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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Readers sound off on spyware, Blizzard Entertainment and Martha Stewart's ass.
May 3, 2002 | Read "Spyware vs. Anti-spyware by Damien Cave.
I believe your article about "spyware", "anti-spyware" and "anti-anti-spyware" does not go nearly far enough in exposing an underground community like the developers of Ad-Aware.
While I agree -- mostly -- that introducing applications that clearly expose personal information to others is a bad idea, I do not believe there is a solution for a bunch of people to decide "this is a bad business model, let's destroy it."
We have on one hand a for-profit organization that is looking for ways to stay afloat. Maybe they have chosen a bad way initially and need some education. However, they are generally an organization with public ties and employees, and are generally a functioning part of the economy.
On the other hand we have a bunch of "volunteers" and students that feel it is their right to quash any business they disagree with. These people are specifically not "part of the economy" -- they are only interested in destruction.
I would equate this roughly to the antiabortion folks that burn down clinics because they disagree with what goes on inside. Or, burning down an adult bookstore because you do not like their product.
In the physical world we have laws to protect businesses from this sort of action -- and at the same time enforce some level of oversight on businesses to educate them on reasonable business models.
What we have with Lavasoft is simply an attack model and anyone that does not think like they do is out of luck. They are not an organization that bears any responsibility for their actions and their actions do indeed harm others.
I am the owner of a software business and have had run-ins with false complaints of "spyware" that were generated by them. We found them to be extremely unresponsive to e-mail and no way to contact them other than e-mail. Their position is extremely militant and it is extremely difficult to justify the statement that they are performing any sort of "community service."
Other than the type of community service burning down an adult bookstore provides.
-- Paul Crowley
Before I found Ad-Aware, I had a problem.
My computer kept producing these strange error messages claiming that "Explorer.exe" had crashed. Except that MS Explorer was still plugging along the way it always had. Still, these messages worried me.
I went looking for a cause, and discovered that this "Explorer.exe" wasn't actually Windows ... it was a spyware program trying to prevent people from ctrl-alt-deleting it off by calling it something the user wouldn't recognize.
You know what? If you want to serve ads to me, that's fine. If you want to track me while using your program, I'm even OK with that, though I object to tracking my use of other programs. But I will not tolerate this being done without an obvious disclaimer -- and not in the fine print of the EULA [license agreement]. I will not tolerate this being done if it destabilizes my computer. And I will not tolerate it being done if I have no simple way to remove the program.
Ad-Aware solved my problem. If software companies go under because they can't make money this way, then they need to find new ways to make money. Ad-Aware is not at fault for their problems.
-- Susan Tussing
I work as a PC technician and recently I have been seeing computers that are unusable because of the spyware that was running on them. All of the owners of these machines were unaware that these programs were there. Technically, when several of these applications are running together they can tie up resources to the point where the computer becomes unresponsive and a cold boot is the only remedy. I expect it's because of poor programming practices, resulting in runaway processes or memory leaks. Ad-Aware is a godsend in identifying and removing all the garbage and getting a machine running again. The last time I ran Ad-Aware on a slow computer it found 171 components. If the companies that rely on spyware/adware for revenue don't want people to uninstall the adware, they should make their products unusable without it and inform users up front what they are doing, i.e. a prominent warning at the beginning of the installation process, not some tag line at the end of a lengthy license agreement.
-- Jim Humphrey
Without pimping an ad for some of the more popular personal firewall products out there, it is my belief that protecting personal privacy on the Internet should be important enough to Web surfers that they should make the minimal investment and get on with life.
I've found a great product from an established company that lets me control exactly what content can be placed on my system, and subsequently distributed to other computers. Oh, and it kills annoying banner ads too.
This certainly doesn't prevent spies from catching information when I order from a "bugged" online retailer, but I also don't order "sensitive" items online. Web surfers take heed, use your head!
-- M.A. Hanna
What some bright young programmer should do is write a Spyware scrambling program. One that send backs gibberish, or better yet, random made-up information.
I for one, would be happy to buy such a program.
-- Bill Hagood
One way to get rid of Internet parasites is for all users to uninstall KaZaA immediately. This wouldn't happen for long if there were no market.
-- Petra Hofmann
As a frequent downloader I have often been burdened by having my computer gummed up by various spyware and adware programs. At this point I wouldn't fathom to guess how unmanageable and off-putting the Internet would be if it weren't for the existence of Ad-Aware, its creators in Lavasoft, and the numerous other groups who are watching out for the rights, security and privacy of your average computer user. I would guess that most us know only enough to get our computers aimed toward the right page. So Kudos to Lavasoft for volunteering their time, energy and skills to making the Internet a better place to live.
-- Glenn Given
