Security Bench

by: Grant Rogers

The US House of Representatives has recently passed the “Spy Act” – or to give it its full title – the Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act. This aims to prevent software companies from installing spyware on users PCs without their knowledge, and anyone found guilty of breaching the act faces a fine of up to $3 million.

Does this mean the end of spyware as we know it? Unfortunately the answer is no, not really. The problem is that most spyware can continue to operate in exactly the same way as it does now, by asking the computer user to agree to a licence before it installs itself. The majority of people who are faced with a lengthy legal-looking page of text when installing a new program, automatically click the “I Agree” option without reading the terms. Therefore spyware programs can quite legally continue to piggy-back their way onto PCs.

Add to this the fact that a large percentage of spyware originates from outside the US, and it quickly becomes clear that the Spy Act realistically has about as much chance of success as the Can-Spam act did in attempting to stop the deluge of junk email that arrives in our mailboxes every day.

Spyware can be a lucrative business for advertisers and software vendors, and with the average home PC already carrying around 26 spyware and adware programs, it’s a problem that looks set to become worse before it gets better. In time, additional international laws may reduce the problem, but for the present at least, every PC user should keep up-to-date anti-spyware software running on their machine.

About The Author

Grant Rogers is an independent computer security consultant. You can find more information on anti-spyware and adware software at http://www.spyware-adware.info

by: Dean Phillips

Spyware is software or hardware installed on a computer without the user’s knowledge which gathers information about that user for later retrieval by whomever controls the spyware.

Spyware can be broken down into two different categories, surveillance spyware and advertising spyware.

Surveillance software includes key loggers, screen capture devices, and trojans. These would be used by corporations, private detectives, law enforcement, intelligence agencies, suspicious spouses, etc.

Advertising spyware is software that is installed alongside other software or via activex controls on the internet, often without the user’s knowledge, or without full disclosure that it will be used for gathering personal information and/or showing the user ads. Advertising spyware logs information about the user, possibly including passwords, email addresses, web browsing history, online buying habits, the computer’s hardware and software configuration, the name, age, sex, etc of the user.

As with spam, advertising spyware uses the CPU, RAM, and resources of the user’s computer, making the user pay for the costs associated with operating it. It then makes use of the user’s bandwidth to connect to the internet and upload whatever personal information it has gathered, and to download advertisements which it will present to the user, either by way of pop up windows, or with the ad banners of ad-supported software. All of this can be considered theft in the cases of advertising spyware that installs without disclosure.

And while anti-virus software like Symantec’s Norton Anti- Virus or McAfee’s ViruScan can offer some protection, one of the best ways to combat spyware is with anti-spy software. Two of the best are Lavasoft’s Ad-aware and Spybot’s Search & Destroy, which are available as free downloads.

http://www.lavasoft.de/

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

The free version of Ad-aware does not proactively protect against spyware infestation. You have to start the Ad-aware application and initiate a scan to detect spyware. But the paid version, Ad-aware Plus does remain alert in the background, like Spybot, to deflect any attempts at infestation. In recent tests, Ad-aware Plus and Spybot both protected systems extremely well.

If you haven’t already done so, I highly recommend installing Microsoft’s Service Pack 2. SP2 tightens your PC’s security with a new Windows Firewall, an improved Automatic Updates feature, and a pop-up ad blocker for Internet Explorer. Plus, the newly minted Security Center gives you one easy-to-use interface for keeping tabs on your PC’s security apps.

There are also other steps you can take to protect against spyware. One simple step is to switch from Microsoft’s browsers, which have security holes for spyware programs to exploit. A good alternative is Mozilla Firefox. Another not- so-simple step is switching to the Mac or Linux operating systems, which don’t have spyware problems.

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net

Double your income! Internet marketing expert, Dean Phillips will teach you how to double your income, starting today…Guaranteed! For details just visit my website.

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About The Author

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net

Double your income! Internet marketing expert, Dean Phillips will teach you how to double your income, starting today…Guaranteed! For details just visit my website.

Website: http://www.lets-make-money.net

dean@lets-make-money.net

by: Gina Marie Capatar

Spies, spyware, internet parasites are among what they are usually called. These are scouts that monitor your web activities. The work undercover to check on your surfing patterns, spending habits, items bought, they extract email addresses, hijack browsers, steal credit card information. These are just some of the things a spyware is capable of.

A spyware is mainly an information hungry parasite determined to gather data from a user or surfer without him knowing it.

The information gathered by these parasites are then sent to the originator without the users consent. Most often, the information gathered by the spyware are used to generate ads and pop-ups on the user’s PC.

Spywares and Adwares aside from being a nuisance and an invasion of privacy can also jeopardize the optimal performance of your PC. They can eat up unused disk spaces and position themselves in an inconspicuous location in your hard drive. They can also eat the bandwidth, crash your system and oftentimes inflict themselves in the Registry or in the memory of your computer.

Spyware and Adwares have become very rampant nowadays. Prevent yourself from being a victim of these by:

Being careful of Freeware and Shareware Downloads

- Some of these downloads are tagged with spywares which may be unknown to the user. Refrain from downloading sharewares and freewares from unknown sources.

Installing a good spyware/adware scanner and removal software

- There are a number of spyware scanner and/or removal softwares in the market today. A good spyware scanner can effectively locate all spywares installed on your PC and a good spyware removal tool can effectively remove all the spywares detected.

Spy Scanners are programs designed to detect spies in your PC. A good spy scanner can effectively search through the most unnoticeable embedded files that spy on you.

Most Spy scanners include a spyware removal function. Other spy scanners do not entail spyware removal features but display the logs of the spyware detected in your PC. The information in the logs contains the location and nature of the spywares.

For spy scanners with no built-in spyware removal functions, a manual deletion of the spyware files could also be done since the location and the file type is specified in the logs. Some Spy scanner products on the market today have spyware scan available for non-paying users and the removal tool available only for paying users.

Spy Scanners when installed can be chosen to run on demand or periodically.

About The Author

Gina Marie Capatar is the main writer for http://www.isnare.com and currently accepting technical writing jobs. You may see her works at http://www.isnare.com and reach her through her mail.
gcapatar@gmail.com

House Passes Anti-Spyware Bills.

In a move to protect against spyware, The U.S. House of representitives passed two bills against the misuse and criminal intention of malware and spyware. The bills aimed at data mining and unwelcome software downloads will carry severe penalties. (it is not certain what those penalties will be) And the bill is expected to be put forth to the senate where tough questions will be asked.

Rep Mary Bono (R-Calif) Supports an active approach to SPYACT as Users must be informed of spyware ladden downloads. What this means is that users must be informed of any spyware program that may be included with a download. That way, they would be agreeing to download knowing that there is a spyware program that comes along with.

Whatever the outcome is concerning this bill, Securitybench will be here to keep you informed.

Links:

http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/News/06242004_1330.htm

http://pcworld.about.com/news/Jun242004id116685.htm

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