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U.S. To Impose Spyware Control Laws
ArbiterOne writes "BBC has the story: A bill has been introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives to control the proliferation of spyware and malware. The proposed bill would force programs to inform the user before installing programs, and require that spyware be easily removed. A study by EarthLink found that the average user has 28 spyware programs on their computer!"
Will this bill make it illegal for "copy-protected" CDs to add malware to your computer through autorun? Will they be required to make it easy to remove the malware?
Why is legislation necessary here? this is a problem that could be solved with just a little technical nous.
Instead, we get another law, pretend it's enough, and find it's as toothless as the paper it's written on.
Why is it that the Beeb has the scoop on a pending US bill, before I can find this story in any of the major US media outlets?
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The average WINDOWS machine has 28 spyware programs on it.
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It would be interesting to see what percentage of these "victims" used IE as their browser exclusively. I only use IE for sites written by fanboys which require IE. Otherwise, I use Opera. For kicks, I ran spybot on my pc at work and all it found were about a dozen cookies. The techie who suggested doing this says that the typical pc on our network has anywhere from 20 to 50 bad things. Go figure.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
It uncovered an average of 28 spyware programs on each PC scanned during the first three months of the year.
How exactly was Earthlink able to detect the installed spyware? Tracking outgoing requests that were related to known spyware apps? Or did they allow users to run software that reported back to Earthlink for this survey?
C:\>
Of course, the definition of "spyware" is critical. Legislatures in the past have had a hard time defining computer-related terms without making them too broad (for example, is your web browser spyware? After all, it's sending cookies back to all kinds of web sites!)
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Are you sure it was actually 4600 different programs? I find that hard to believe - It seems that the computer wouldn't run at all with that many programs running in the background.
Could the "4600" number have been the total number of spyware programs running, files found, and registry keys found?
I wonder how many are on my Windows machine? Oh wait, none. It's not that hard to keep spyware off your machine. Goodness. I guess the key is "the average user...". Ah well.
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28 spyware programs? No, that's not at all what Earthlink said. They did I study counting the number of spyware programs, adware programs and tracking cookies, and found an average of 28 per computer. Someone, either malevolently or ignorantly, decided to trumpet this as 28 spyware programs per PC. Even though the number seems on the face of it absurd (it is), most reporters and Slashdotters don't bother digging in & figuring out what the number really means.
So I don't know if the writer & editor thought it was funny or true, but either way, stating that the average computer has 28 instances of spyware is outright false.
I fix computers for people in my neighborhood. I'm the guy they call when they don't know how to do something, or they got a new DVD drive, or something isn't working. I've seen that happen a few times.
Just a week ago I was called to help a nice lady setup her new Dell and copy the files off her old Gateway. She bought the computer because she was tired of the Gateway always crashing and being slow and such. Every few minutes a "Explorer has crashed" dialog would come up. I can understand why she hated it.
So she bought a new Dell. Well, when copying files over I noticed what the problem was on the old Gateway. Tons and tons of spyware. Things loading in the tray, in startup, in IE, chaning preferences, causing popups, everything. She thought the computer was just "old" and was having problems, when it was all the spyware. I told her I could fix it, but she wasn't interested.
Now the fact is she had other reasons for getting the new PC. She wanted a flatscreen to get more desk space. She had a camcorder and wanted to be able to make DVDs of family movies and other such things. Her old computer would have been fine for her other tasks (like surfing and e-mail and word processing), but she really would have needed a new one to make DVDs and CDs and such.
But the point is, I can EASILY see tons of people buying new computers due to spyware. If it wasn't for that, why wouldn't Dell and other ship somehting like Ad-Aware on the computers they sell?
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Since we all know how technical majority of politicians are, I can just see them basing this whole bill on the definition of spyware. If you ask any of the companies that make spyware if their product is spyware, everyone will say that it isn't. This is just going to lead to millions of dollars being wasted on deliberations as to the definition of spyware etc.
This bill it just an attempt to treat one problem. Why don't they make an ethical software bill where all software is required to follow certain standards. Don't worry about the user being informed of the reporting of their personal info. There are too many ways to legally get the consent of the user like a 349575 page EULA. Just focus on things like being easy to find and uninstall. This would make all spyware as we know it illegal. Also, required all software list the legal name of the individual(s) or company that developed the software.
While I think that spyware and virus writers should be summarily executed, we all know that it is better to treat the source of the problem. Do something like imposing a small fine for every piece of software they install on your computer without giving you the ability to uninsall it with less than 10 clicks and no visiting a website (that doesn't exist) to complete the uninstall process. Figure $5 per violation, they'll be out of busines in no time.
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Do they mean 28 actual spyware programs? That seems pretty hard to swallow. Or do they mean 28 tracking cookies (which are OS independent).
-a
It's not that hard to keep spyware off your machine
No? You will be able to avoid clicking a yes button on an Active X install dialog box which is obscured by a popup window or comes in a serious of several other sensible Yes/No questions, while you are looking for some information in a hurry? How about unpatched IE exploits that don't ask for anything.
Yes, you can run Mozilla. But then you are replacing part of what Microsoft says is the OS. You might as well run cygwin with X server and no native Win32 programs and then compare your security to other people.
don'tcha just love it when one hand of Corporate America Chops Off the other hand? It's kind of like watching a slow motion train wreck, or a circular firing squad.
RS
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