Julie Amero Case About Law, Not Adware

Adware is at the center of debates over the Julie Amero case, in which a 40-year old substitute teacher was convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child. More specifically, Amero did not turn off a computer which was serving up pornographic images in the classroom. Or, as she herself described it, "The pop-ups never went away. They were continuous. The computer was completely covered with pornography."

Symantec and Spybot: War of the Words

There's a war of words happening between antivirus vendor Symantec and the makers of Spybot Search & Destroy. At the heart of the controversy is a recommendation in Norton Internet Security 2007 to uninstall Spybot S&D due to incompatibilities. So is Symantec the big bully some are claiming? Or, like most things in life, is there more to this story?

Adware and Spyware

Has this ever happened to you? One day you're browsing the Internet as normal. The next day your browser's homepage has been changed to some off-color site and your desktop is serving up some program you don't recall installing.

RFID Chips and Passports

RFID was developed in World War II, helping radar operators distinguish friendly aircraft from enemy. By the 1980s it had evolved into wireless tracking and access applications and today provides omnidirectional electronic storage technology on chips that can read, write, store, and transmit data in freely available international frequency bands.

Trading privacy for protection

Panda SpyXposer is a free online scanner that purports to detect spyware, dialers, hacking tools, and other security risks. It doesn't actually remove it, but it does provide a handy log file you can save and use to ferret out the unwelcome additions to your system. I ran Panda SpyXposer on a system I use for casual Internet surfing. SpyXposer ferreted out 31 instances of 'spyware'. All were cookies. Since I view cookies as mostly benign and often quite useful (customizing the content I see on my favorite websites, for example), I wasn't thrilled to see cookies labeled as spyware.

Is all adware badware?

Microsoft has received no small amount of flack for their decision to downgrade Claria (aka Gator/GAIN) detection in the Windows AntiSpyware beta. Though Claria software is still detected, the recommended action is now set to 'Ignore'. Previous versions of Windows AntiSpyware had recommended Claria software be removed.

FTC cracks down on lonely housewives

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has lodged a complaint against those allegedly behind the so-called 'lonely housewives' spam. According to the FTC, the 'date lonely wife' email "violates nearly every provision of the CAN-SPAM Act", misleading the recipient with falsified senders and failing to provide a valid opt-out link to stop the spam. The 'date lonely wife' email also contains sexually explicit material without clearly identifying it as such in the email Subject line, a violation of the FTC's Adult Labeling Rule.

Spyware bills miss heart of problem

On Monday, May 23, 2005 Congress passed two separate bills designed to take the spy out of spyware. The first bill, the Internet Spyware Prevention Act of 2005 (I-SPY) imposes stiffer jail sentences and multi-million-dollar fines for those convicted of distributing spyware. The second bill, Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act (SPY Act) also imposes stiffer penalties upon conviction, but it goes a step further and imposes stricter policies regarding opt-in notices and consent agreements.

Yahoo web beacons

Yahoo's current privacy policy is causing consternation among some users who object to their use of so-called 'web beacons'. Known in most circles as web bugs, these invisible images are embedded in websites and email and used to track your surfing - and even tell whether you've opened a particular email. According to Yahoo's current privacy policy, "Yahoo!'s practice is to include web beacons in HTML-formatted email messages that Yahoo!, or its agents, sends in order to determine which email messages were opened and to note whether a message was acted upon." (For more on the hazards of HTML email and the practice of using web bugs, see: Why Plain is Better)

What's related.htm?

Some anti-spyware scanners, notable Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy, routinely tag related.htm as Alexa spyware. What's being tagged as spyware, however, is nothing more than a registry key that points to a search page that will only be used if you enable the related links feature.