up more than half of all the e-mail that travels on the Internet.' He criticizes the new spam law, the lack of attention to spyware and how it threatens our beloved internet."
The new spam law does nothing about the invisible programs that invade our computers as we move from one Web site to the next. These insidious programs -- variously known as adware, spyware and snoopware -- can cause computers to call up aggressive ads or can actually track a user's movements through the Internet for use by marketers later on. The most sinister programs can record everything the user does, whether offline or surfing the Net.
And what the article does not discuss at any length is that we have Microsoft security (or lack thereof) to blame for most of the spyware problems. If Windows had better security, then most of these problems would not be there to the same degree as they currently are.
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I was visiting my parents when they got their Dell and out of the box it required over 20Mb of security fixes and had a virus scanner (Mcafee) that was set to explode after 90 days if they didn't subscribe and the firewall off by default. Oh and of course their account that they setup with the instructions made them an administrator. We got that patched up and hardened quickly but your average Joe who buys a system and plugs it in is just a sitting duck and he has no clue. It's pathetic that companies like Dell can't harden the things a little before shipping them out.