Spyware and Adware Follow Your Movements

Spyware and adware follow your movements

Information on the sites you visit, what you buy, where you buy it, how you pay for it are like a golden-road to riches for users of spyware and adware.

Spyware infections are down compared to past history according to surveys done by industry professionals including Consumer Reports; currently the chances that you currently have one on your system are about 1 in 3 and of suffering significant damage about 1 in 12. Spyware and adware, programs downloaded to your computer by sites to track all your online activities for use by marketers planning how to get more of your shekels, still are rampant according to industry experts. Experts say this is because the big advertisers still use distributors who install software that displays pop-ups on users' computers. Currently a class action suit against Yahoo alleges that Yahoo used spyware to show ads, but part of the case against this huge advertiser is in mediation and the final results aren't in yet.

In January of 2007, the New York State attorney General's office finalized a deal with Priceline.com, Travelocity.com, and Cingular Wireless in which the three companies agreed to cease using ad distributors that install adware without adequate notice or consent. The three companies had been using DirectRevenue, a service that the state attorney General's office sued last year for such practices (the suit is still pending before the courts).

According to legal officials spyware has been showing up at some sponsored links in search-engine results that you have most likely used. McAfee, using its Site Advisor service, which identifies dangerous sites and notifies the user, recently, completed a study of such sites using the top five search engines and found that they led to more than twice a many dangerous sites than nonpaid results did. The risks included spyware and scam sites with deceptive claims or bait-and-switch billing, used to obtain personal information on habits.

Developers of anti-spy software are hitting back against the tide, but they also risk being sued by companies their product labels as spyware. Recently Zango, an online ad distributor sued PC Tools for labelling their product as spyware, although the courts did deny Zango's motion for a temporary restraining order.

How can you protect your system against these invasions? Make sure you always run a good anti-spyware program on your computer (check our the hubs to come on our picks for the best anti-spyware programs on the market), or even two or three programs since they shouldn't interfere and will provide extra coverage in case one program doesn't recognize the spyware. In addition anytime you visit a site your not sure of, make sure to check with the FTC for violations by the site in question after visiting the site and if there is a problem immediately fix the problem and notify the FTC.

The Federal Trade Commission has brought 11 spyware legal actions to the courts in the past two years against companies running spyware operations and big state-based legal actions have continued during the past year as well and the future will probably hold more of the same, at least until some of the more subjective legal issues are figured out. The I-Spy Act, passed last spring by the U.S. House of Representatives, enhances the criminal penalties for spyware activities of culprits, such as downloading damaging programs not approved by the user, but we are still waiting for the vote on the bill to see if it passes.

The Spy act, approved by the House of Representative in June, requires opt-in practices and notice to the user to be given before implementation of spyware; it deals mainly with the civil penalties given to those not following the rules of conduct trying to be set up by concerned government officials. The effectiveness of the bills is up for debate according to industry and legal officials and they don't appear to be going in the right direction, but many industry officials think this maybe for the best in the end as they point to the fact that these bills could do more harm in the long run by validating business practices that are no good to consumers.

Industry professionals aren't sitting still as several initiatives are currently under way to help provide better security for the Internet and its users. These include e-mail authentication programs used to verify the author of an e-mail and this spring, the Internet Engineering Task Force, which sets all the Internet standards and protocols, approved its first proposed authentication standard for the World Wide Web.

Congress recently passed the U.S. Safe Web Act, giving the FTC more authority to work internationally to protect consumers using the net. In anticipation of its up coming battle, the FTC even requested an increase in its consumer protection budget for the next year.

While these additional initiatives will help make the Internet safer for all in the coming battle against advertisers in the years to come, most of the responsibility should fall on individual consumers to protect themselves. If we take every step we can to make it harder for cybercriminals targeting us then they will look for easier marks, because they are always looking for the easy way to accomplish their goals.

Well that's it for this hub on spyware on the Internet, what we can do to combat it personally and how legal officials are attempting to prevent such attacks. Join us next time as we will talk about social networks operating on the net and the risk they could pose to your progeny. Until next time hubber, happy hubbing!