Slashdotters are twittering about a BBC article that says there are an average of 28 spyware programs on people’s PC’s. One commenter sums up the whole thing by saying: “…ten million sysadmins and deskside support people all saying “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!” in unison.” I’d have to say the same thing myself. Of all of the support people, computer consultants, and power users I know, spyware removal now takes up at least 1/2 their time.
Spyware has gotten to the point that it affects nearly everyone I know. For the last 3 years, I’ve had to run Adaware or, Spybot Search and Destroy at least once weekly. Viruses are actually barely a problem for me anymore. My counterparts are reporting the same thing. Oh, there’s stray e-mail viri in the wild yes but, nothing in comparison to spyware.
But, if spyware is so malicious, why aren’t the software “powers that be” doing something about it. Well, that’s a very slippery slope. The function of spyware and viruses may actually be about the same. They both infect a PC without the users consent. They propagate themselves from machine to machine. They both report back data about the user and the PC to the authors. The major difference is that spyware is commerce and viruses are terrorism, at least as it is currently believed. Both Norton Anti-virus and McAffee both advertise that they remove spyware but, do they remove their own trojans that merrily report information about you back to them?