Spying on spyware

EarthLink and Webroot Software released a report Wednesday, revealing that nearly one of every three computers scanned in April for Trojan horse programs or system monitor spyware was infected.

Internet access provider EarthLink and security software maker Webroot scanned nearly 421,000 computers for their April Spy Audit report. Trojan horses and system monitors accounted for 133,715 pieces of the spyware found on those computers--representing almost one in three machines.

System monitors track users' computer activity, capturing virtually everything they do online. Trojan horses appear to be software programs a user has requested but actually aid hackers in stealing computer data. That information is then used to gain unrestricted access to users' computers while they are online.

"Consumers should be aware of the applications and files residing and running on their machines," Matt Cobb, Earthlink's core applications vice president, said in a statement. "While certain types of spyware are malicious, other programs can be used to improve their Internet experience."

Security experts note that the damage from Trojan horses or system monitors can sometimes be more severe than adware and adware cookies typically found on PCs.

When adding all four types of spyware found on the scanned computers during April, the Spy Audit Report found 11.3 million instances of spyware on the computers. That averaged 26.9 pieces of spyware per machine.

In March, 237,200 PCs were scanned, with 7.1 million pieces of spyware found on the computers. That averaged 30 pieces of spyware per PC, according to the report.

[ScifiterX]

Those statistics seem good, if incomplete

Being an Earthlink customer and friends with a number of
Windows PC users, I see about the same ratio of PC infected and
to the degrees being shown. However, the test only work under
Windows and while most spyware is Windows and I know that
not all of it is and not everyone uses Windows. I know many
users who use some type of Mac OS or Linux. It would be
interesting to have comparative results, for all those systems not
to mention informative.

95% are plain cookies

I ran that program on earthlinks site. For me every single file was just a tracking cookie which they considered spy ware (and easily deleteable at that). I didn't see any trojans or spyware programs on my pc, yet, they seemed to think i did have them. I take this report with a grain of salt.

Problem bad enough without overstating it

Spyware is truly the scourge of the internet today, and there is plenty of it around for people to be worried about without needing to inflate the statistics by bringing in cookies. I am in agreement that cookies can be used to do all sorts of tracking, but cookies are the result of a choice you make in accepting or altering your browsers settings AND they are easily managed by your browser. If you don't want one from XYZ you can tell you browser that and you are done. They aren't executable and they aren't running wild on your computer. Let's not forget to that we NEED cookies to make things like shopping baskets work.

Spyware on the other hand is insidius. It is executable and in many cases there is no way to manage or remove it. It degrades systems or makes them unusable. Often it is itself illegal in its installation or facilitates illegal activity.

If we are not extremely careful in how we frame this debate, we will certainly wind up with perhaps well intentioned but overly zealous and ill informed legislators reacting to surveys like Elinks and passing laws that impact not just the pernicious but also the desireable.

This is a slippery slope that needs good judgement from ALL the players. The problem is real enough without needing to include non executables.