Posted by
CowboyNeal
on from the keeping-things-clean dept.
peterfa writes "Sun and Google have teamed up and started a project called Stop Badware. This project aims to expose all the spyware and adware bundled in software and the companies that are responsible. While it's funded by Sun and Google, the research will be done by Oxford and Harvard."
What about Stanford?
by
Tackhead
·
· Score: 5, Funny
> While it's funded by Sun and Google, the research will be done by Oxford and Harvard.
Stanford and Berkeley snubbed by alumni, film at 11!
Excellent!
by
rob_squared
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Not because google is handling funding, but that an organization that doesn't have a vested interest in such business persuits is doing the actual work.
PS: I'm waiting for Google to annouce its plan for world peace.
Google's income comes from advertising, and these spywares are showing ads, hence competiting for eyeballs, I would say Google has a large interest in squashing these competitors.
Personally I'd be satisfied with some sort of a trusted archive that allows you to research different programs/sites/companies. There's a lot of info available on the web but most of it is buried in tech forums or as come ons for dubious spyware removal programs, both of which you're never really confident about the truth. That way it wouldn't be just a yay or nay that goes on under the covers, but a place where you could find out what a program's issues are, or the track record of a developer.
How about...
by
doorbot.com
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
How about also exposing the companies that pay for the information gathered by spyware/adware? In other words, the ones actually funding it...
Project UngoodWare aims to give you a double plus good bellyfeel about your computer. The people of Harvard and Oxford will have a goodthink and make an effort to stop the many installcrimes done by the unpersons who make ungoodware.
Project Ungoodware: brought you you by the Minisry of Love.
Google IS the problem
by
slashkitty
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Notice how the site has a forum, on google groups. The ADS on those pages are for adware based spyware removers!
Google makes millions if not billions from adware/spyware companies who advertise on google and google affiliates. Lots of standard searches like "screensavers" and "smilies" will bring up adware, and if you search for a spyware removal tool, you'll likely get some even worse spyware than you had before.
If Google wanted to do good (and not be evil) they would BAN spyware, adware and badware from AdSense, and they'd filter them from the listings!
Who's with me?
-- -- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
And the URL is...
by
fugas
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Good news, but I would have been happier if the article or submitter also mentioned the actual URL of the site...
Spyware is easy money
by
chris411
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I often get paid to provide tech support to friends and other people from my area (just a modest village) for a few bucks. Recently, our local ISP not only provided us with DSL, but also a special offer that includes a payment plan for a (cheap) Dell computer if you sign up for DSL for a year.
You would not believe the number of computers that went out of commission within the first month just from being overloaded with spyware/adware. I often feel the urge to tell them "Stop surfing pr0n sites. Stop clicking on everything in sight just because it tells you to click it."
But I don't. Because I know that as soon as I fix it, they'll just ask me to come over again within a few weeks. I seriously doubt they would listen anyway. As I said, easy money.
Google profits from spyware
by
slashkitty
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Google has a reason to keep spyware around. They make millions from selling ad space on their search results and affiliates TO the adware companies. Do a search for "smiles", "screensavers" or "Spyware removal" and you'll see lots of ads for adware/spyware!
Google should do less evil by not accepting ads from these companies.
-- -- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I get what they're doing
by
evilsofa
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This past week I've been helping one of my friends remove spyware from his computer. All he did was hook up to a relative's cable to download a large update file, and in the space of a couple of hours, his unprotected PC got loaded down with several DOZEN virii including VX2, smartloadb, Virtumundo, etc.
Google believes click fraud to be the most significant threat to the internet. This makes sense because click fraud is what makes all the malware, adware and virii PROFITABLE. What Google and Sun are doing with stopbadware.org is their answer to that. And it's an answer that is needed badly.
Why? As a very recent veteran of attempting to remove malware, I can tell you that the good side of this war is terribly, horribly disorganized. Let me explain:
If you get a massive infection of various kinds of malware, or if you want to protect yourself against all this stuff, you have to:
1. Protect yourself with a firewall (software example: Zonealarm) 2. Run or have available an antitrojan application (example: Trojan Hunter) 3. Run an antivirus program (commercial examples: Norton or McAfee; freeware example: Grisoft AVG Free) 4. Run several antispyware programs (examples: Spybot, Lavasoft Adaware, Microsoft Antispyware) 5. Use something like merijn.org's HiJackThis to find out what your system is infected with that all of the above cannot detect 6. If you're infected with something difficult like VX2 that can't be detected by ANY of the above, you may also need to hunt down very specific helper scripts and applications to deal with it, or even worse figure out how to remove it manually (which is generally VERY technical and difficult).
So, you have firewall, antitrojan, antivirus, antispyware and detection all covered by entirely different industries, most of which don't have much overlap (antivirus programs still do little against antispyware, for example). In the antispyware category, none of the legit programs can detect everything, so you need to run several of them.
You also have the fact that most of these anti-malware companies are commercial; they need to make money doing what they do, because what they do is very difficult, very technical, and has to be done VERY FAST. You see freeware versions, probably because they can't stand to see people who can't afford all these applications get run into the ground by the malware industry.
It doesn't help at all that you've got hundreds - literally, hundreds - of malware installers masquerading as antispyware, antitrojan and antivirus programs. The antispyware industry has had no choice but to put up www.spywarrior.com just so people can sort out the few good ones from the many bad ones. That site is run by one of the legit companies. That company would obviously much rather have nonprofit, noncommercial oversight declaring who is legit and who isn't - it puts a commercial company in an uncomfortable ethical position to be declaring legitimacy of other companies in its industry. But I don't see that they had any choice; to not do it would be even worse.
It looks like that is what badware.org is intended to be, and what is so badly needed - a nonprofit organization that has no base or funding from within the antimalware industries, to oversee and report on those industries.
Do you know what the process for cleaning an infected computer is right now? You post HiJackThis logs to a variety of different forums (just google "HiJackThis Logfile" for a sample) and people voluntarily, out of the goodness of their hearts, help you with incredibly technical removal procedures (google "VX2 removal" to see what I mean). If you want to look up these removal procedures yourself, you google around on various antispyware and antivirus web sites with various descriptions (often vague or assuming you have their commercial product). It's horribly disorganized, with different antivirus companies calling each virus by a different name. A good example: try and find out how to tell the difference between a Lo
Re:What is there to research?
by
TubeSteak
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Internet users can visit StopBadware.org to check whether programs they want to download are infected with badware and alert others to programs they have encountered that include malicious software such as spyware, incessant pop-up ads or other obtrusive programs.
StopBadware.org will publish short user friendly reports on downloads they have identified as badware, as well as more detailed academic studies on the problem of badware.
StopBadware.org will publicize the names of companies that make up the most insidious purveyors of badware and shed light on how they make money through unethical marketing practices. For example, advertisements will spotlight the worst purveyors of badware.
StopBadware.org will seek the horror stories from Internet users who have been adversely affected by badware. It will publish these stories to raise awareness of badware's harmful affects.
To be fair to the beatniks, they have a different focus and the fact that they've got Consumer Reports on their side shows it. IMHO, Their goal is to review software & not to sue bad guys or write laws.
Slashdot Mirror
Stanford and Berkeley snubbed by alumni, film at 11!
Not because google is handling funding, but that an organization that doesn't have a vested interest in such business persuits is doing the actual work.
PS: I'm waiting for Google to annouce its plan for world peace.
I don't get it.
Personally I'd be satisfied with some sort of a trusted archive that allows you to research different programs/sites/companies. There's a lot of info available on the web but most of it is buried in tech forums or as come ons for dubious spyware removal programs, both of which you're never really confident about the truth. That way it wouldn't be just a yay or nay that goes on under the covers, but a place where you could find out what a program's issues are, or the track record of a developer.
How about also exposing the companies that pay for the information gathered by spyware/adware? In other words, the ones actually funding it...
/Didn't RTFA
Project UngoodWare aims to give you a double plus good bellyfeel about your computer. The people of Harvard and Oxford will have a goodthink and make an effort to stop the many installcrimes done by the unpersons who make ungoodware.
Project Ungoodware: brought you you by the Minisry of Love.
Notice how the site has a forum, on google groups. The ADS on those pages are for adware based spyware removers! Google makes millions if not billions from adware/spyware companies who advertise on google and google affiliates. Lots of standard searches like "screensavers" and "smilies" will bring up adware, and if you search for a spyware removal tool, you'll likely get some even worse spyware than you had before. If Google wanted to do good (and not be evil) they would BAN spyware, adware and badware from AdSense, and they'd filter them from the listings! Who's with me?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Good news, but I would have been happier if the article or submitter also mentioned the actual URL of the site...
You would not believe the number of computers that went out of commission within the first month just from being overloaded with spyware/adware. I often feel the urge to tell them "Stop surfing pr0n sites. Stop clicking on everything in sight just because it tells you to click it."
But I don't. Because I know that as soon as I fix it, they'll just ask me to come over again within a few weeks. I seriously doubt they would listen anyway. As I said, easy money.
Google should do less evil by not accepting ads from these companies.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
This past week I've been helping one of my friends remove spyware from his computer. All he did was hook up to a relative's cable to download a large update file, and in the space of a couple of hours, his unprotected PC got loaded down with several DOZEN virii including VX2, smartloadb, Virtumundo, etc.
Google believes click fraud to be the most significant threat to the internet. This makes sense because click fraud is what makes all the malware, adware and virii PROFITABLE. What Google and Sun are doing with stopbadware.org is their answer to that. And it's an answer that is needed badly.
Why? As a very recent veteran of attempting to remove malware, I can tell you that the good side of this war is terribly, horribly disorganized. Let me explain:
If you get a massive infection of various kinds of malware, or if you want to protect yourself against all this stuff, you have to:
1. Protect yourself with a firewall (software example: Zonealarm)
2. Run or have available an antitrojan application (example: Trojan Hunter)
3. Run an antivirus program (commercial examples: Norton or McAfee; freeware example: Grisoft AVG Free)
4. Run several antispyware programs (examples: Spybot, Lavasoft Adaware, Microsoft Antispyware)
5. Use something like merijn.org's HiJackThis to find out what your system is infected with that all of the above cannot detect
6. If you're infected with something difficult like VX2 that can't be detected by ANY of the above, you may also need to hunt down very specific helper scripts and applications to deal with it, or even worse figure out how to remove it manually (which is generally VERY technical and difficult).
So, you have firewall, antitrojan, antivirus, antispyware and detection all covered by entirely different industries, most of which don't have much overlap (antivirus programs still do little against antispyware, for example). In the antispyware category, none of the legit programs can detect everything, so you need to run several of them.
You also have the fact that most of these anti-malware companies are commercial; they need to make money doing what they do, because what they do is very difficult, very technical, and has to be done VERY FAST. You see freeware versions, probably because they can't stand to see people who can't afford all these applications get run into the ground by the malware industry.
It doesn't help at all that you've got hundreds - literally, hundreds - of malware installers masquerading as antispyware, antitrojan and antivirus programs. The antispyware industry has had no choice but to put up www.spywarrior.com just so people can sort out the few good ones from the many bad ones. That site is run by one of the legit companies. That company would obviously much rather have nonprofit, noncommercial oversight declaring who is legit and who isn't - it puts a commercial company in an uncomfortable ethical position to be declaring legitimacy of other companies in its industry. But I don't see that they had any choice; to not do it would be even worse.
It looks like that is what badware.org is intended to be, and what is so badly needed - a nonprofit organization that has no base or funding from within the antimalware industries, to oversee and report on those industries.
Do you know what the process for cleaning an infected computer is right now? You post HiJackThis logs to a variety of different forums (just google "HiJackThis Logfile" for a sample) and people voluntarily, out of the goodness of their hearts, help you with incredibly technical removal procedures (google "VX2 removal" to see what I mean). If you want to look up these removal procedures yourself, you google around on various antispyware and antivirus web sites with various descriptions (often vague or assuming you have their commercial product). It's horribly disorganized, with different antivirus companies calling each virus by a different name. A good example: try and find out how to tell the difference between a Lo
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!