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The State Of Grayware On the PC
Checkers and Pogo writes "Grayware inhabits a murky area between pure malware and useful apps, and it's a growing problem. 38.1% of all malicious PC software falls into the grayware category, and so-called 'grayware 2.0' is targeting social-networking sites. Ars Technica's Jeremy Reimer notes, 'The "threat" of rogue applications like SuperWall wasn't immediately obvious: they seemed more like annoyances than real security risks. But as users entered more and more personal information into their Facebook accounts, it became clear that the possibilities for abuse were rampant. For example, because Facebook allows users to "tag" photos with the names of friends, it is possible for third-party apps to distribute photos that a user might only want to be seen by their inner circle of friends.'"
Gator was a piece of shit too. I can recall stumbling upon that wondering how it got there and why and then taking the time to find out how to remove it completely. Awful.
In terms of facebook, which I'm contemplating removing all my pictures/info from and "deleting" my account, I remember going to kongregate, a flash game site, and discovering that it had some sneaky little trick of noticing I had a cookie from facebook and it sent some shit to my account. I quickly rectified that by changing all my privacy settings, since I rarely ever use it I hadn't noticed the updates to it.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Well, I was originally gonna post something about DRM being grayware, since there's an arguably useful thing (media) with something else harmful (DRM) piggybacking on it. But if grayware is a sham term, then I guess that just means that DRM really is malware.
Suck it, Sony!
So why didn't the idiots in IT (or was that you?) just get a set of kitten cursors and add them to the machines?
Hardly so. You were on the dot. I'd pick XMMS or Winamp over iTunes anyday, with the older Winamp 2.x series being the best of the lot. And iTunes follows the same bundling thing with Quicktime, and installing its auto-updater. Personally, I'd much rather prefer to manage my collection myself and treat a music player as if it were a USB hard disk.
I am not sure that is entirely fair. Facebook specifically gives the option for each photo album as to whether you friends, your friends friends, or the whole world has access to your pictures on Facebook.
Your friends could of course download your pictures and then post to other people them themselves but that makes Facebook no less secure than emailing your photos out. The difference is on Facebook people don't go around recieving and forwarding the photos on, they just look at the albums, so I think that photos get passed between groups of friends less often than if they are distributed, of course it can happen quite easily and probably does. If your friends can see them in softcopy you have given up sole control over them. Nobody would transmit sensitive photos to their friends (they wouldn't want them to see them anymore than anyone else) and I don't think anyone I know would be stupid enough to upload those photos to Facebook either. I don't use Facebook's applications (like Superwall) but it is a great way to share photos that involve them (such as parties etc), I don't think it is unreasonable to ask that the applications my friends use respect my privacy choices on Facebook if Facebook itself respects them (I am not convinced that it does however).
The bottom line is that if you don't want others to see your photos, you probably don't want your friends to see them either.
The real bottom line is i keep getting distracted and I'm not sure what I am trying to say really.
If this were really happening, what would you think?