The Spyware Weekly Newsletter is distributed every week to 20,000 subscribers and read online by hundreds of thousands of visitors. Click here to subscribe. Please read our Terms of Use for quoting guidelines.This edition of the Spyware Weekly Newsletter is archived permanently at http://www.spywareinfo.net/dec10,2005.

Wherever the term "adware" is used, it is referring to a category of software, not to any particular company or product.

The contents of this newsletter is commentary. It should not be mistaken for unbiased, objective journalism.

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• The Ten Net Commandments
• Spycop Antispyware and Evidence Terminator
• Is Adware All That Bad?
• California's Sovereignty Threatened Again

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Just a little something to keep in mind, going into the new year.

1. Thou shalt not buy merchandise found in pop-up ads or spam.
2. Thou shalt not post thy email address, phone number, address or social security number to the internet, nor shalt thou post anyone else's.
3. Thou shalt not forget to update thy Windows every second Tuesday.
4. Thou shalt not connect to the internet without installing an antivirus, nor shalt thou begin a scan without checking for updates.
5. Thou shalt not connect to the internet without installing a firewall.
6. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's credit card number, nor his bank routing number, nor his social security number.
7. Thou shalt not enter thy credit card number without seeing the tiny padlock icon on thy status bar.
8. Thou shalt not reply to the email from the Nigerian banker.
9. Thou shalt not forward chain letters to thy friends and family.
10. Thou shalt not use "password" as thy password, nor thy birthday, nor thy children's names.

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Program: Spycop Antispyware
Price: $49.95 $39.96 [20% off until Dec 15, 2005]
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Program: Evidence Terminator
Price: $49.95 $39.96 [20% off until Dec 15, 2005]
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Spycop + ET Bundle: $79.90 $69.93
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There is the sort of spyware that comes from installing programs like Kazaa and Imesh. This kind of spyware will track your web usage to produce more relevant pop-up ads. This is an annoying and unfair invasion of privacy. However, other than the aggravation of dealing with pop-up ads and spam, this kind of spyware usually is not dangerous (well, except to your blood pressure). These usually can be cleaned up with products such as Ad-aware and Spybot.

More dangerous are the surveillance and monitoring programs. These programs are used to gather all of the information necessary to steal your identity and ruin your credit. A business rival can bribe an employee to install spyware on the company network. Or the company itself might install spyware to watch you while you work. These programs cost money to buy for testing and not all antispyware companies can afford to keep up with each new version.

SpyCop is the leading solution for finding computer monitoring spy programs, keyloggers, and commercially available software designed specifically to record your screen, email and passwords. SpyCop will detect the spy, tell you when it was installed, and disable it. SpyCop claims to have the largest database of surveillance spyware.

SpyCop also makes Evidence Terminator, a program that cleans out the traces of computer usage that Windows leaves lying around. This includes browser cache, temp files and recently opened documents among other things. You should shred paper documents at home and in the office, if you don't want people reading them. The same goes for your PC.

More information about Spycop http://www.spywareinfo.com/downloads/spycop/
More information about Evidence Terminator http://www.spywareinfo.com/downloads/spycop/eterminate.php

Don't forget, even if you catch all the spyware on your computer, someone can still sneak up behind you and peek over your shoulder. Spycop won't help with that, so you might think about buying yourself one of these monitors. ;-)

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It is time to ask the question: "Is adware all that bad?"

For a couple of years now, the makers of software parasites - the large ones anyway - have been putting on a non-stop public relations campaign. They don't make "spyware"; they make "adware". And "adware" is good. It says so right there in the press releases.

It is all about perception. Calling the first advertising parasite "spyware" had a double advantage. A: it was true and B: it sounded evil. It was a term that made people sit up and take notice.

Tell someone that they are being spied upon and they will become irate. So it became convenient to label all such software as spyware. For a while, it was even true. And it was a good way to make sure the public listened.

Then, an unfortunate thing happened. In the war of words, those of us in the antispyware community allowed ourselves to become outflanked. Software which monitors computer activity and reports on that activity to its maker is spyware. There is no getting around that. "Spyware" had become a dirty word, one to be avoided at all costs. There was no way around that either.

We had won the moral high ground decisively. They needed to find a way to push us off that particular hill.

They outflanked us when they stopped spying. It finally occurred to someone that they could install the software right into the browser, monitor keywords on search engines and on the pages being read and pop up ads based on that. There was no need to send that information back to the company. The program could do all of that by itself, no phoning home required.

The software was doing all the same things, except that there no longer was any spying. We no longer could call it spyware. They adopted the term "adware" and put on a massive public relations campaign to distinguish the two words from each other. They also found a clever way to keep us off that moral high ground.

"Spyware is bad and deserves all the bad things people have to say about it. What we distribute is 'adware', which helps publishers produce their software for free, in exchange for displaying some ads. Of course, there always will be those few people who simply hate all forms of advertising..."

That is how they outflanked us. The debate no longer was about how bad it is to spy on people without their knowledge. They cleverly twisted it into a debate about whether or not advertising was a bad thing. Nevermind that the software basically was unchanged. This wasn't about spying; it was about ads.

We put a good effort into turning "spyware" into a dirty word. They have put ten times the effort into making "adware" a good word. They want everyone to think of adware as something acceptable. They want us to believe that adware is vastly different from spyware.

It is time to stick a pin into this argument and burst a few bubbles. It is time to stop pretending that adware is any better or more benign than spyware.

What is the real difference between a program you would call spyware and another that you would call adware? The truth of the matter is that there is not a whole lot of difference.

The spyware will monitor your activity and report that information to its maker. The adware will not. Otherwise, it might as well be the same program. Same unannounced arrival. Same pop-ups. Same drain on the system resources. Same annoyances.

What causes people to complain about these programs? Are they up in arms because some company might learn that they like yellow toasters and visit certain sites over and over? In some cases, yes - that is exactly why some people are angered. But that really is not what causes the overwhelming majority of complaints.

People notice that their computer takes twice as long to start up. They notice that new, mysterious toolbars appear in their browser. They notice the ads, which pop up relentlessly the entire time the computer is turned on. They notice that their home page has changed and they are unable to change it back.

People do not remember installing the software responsible for all of this. They have lost control of their own computer and they do not understand how it happened.

Maybe they saw some sort of disclosure, maybe not. Maybe the software is monitoring their activities, maybe it isn't. Everything from spyware to adware to browser hijackers fit this description. When it happens to you, you really do not care what you are supposed to call it. You just want it to stop.

Adware often is installed by web sites that exploit browser flaws. This happens all the time. How can a company claim to be legitimate if, time after time, they make payments to people who install their software through security holes?

Rootkits often are installed to hide the adware files. This is done to prevent you from finding them. Why go to all that effort to hide legitimate software? Why would they want to hide it, unless they know that people do not want it?

Adware frequently will put several files into memory, so that if one process is terminated, another will restart it. If certain files or registry entries are deleted or changed, they will be changed right back. That makes it extremely difficult to remove these adware programs. Why do all that, if the program is legitimate?

A computer, with adware installed, becomes a pop-up factory. Window after window after window pops up. They never stop. It does no good to close them, because that simply causes more to open. So many pop-up windows will open that the computer literally runs out of memory and crashes. I have seen it happen with my own eyes. This is legitimate software?

It is time to stop pretending that adware is any less of an annoyance than spyware. It is time to stop pretending that people dislike adware merely because it is serving ads. It is time to stop pretending that adware is better than spyware. It is time to stop pretending that there is any significant difference between the two.

I have one more fact for you. 56,000 people have created more than 325,000 individual topics on the SpywareInfo message board, most of them asking for help to remove some unwanted software. Very few of the programs we have helped them to remove performed any spying. Nearly all of them easily fall under the label of "adware".

Let us stop pretending that there is a valid reason to distinguish between adware and spyware. Except for that one little detail, the two are identical. No amount of money spent in a public relations campaign will ever change that.

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The restraint of the people of California amazes me. California's government repeatedly has passed laws to protect the people who live there, only to have the Federal government tell them they cannot enforce those laws and to go sit quietly in the corner like a good child.

In 2003, California passed a law telling banks that they cannot sell or distribute information about their customers without their permission. Banks ran to the US Congress, spent God only knows how much money on lobbyists and had a Federal law amended to contradict and override the California law.

A few weeks later, California passed a law banning spam - all of it. The law outlawed any bulk email, advertising any product, that California residents did not request. The state, an ISP and even the recipients of the spam could take legal action against anyone violating this law. Those breaking the law would have been fined up to $1,000 per message.

Predictably, the "direct marketers" (aka spammers) went to Washington and began spending money. Three months after that, California's new antispam law also was overridden by a weaker, less effective Federal law. You need merely to check your inbox to see how that turned out.

Today, it is happening again.

In October of this year, Governor Schwarzenegger signed a law forbidding companies to send advertisements to fax machines in California, unless the company has written permission to do so.

The US Chamber of Commerce is filing a lawsuit against the state in an attempt to overturn the law. The Chamber of Commerce also is asking the Federal Communications Commission to declare that a weaker, existing Federal junk fax law overrides California's law.

The Federal junk fax law, passed earlier this year, originally was very similar to California's law. However, once again, the money poured in from lobbyists and the law was watered down. The problem - and this is the kicker - is that the weaker Federal law allows for state governments to create their own, tougher laws.

That would seem to be a circular argument. The Chamber of Commerce wants this Federal law to trump California's law, even though the Federal law allows for the existence of California's law.

The Chamber of Commerce is trying to work around this little problem by pointing to the original Federal Communications Act, a law which was passed over seventy years ago. The Chamber is trying to say that the Act does not allow the state law to exist alongside the Federal law, even though that same Federal law says that it can.

Is your head spinning yet?

This is the new corporate trend in America. Any undesirable law, passed by any state government in the country, can be overruled merely by running to the feds with an open wallet. If I was a Californian, I would be furious.

The US Congress is not supposed to be an auction house, where laws are given to the highest bidder. This brazen usurpation of state's rights has to end, before it leads to another violent confrontation between the states and the feds. If you are tired of seeing this happen, find out how to contact your Congresscritter and give him or her an earful.

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SpywareInfo has a new(ish) feature, listing news headlines relevant to spyware, privacy and safely using the computer. There is a saying that "all politics are local". It seems that this also applies to the internet. It is a close community in that problems can spread from anywhere. If you see a local story that you think deserves attention, please let us know. Use this mail form, tell us some details and we will follow the story.

This Spywareinfo News Section is updated every day - and several times during the day. It is a section of Spywareinfo that we hope will keep you informed on a daily basis - and keep your internet time a bit safer. Go have a look.

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