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Spyware More Common in Popular Software?
Keith Young asks: "Over the past month, we have seen a 1500% increase of spyware denials on our firewall primarily due to WildTangent 'spyware' installed with AOL IM 5.5 and adware installed with Weatherbug. Since many of these widely-installed types of applications have an automatic upgrade feature, how can these be tested for license agreements, spyware, and security 'irregularities'? Is this another reason to approach management to choose only open source alternatives?"
Unfortunately gaim doesn't support AIM's video chat.
Is there something out there that does? I was looking forward to AIM 5.5 connecting with iChat to do video chat with my dad and friends; now I may have to avoid that if the AIM spyware is bad (sigh)
GPL Deconstructed
I recently discovered that screensaver.com is distributing screensavers that I wrote with their own custom installer that includes several spyware programs, some of the worst I know of, hijacks their home page, puts advertisement links all over their computers, and requires them to agree to receive spam before they're finally allowed to install my screensaver. I've dropped their affiliate commission and demanded that they stop distribute my screensavers with spyware, particularly because it hurts my reputation and is responsible for some of my support email, but so far no response (I'll give them another day or so). Spyware bundling was not a problem I had anticipated when I wrote the EULA. Next I'll be contacting other authors I who's screensavers are being distributed in this fashion.
Also, GAIM doesn't have AIM Talk. I use AIM Talk regularly to talk to someone who is running AIM on a Mac OS 9.0.4 machine. (her machine can't run OS X, and OS 9.0.4 is the last stable version)
You'd be surprised how few VoIP proggies exist for OS 9 machines, and even rarer still, proggies that also have Windows clients...
Apart from MSN Messenger (which requires at least 9.2.2), AIM seems to be the only solution.
I've recently become a fan of WinPatrol. It's shareware, but will do pretty much all you need indefinitely in its trial version.
Most spyware tend to set themselves to run automatically on startup, and WinPatrol's watchdog will bark at you whenever a program does that, and let you confirm or deny. (If you register, they'll give you information about tat program to help your decision).
Funny that AOL's own AIM Virus/Trojan Help page instructs the user on installing and using Ad-Aware (steps 5-8).
Of course, that was probably posted long before Ad-Aware would actually remove parts of AIM itself.
I have not come across any major apps I use on OS X that have a built-in "Spyware", much less have tried to hijack my browser (Safari). There are the occasional free/shareware games etc. that I have downloaded which try to call home when they are launched. Any thing that displays such behaviour is trashed immediately.
A suggestion to OS X users: get a copy of Little Snitch. Any time an "unauthorized" connection is innitiated from your Mac, Little Snitch will "blow the whistle" on the offending app. It is also vey easy to set up a list of un/authorized apps and the port(s) they are not/allowed to talk on.
After I started using it, I was a little surprised at how many junk/spam email I found calling home either to pull in some content or to log which email@address had actually clicked on the spam. Previously, I knew this was going on (email/web-bug), but I was just surprised at how prevalent it had become.
cheers- raga