Spyware Wars
I picked up on this article through a slashdot link. Spyware is a confusing issue. What makes its artisans think that because they infest our PCs we are all going to do more business with them. Every time a pop up shows up I immediately shut it down and say a little curse.
Last summer my home PC, the one that my wife, children and all the neighborhood kids use, got so bad that I was clicking on links and between the time I clicked and the time the cursor responded a pop up had intervened and all of a sudden I was staring at a casino site looking at some gambling offer. I tried my mcafee virus software and removed a dozen or so spyware apps. Things didn't get much better. That's when I asked around the office and found out about ad-aware. That night I downloaded the software and removed another 199 (not an exageration) spyware infestations.
That made me a believer. I spent the next few weeks telling everyone who seemed interested to get ad-aware. I was disappointed to find out that Lavasoft only offers this spyware killer as a free application to stand alone users. It gets expensive for the industrial strength, centrally manageable version. That's too bad. In recent weeks I've been told that it isn't all that good at removing every bit of spyware. That's more than disappointing. My cousin, responsible for the desktops of a major US hotel company, says they use three different products. Ouch! The cost of spyware removal has to be hugh.
IDC estimates a two-thirds infestation rate for PCs. I think that has to be low. How do you combat spyware? Well, there are several acceptable options and maybe with some attention this problem will see better tools developed. Now, how do we get rid of the software spys? That's what I want to know..........
7:53:59 AM 
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