Taking care of BadWare
p2p news / p2pnet: Viruses and worms are no longer the biggest threat to computer users – it’s badware. That’s the raison d’etre behind a new site that’s just launched.
Interestingly, one of the companies behind it is Google, advertiser extraordinary.
But StopBadware isn’t concerned about the ads flooding the Net via the likes of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, et al.
Rather, "Badware is a term we use to encompass the broad range of malicious software that is sneaking onto people’s computers, including spyware and deceptive adware," it states. "It can subvert your computer for the benefit for a third party, frustrate you with unwanted advertising, and even steal your most personal information."
Up front are Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute.
Corporate sponsors are Google, Lenovo, and Sun Microsystems with Consumer Reports WebWatch, "serving as an unpaid special advisor".
And site content is published under a Creative Commons license.
The Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC) recently released its final “risk model description” to help users combat spyware infesting their computers.
Also See:
ASC – Defining spyware, January 13, 2006
January 25th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
I wonder how long it will be before they get sued by some company like Claria(The company formerly known as Gator) who will claim that they are being slandered by being labled as badware because their product is “legitimate”. They have successfully used this tactic to get their junkware removed from Adaware’s list. I think anti spyware companies should come up with a new term, unwanted software, or third party software, and whenever they are harrassed by spyware companies they can at least put it in that catagory, rather than removing it altogether.
January 26th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
I agree with you for most part , but I think one of the main problems here for receiving hundreds and hundreds of junk mail is people themselves. We all likely receive joke e-mails , some more than others and most of us forward them on to others. But most people just forward them without cleaning them and that includes everybody’s e-mail address that it was sent to before, unless someone takes the few seconds it takes to clean it before forwarding. Evenually those addresses make it to a hundreds of spammers lists. No wonder we receive the amount of junk mail we do. A person has NO control what so ever on who or how many people will get to view his e-mail address once they send an e-mail out. How about passing a law for all e-mail program providers to make a program that deletes ALL e-mail addresses in the message body when a message is forwarded. I know this wouldn’t eliminate the problem of junk mail but i would think it would go a long way to help. Another helpful way would be for the likes of Yahoo, Google ,Hotmail, to enable you to have an allow only list. That way you wouldnt get any junk mail ever unless you want it. Some problems with receiving mail from people you want for the first time would happen yes , but even I could think of a few fixes for that.