Spy! Where?

By: Jonathan Brazil

Casually browsing the Internet these days is a common activity for most people. However, did you know that by simply browsing around and not doing anything else you are subjecting your computer to possible infection by spy ware. Forms of spy ware have been around for years but it is only now that the problem has started to reach substantial mass and is causing a real problem for computer users worldwide. Most often these unwanted invaders of our computers come as part of our favourite free applications such as some web browsers, file sharing agents and other commonly downloaded utilities used by millions worldwide.

So what exactly is spy ware? Spy ware is yet another of these Internet jargon phrases for undesirable additions to your computer. In short most forms of spy ware take the form of Advertising Supported Software (Adware). Adware is a way for programmers who release shareware software (i.e. software that you download and try for free but are encouraged to make a donation to the author if you choose to keep using it) to make money from a product, other than by retrieving donations from satisfied users. These applications usually have areas of the user interface dedicated to displaying advertisements.

There are several large companies that offer money to these developers to place banner ads in their products in exchange for a portion of the revenue from banner sales. This way, you don't have to pay for the software and the developers are still getting paid. If you find the banners annoying, there is usually an option to remove them, by paying the regular licensing fee.

Other forms of spy ware take the form of cookies. What are cookies? A cookie is simply a small text file placed on your computer when you visit a website. It is specific to that website and can only be written to and read from that website. Online shopping stores and other organisations use cookies to track people moving through their sites and what products they have recently viewed, etc. No malicious information is stored in these files so they generally won't cause any harm to your computer. The typical lifespan of a cookie is a couple of hours before it expires and becomes unusable. However, some websites place perma-cookies on your machine. These are cookies that never expire and can be used to constantly track your activity on the site over unlimited time periods. This information can be used to build up a profile of the viewer and can then be used to target them with ads for specific tastes.

So as you can see, this type of spy ware is all about advertising and trying to get you to buy products either directly or indirectly. It is all about being subjected to products that may or may not be related to what you originally installed or wanted to view. Spy ware is annoying and sometimes intruding into our otherwise faceless computer existence. As more and more of these, little monitoring add-ins become almost standard in our applications we are being forced into submission of our identities in a technological world where we lived for so long in the shade as nameless individuals.

There are also other types of spy ware that allow remote monitoring of users actions. This includes everything from keystrokes, snapshots, email logging, and just about anything else. Typically these applications are created for parents to monitor the activities of children on home computers but if such applications were installed unknowingly to you by a malicious attacker then any information that you store on your computer is potentially at risk, including credit card details and other sensitive information. There are ways to scan and remove certain forms of spy ware. Obviously you'll never be able to catch them all, as just like viruses, there's a new one released every day.

Applications such as AdAware from Lavasoft (http://www.lavasoft.de) offer a very good level of scan and remove facilities to the average user. From personal experience I would recommend that if you use the Internet regularly then you should install some spy ware removal tool and run it at least once a week to remove any unwanted garbage/dangers from your machine.

As a software developer I can see benefits for shareware developers who want to push users into buying their often valuable software by offering the option to remove ads by purchasing a full licence for the software. From the perspective of casual web browsers however, I feel as though this is only another migration of statistical gathering to perform free market surveys on an unsuspecting public. I've written articles in the past about the e-voting systems, the club card schemes, and SPAM. Each one of them technological advances now present in our everyday lives, that cause concerns about who has possession of our personal details and for what purpose they will use them. Spy ware may have started as a way of generating revenue for hard working independent developers but sadly like any piece of technology that can track people it will be mostly used by those who gather statistics and details from unsuspecting prey.