[Marxism] Spyware/adware

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, September 19, 2004
Barbarians at the Digital Gate
By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN and SAUL HANSELL

KARSTEN M. SELF, who oversees a children's computer lab at a youth center
in Napa, Calif., spends about a half-hour each morning electronically
scanning 10 PC's. He is searching for files and traces of code that
threaten to hijack the computers by silently monitoring the children's
online activities or by plastering their screens with dizzying - and nearly
unstoppable - onslaughts of pop-up advertisements.

To safeguard the children's computers, Mr. Self has installed a battery of
protective software products and new Web browsers. That has kept some - but
by no means all - of the youth center's digital intruders at bay. "You
would expect that you could use these systems in a safe and sane way, but
the fact of the matter is that you can't unless you have a fair amount of
knowledge, time to fix the problems and paranoia," he said.

The parasitic files that have beset Mr. Self and other frustrated computer
users are known, in tech argot, as spyware and adware. The rapid
proliferation of such programs has brought Internet use to a stark
crossroads, as many consumers now see the Web as a battlefield strewn with
land mines.

At the same time, major advertisers and big Internet sites are increasingly
tempted by adware's singular ability to display pop-up ads exactly when a
user has shown interest in a particular service or product.

"Adware has its place, but to grab market share I think a lot of companies
are doing things that make consumers feel betrayed," said Wayne Porter,
co-founder of Spyware-Guide.com, a Web site that tracks adware and spyware
abuses. "I think we're at a very important inflection point that is going
to decide how the Internet operates."

The exact definitions of spyware and adware, like many things in the
ever-changing world of the Internet, remain open to debate. But spyware
generally refers to programs that reside in hidden corners of a computer's
hard drive and record confidential information like keystrokes, passwords
and the user's history of Web site visits. Some of the most insidious
versions have to be installed on a computer by someone other than the user
- maybe a jealous spouse or lover.

Adware, for its part, marries old-fashioned highway billboard pitches to
online distribution and the possibility of immediate response. Adware
vendors range from fly-by-night operators who hawk pornography and
gambling, wherever they can, to more legitimate companies like the Claria
Corporation, which tries to aim its ads at the consumers deemed most likely
to respond, based on their surfing habits. Claria alone has about 29
million users running its adware products on their computers, according to
comScore MediaMetrix, an Internet research firm. That compares with 1.5
million users in early 2000, according to the company.

Some spyware creeps onto a computer's hard drive unannounced, often by
piggybacking onto other software programs that people download or by
sneaking through backdoor security gaps in Web browsers when consumers
visit certain sites. In other cases, consumers technically agree to
download the software, but critics say that the disclosures are hard to find.

FOR all the differences between spyware and adware, their impact on
computers is pretty much the same: screens transformed into digital
versions of Times Square, and overburdened PC's that operate much more
slowly as they struggle with random and uncontrollable processes prompted
by the hard drive. Small wonder that consumers are throwing up their hands
in despair.

"From what consumers are telling us, they feel like their computers are
being taken away from them," Mr. Porter said. "We have some consumers
saying it makes them hesitant to use the Internet at all because of what an
annoyance it has become."

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/business/yourmoney/19gator.html


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