Slashdot Mirror
Spyware Removal is Big Business
prostoalex writes "Just when you thought all the software niches were taken, IDC comes out with the report saying $12 million was spent on spyware removal tools in 2003, and $305 million will be spent in 2008. IDC also estimates two-thirds of PC users out there are infected. Large PC vendors are waking up to the spyware threat, having their call centers overwhelmed with spyware-related calls."
...that the vast majority of this spyware was installed by exploiting vulnerabilities (some overt, some more roundabout) in primarily Internet Explorer.
And once an ordinary user is compromised by one piece of spyware, it's usually a downhill battle.
Imagine how different the situation would be if, for the last several years, there had been real competition on the browser scene. Of course, there may never have been a way to solve the problem with the courts anyway: they DID decide that Microsoft illegally used its monopoly position to bundle IE, but Microsoft knew exactly what it was doing. By the time the slow wheels of justice had turned, Microsoft's browser takeover was virtually complete.
And during this entire time, IE fundamentally was stagnant. There were glaring, egregious security issues, and no new features that had already become pervasive and popular with alternative browsers (popup blocking, tabs, etc., not to mention a lack of horrible inattention to security). I imagine Firefox's recent uptick in usage illustrates, even after all that, just how bad IE sucks. But this will only be good for Microsoft, and for everyone: if Microsoft feels it has competition from things like Mac OS X in OSes and Firefox in browsers, we get developments like SP2. We get a new "commitment" to security. We'll ostensibly get new features in and an attention to security in IE. (Well, we can dream, right?)
I wonder how many dollars have been spent, or how many families have actually bought new computers (yes, it happens), once their PC slows down and/or crashes, hangs, or has other problems, to the point that it's virtually unusable. Yes. People really do this. They don't feel they can or know how to just wipe the machine and reinstall Windows, and even if they did, they don't know how to save everything they want to. So they just buy a new computer.
Measure that in negative values. AOL ships Viewpoint Media Player, a known spyware, with their client, which supposedly also includes anti-spyware software.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I travel with a frequently-updated set of tools for exorcising various demons from PC's, and am accustomed to mucking about in the registry, winsock stacks and other oh-so-fun places to finish up the job.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
There are already many examples of this, spyware companies do it to destroy their competition (i.e. remove competitors spyware, but not theirs)
In my opinion, most spyware is easy enough to get rid of using tools like Spybot-S&D, SpySweeper and AdAware. The one category that I've found harder to remove are the ones that embed themselves into the Winsock chain and redirect network features.
I cleaned out one PC last month - it wasn't infected too bad, only several dozen things for the scanners to complain about, and I've dealt with systems that had several hundred! - but even after everything seemed to be gone, its default search URL and things like that kept getting hijacked. I had to grab a tool to fix the Winsock chain; some malware had slipped itself in there and was screwing things up.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
My argument woud be that these authors are invading my privacy when I legitimately get onto the web.
On the other hand, I will shoot myself in the foot by seeing their potential argument too:
They could argue that by visiting specific sites and probably clicking some links, I agree to enjoying all services they offer on these sites including stuff that would be installed on my PC.
Any legal minds here?