Spyware, Spyware, Everywhere!
By Richard Lerner
There has been a rising epidemic on the Internet that has or will affect everyone that connects to the Internet. This threat does not care whether you are on high-speed Internet connection or a low-speed connection, whether you are at home or in the office, whether you are young or old, whether you are new to the Internet or an old hack. I am not referring to a virus either. The name of this threat is spyware. Spyware goes by several names: spyware, malware, adware, browser hijack, browser exploit, etc. but they all do the same thing.
- What is it that spyware does, you may ask? Well it does several things...
Spyware's first purpose is to do what its name implies, that is to spy on you. It does this by running one or more programs on your computer, in the background and usually out of sight, and it tracks your movement on the Internet. Specifically, it does the following: records key strokes (that is, stuff you type in to your web browser - including personal information such as name, address, telephone number, and payment information), keeps track of what web sites you visit, how long you were at a web site, what you looked at on that web site, what you clicked on, etc. Once running on your computer, the spyware software then creates pop-up advertisements, sometimes based on what web sites you visit, sometimes pornographic, sometimes having nothing to do with you at all, and it will do this as long as you are connected to the Internet. This is bad news for people that have "permanent" Internet connections, such as a cable modem or DSL. This is why many people get pop-up advertisements even though their Internet browser may be closed. Spyware is really nasty stuff. To make matters even worse, once installed on your system, some spyware opens a "backdoor" to the Internet on your computer which then allows more spyware to be downloaded to your computer without your knowledge and consent. This all happens in the background and you never know it is happening. Then you end up with even more pop-ups, degraded system performance, a start page (home page) that constantly changes, and an overall very unpleasant experience on the Internet, and lastly and the worst case scenario a crashed computer.
- Now you might be saying to yourself: who would want to make something like this and why?
The answer to this question is simple: money. Money makes the world go round, right? The people that make spyware are actually very talented and smart computer programmers. These programmers typically work for advertising companies. It is the advertising companies that had the idea to create a piece of software that would automatically collect demographic data about a person, report that data back to the advertising company, and then use that very same demographic data to spawn advertisements on the same computer that the demographic data was collected from in the first place. Now ideally, the owner of the computer would grant the advertiser permission to collect this demographic data, and then the user would always have a way to stop the collection of the data. Then, the software that collects the data would be installed with the user's full consent and would provide a way for the user to remove it at his/her convenience. None of the advertisements produced would be offensive. This, however, is not the case today, as I am sure many of you may already know. These advertisers make this software the way they do because it pays. By creating a program that runs completely silently in the background, which is very difficult to remove, and usually done without consent, that automatically can produce advertisements on the screens of millions of unsuspecting users, which guarantees exposure for product manufacturers, is a great thing from a marketing aspect. They have a fixed audience that is forced to see the advertisements if they want to continue to use their computer. If the user is able to remove the software or opt out of the data collection, then the advertisers loose a huge source of money, which is paid by the product manufacturers, to have their products advertised in the popup advertisements. These manufacturers know they have a great way to promote their products and would not want to lose it either, so they pay huge sums of money in order to get more advanced advertising software on people's computers.
- So, how does spyware get on a person's computer?
Originally, many advertisements were just popup windows that came up when someone visited a web site. As the people who created these advertisements got more creative, they changed the way in which they delivered the advertisements to people. Now, instead of using a popup window created by a web site to produce the advertisement for the product, the popup window is instead an ad for something that a person might want to download for free. For example, some very popular ads are for a "living screensaver" of a waterfall, or free smiley faces for AOL or a temperature gauge by your clock that will tell you the outside temperature. All of these things might seem harmless and in some cases, actually useful, but this is where the deception comes in. The people who make these programs, the screensavers, the smileys, and the weather gauges, are the same people that make the spyware. What they do is this: when a user downloads one of these supposedly useful programs, there is another program inside or attached to the program the user actually wants. During the installation of the program that the person wants, sometimes there is something called the EULA (End-User License Agreement, which states the legal terms by which a person can install the software) which the user must accept to install the software. All legitimate software has a EULA, since when you buy software in the store or on-line, you are not actually buying the software itself, but rather a license to use the software. In the EULA there is a clause which states "by installing this application, you allow XYZ company to install other software on your computer". By accepting the EULA, XYZ company is now legally authorized to install other programs in the background, essentially without the user ever knowing it is happening. Most people never read the entire EULA before clicking on "Accept" or "Yes" or "Next". It is these programs that are installed in the background that cause the popup advertisements and spy on you, and it is legal. One of the most popular programs that does this is KaZaA Media Desktop, which is a program used for file-sharing across the Internet. In KaZaA's EULA, it specifically says by installing this software, you agree to let KaZaA install 3rd party software on your computer, namely spyware. If during the installation of these programs, there is no EULA and there is no notification that other software will be installed, then it is illegal in the U.S. Since most spyware hinders the performance of your computer and since your computer is your private property, the spyware is damaging your private property, which is the same a someone smashing in the window of your car and slashing your tires. This is rare though, since most companies try to avoid lawsuits.
