Your Free Virus Removal

If you find yourself browsing the internet and you get a pop-up for a product that claims to help you with something, be it optimize your internet, be your friend, or whatever, it is 100% spy-ware. Unless you wrote it yourself and you know exactly what it is, it would be very unwise to download it. A few examples of well known spy-ware products are “CoolWebSearch”, this program likes to exploit Internet Explorer, and it uses ActiveX and tracking cookies to accomplish its task. Also, when you search with it, all of the search terms you use are recorded. Another popular piece of spy-ware is the “internet optimizer”, this little gem is actually a redirect to a page with lots of ads on it, and this program ultimately makes it nearly impossible for the user to access password protected sites, possibly trying to capture passwords too.

So, we now know what spy-ware is, we have a list of great tools and free spy-ware removal programs, what are the legal aspects of spy-ware development and deployment? I would like to point out here that I am NOT a lawyer; I am not affiliated with any legal entities, nor am I at liberty to give legal advice. I am a computer security consultant, the laws I am aware of, I understand from personal research on my own. With that in mind, here goes.

The act of writing spy-ware is not illegal. You are free to author anything you want (with some exceptions like child pornography). The illegal part of spy-ware comes when you have the software install on the user’s computer unknowingly. This is a violation of the United States’ Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984, it is also in violation of the UK’s Computer Misuse Act and similar laws world wide. Though these laws are more attributed to the authors of viruses and worms, legislation is being pursued to press these laws against spy-ware authors. The spy-ware author’s argument is that the user is consenting that the software be installed to their computer; the writer of the spy-ware will write a very confusing license agreement for a legitimate piece of software that has spy-ware packaged with it. Two states have completely banned spy-ware and made it a criminal offense to produce it, they are Washington and Iowa. Additionally, in 2005, legislation was passed that if you are caught distributing and creating spy-ware you will be imprisoned under the Internet Spy-ware Prevention Act (2005), it passed in 2007.

I would like to summarize what you just read. In 2007, the United States congress passed into law a bill which makes it illegal to create spy-ware and distribute it. This bill made all of most spyware’s data collection mechanisms illegal except cookies.

I hope you’ve learned something here! Spy-ware comes in all shaped and sizes, it will try to find a way onto your computer via any avenue it can, do not visit referral sites if you can avoid it. Surf safely and don’t click the links!