Old Weird Ward
Unless otherwise noted, that which is posted here is opinion, which is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. If you don't like my opinions, go somewhere else. Nobody is forcing you to actually read this drivel.
The presumption exists that you can read at all.
That may be a large assumption.
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Saturday, December 11, 2004
- - - - - What IS "Spyware", Anyway? - - - - -
The definition of "spyware" tends to be a little loose, depending on who's doing the defining.
In a recent post, I jumped all over Claria, makers of Gater products (see the post HERE). And...I'm still very leary of their 6,000-word "End-User Licensing Agreement", which is so obscure as to be un-readable. Look, I'm a computer support pro, I understand the terms used in geekdom, and it took me an hour to read and sort-of understand what the durned thing says!
Anyway, Claria says their stuff isn't really "spyware".
Oh, really?
Well, here's a list of definitions to the categories of "spyware" put out by Network World magazine in their edition of 8 November 2004 (They do have an on-line presence, but subscription is required). Their definitions are in the shaded areas, my comments, if any, follow each shaded area.
ADWARE: Covertly installed on desktops to generate a stream of unsolicited advertisements. Can affect system performance.
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Enough of this stuff will slow your system to a crawl, or cause it to stop functioning entirely. A real PITA to get rid of.
| BROWSER HIGHJACKER: Change a browser setting, usually altering default start and search pages. Can modify nearly every aspect of a browser including adding and editing bookmarks. |
Some of these things also bury themselves elswhere in your system, so that when you change your default start-up page back to where you want it, your browser is automatically "high-jacked" back to the offending place. Example: Every time you start Internet Explorer, you get to a page labeled "about:blank" with a list of links.
| BROWSER PLUG-IN: Installed as a tool-bar or a search and navigation feature; plug-ins provide complete access to the browswer and can modify, spy on, and redirect tasks. |
One example of a "good" plug-in is the Google Toolbar, which allows you to block "popups" and "popunders", and also provides quick access to the Google web-search engine.
| SPYWARE: Collects demographic and usage information, usually for advertising purposes. Modules are almost always installed and run secretively. |
Claria (aka "Gator") is a good example of this. They provide the "engine" for other companies, and, on purpose, make their official un-install almost unusable. A major pain, and very close to "hostile" or "malware". And, as I've said before, their "End-User Licensing Agreement" is unreadable trash.
| TROJAN: Any software that a user is not aware of or did not intentionally install; generally used to compromise security or privacy. |
Definitely "malware".
| KEYLOGGER: Runs in the background and logs keystrokes. That information is hidden in the machine for later retrieval or is sent to the attacker. |
Definitely "malware" AND "spyware".
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