the jackol’s den

7 June 2004

Spyware

Posted by Mikhail Esteves under: General .

The Economist on Spyware:

The rapid growth of spyware over the past year, and the legal ambiguity surrounding it, has brought it to the attention of regulators and lawyers in America and Europe. This month, a court in Utah will hear a case challenging the first state law that would ban it. Unless the software is stamped out, it could do to the web what spam has done to e-mail: create an annoyance of such magnitude that the internet may become less useful.

The practice is widespread. Spyware that monitors a user’s online activities and triggers advertisements in response is present on over 4% of computers, according to one study. The top three spyware firms claim their software is installed on around 100m PCs. Yet most users are unaware it is there. That is because the software is usually installed in a �bundle� with other programs, such as the peer-to-peer file-trading software with which many internet users swap music. Another kind of spyware automatically installs itself when a user merely visits a particular site, a trick known as �drive-by downloading�. Having sneaked on to a PC, spyware applications can severely degrade its performance. Mostly, it is very difficult to remove; some programs are even designed to make removal as hard as possible.

The most nefarious forms of spyware steal information such as credit-card numbers or passwords by monitoring every keystroke a user types. This kind of software is already illegal, and is relatively rare. Much more common, however, is advert-triggering software, produced and distributed by software companies operating in a legal grey area, who prefer to call their products �adware�. There is real money to be made in hijacking screen real-estate and selling it to advertisers: the largest adware firm, Claria, had revenues of $90.5m in 2003 and recently announced plans for an initial public offering.

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