Can You Trust Your Spyware Protection?
Why Your spyware scanner may not catch some adware programs.
Andrew Brandt
From the July 2005 issue of PC World magazine
Posted Tuesday, May 31, 2005
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,...n053105X,00.asp
The next time you run a scan with your anti-spyware tool, it might miss some programs. Several anti-spyware firms, including Aluria, Lavasoft, and PestPatrol, have quietly stopped detecting adware from companies like Claria and WhenU--a process called delisting. Those adware companies have been petitioning anti-spyware firms to delist their software; other companies have resorted to sending cease-and-desist letters that threaten legal action.
In most cases it's difficult for customers to determine whether their anti-spyware tool has delisted anything and, if so, which adware it skips.
"When a spyware program gets delisted, users won't be aware of its presence," says Harvard law student and spyware researcher Ben Edelman. The practice, he says, "offers spyware makers a new lease on life, letting them keep users who otherwise would have removed their software."
Degrees of Spyware
Of course, some spyware apps are worse than others. One spyware program may make severe changes to your computer's settings, while another merely displays ads.
Claria and WhenU are making the case that their adware programs don't resort to illegal tactics, such as exploiting security holes, to install themselves. And though this software can be annoying, adware developers argue that merely being listed in an anti-spyware scanner's database tarnishes a company's reputation by linking its relatively benign adware application with far more harmful and intrusive spyware programs.
According to Avi Naider of WhenU, though some other adware companies will track your Web meanderings and sell that data, WhenU's privacy policy doesn't permit it to track the search queries that users type or the Web pages that they browse..............MORE IN ARTICLE...........