Australian Gov't To Consider Spyware Laws

bernie writes "It seems the US is not the only country with spyware legislation in the works. According to this Computerworld article, a bill outlawing the 'harvesting without consent corporate or personal information via a Web site or with software applications for marketing purposes will be classified as 'spyware'' and is set to go before parliament later this year. In addition to making all 'spyware' opt-in the bill will cover 'malware' such as viruses, trojans, and worms. Interestingly, the article cites lack of 'international cooperation' as a barrier to effective enforcement of cyberlaws. Also included is a statement from the EFF that it 'would like to see a more serious effort made to use existing laws against unfair trade practices, misrepresentation, computer fraud and abuse, before new technology-specific laws are passed'."

Comments

Good!

[suqur]

The more spyware/malware laws we get the better. It's so frustrating trying to use a computer with tons of spyware and spyware trojans. Ugh. And they say the average PC has 28 spyware programs running on it! This needs to stop.
It took me about 8 hours to clean out a friends computer the other day. He had about 15 viruses all installing spyware daily.
Here's some suggestions for cleaning your computer:

Grisoft's AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition - this is key. Free auto-updates too
http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php

Lavasoft's Ad-Aware - run it every so often, and always be sure to update it manually.
http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html?pa rt=69274&subj=dlpage&tag=button

CWShredder - removes only a few trojans that give you tons of ads, but does a better job of fully removing them than ad-aware.
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

Spybot-Search & Destroy - Similar to Ad-Aware. You should run both.
http://download.com.com/3000-8022-10122137.html

Re:Good!

[Mz6]

"Spybot-Search & Destroy - Similar to Ad-Aware. You should run both.
Is it really necessary to run both? I've been fine with just Adaware for a while now."

Actually, it's recommended to run both of them. The reason is because they both use different methods of determining spyware. While one may not find/remove a spyware program, the other may remove it perfectly. It shouldn't take much to install and run both nd you are protected that much more. Besides, you can't beat the rpice... right?

Re:Good!

[suqur]

Wonderful Anti-Virus software, but what does it have to do with spyware/malware?

So many people don't run Anti-virus software, and many of these people are the same that open up email attachments they weren't expecting.

There are TONS of trojans out now with the simple payload of installing spyware on your PC.

The PC that I mentioned I worked on recently had over 500 dll/registry keys/executables and bookmarks (not counting another 300 cookies) that were found as spyware. I removed them all with Ad-Aware, and after a reboot, another 150 files were immediately put back by about 15 different trojans.

I consider anti-virus to be a huge deterrent to spyware.

Is it really necessary to run both? I've been fine with just Adaware for a while now.

They both find different things. So yeah, it's good to run both. Spybot also has some nice features to automatically setup your hosts file and other things to block even more spyware.

Re:Good!

[suqur]

I forgot to mention HijackThis. It's another great tool for getting rid of spyware, but it's definitely for the more advanced user. It'll show you both good and bad items, so discretion is important.

You can easily track down spyware by googling for the different exes and get tips on removing them.

http://www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html