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Australia Says No To Spyware
PrivateDonut writes "Australian parliament introduced a bill on Thursday that would 'make it illegal for anyone to install a program without informed approval and attract a fine of $10,000.' Is this doomed to fail as many other anti-spam/spyware bills have failed? Or has Australia finally hit the mark?"
Not just 'consent', but 'informed' as well.
Does this include automatic update features? If an update breaks something, is it malware?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Some free applications include spyware in their main installs, to provide ad revenue or whatever.
Kazaa used to be one of those, is that right?
Can this make any impact on those programs who refuse to install unless you also allow numerous pieces of malware to go with it?
Violator gets $10,000 fine.
Austrailia govt gets $5,000.
Bounty Hunter who finds the product gets $5,000.
All the spyware on the internet would be rooted out in less than a week if Australia could smack down fines to people across the world.
God spoke to me.
Fines, BAH.
An blacklist of people that develop or use mal/spyware. Something that ISP's can check before they give internet access or hosting services.
I can hear it now, "Oh sir. I'm sorry, but you have a high Internet abuse score. We are unable to aprove your e-mail account at this time."
Ignorance is amusing, stupidity is annoying.
At the end of the day we all know that local laws like this have no effect in a global place unless every country connected to the Internet agrees on such laws. Spyware software is a matter of education and choice. The best way to fight it is to educate people on software and the importance of knowing how it works so consumers can make choices based upon facts and information. Some operating systems allow spyware to be installed, others do not. People need to learn that they can choose operating systems that do not allow Spyware. And they also need to learn how to avoid the pitfalls in the operating systems that allow spyware to be installed easily by clicking on the wrong advertisement banner in the wrong browser if the wrong configuration is in use. Knowledge = power....
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
For example, if , under the proposed law,, action can be taken against the (American owned) banks which process the money for all spamware sales, then it would stop.
If the Australian government says to American Express: "If, after being informed that one of your clients is using your service to process payments for items promoted by spyware, you continue to make payments to that client, then the Austrailian branch of your company will be fined $10,ooo for each transaction" it would stop.
If the American government threatened to withdraw banking licences from banks that provided services to those who use spyware/spam to promote their goods and services, there would be no spam. They could do this using existing anti-corruption/money laundering legislation. But they don't.
Unfortunately, the US government has sold its soul to the devil.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
In addition to not using obvious passwords, there is a rampant problem on the side of websites: requiring the user to choose a question and answer in case of a lost password. Stuff like, "What city were you born in?" Such a question may foil a criminal on the other side of the world from his victim, but if a criminal is targeting locals, perhaps even acquaintances, friends, and family, then it's trivial. Personally, I just respond to the questions with a random string of characters that only leet hackers could guess.