Battling Spam and Spyware
Last week, the Post's Business section featured a couple of stories that suggest we might be getting smarter about how to deal with two plagues of modern computing--spam and spyware.
First, Cindy Skrzycki (one of the few people with a byline more spellcheck-proof than my own) wrote in her Regulators column about the Federal Trade Commission's plans to nag companies whose ads have been distributed via spyware. That's a good idea, but New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo did this earlier and better--by publicly naming the offending advertisers instead of communicating privately with them. Skrzcyki wrote:
Cuomo...announced on Jan. 29 that Cingular Wireless, Travelocity.com and Priceline.com agreed to pay a total of $100,000 in fines to settle a spyware case involving a distributor called DirectRevenue.
We need public shaming of companies that would do business with a firm like Direct Revenue--among the lowest of the low when it comes to spyware attacks. You should know which firms chose to get in the gutter with these bums, so you can take your business elsewhere if you choose. Nothing gets a for-profit company's attention like the loss of business.
Then, on Friday, Carrie Johnson wrote about how the Securities and Exchange Commission had halted trading in the shares of companies advertised in "pump-and-dump" spam campaigns. Again, this is the right idea--by preventing people from making money off spam, you take away their incentive to spam people.
The SEC's action does, however, leave out one other group of people who contribute to the problem. That would be the people--to be technically accurate, the fools--who respond to junk e-mail in the first place. If you're ever tempted to act on a junk e-mail pitch, think about this: By taking that bait, you're showing the spammer that his ads work, and in turn encouraging him to keep being a pest.
By Rob Pegoraro |
March 12, 2007; 6:00 AM ET
| Category:
The business we have chosen
Previous: Last-Minute Help With Daylight Saving Time |
Next: Rules For The Digital-TV Transition
Posted by: Steve | March 12, 2007 9:10 AM
I'm confused. There's an ad for spyware on this site. What up??
Posted by: constantine | March 12, 2007 9:32 AM
I ran Ad-Aware. Then I only opened the Washington Post and only read this article. I reran Ad-Aware and picked up 6 tracking cookies. Not spyware maybe, but the next thing to it. Is this necessary?
Posted by: Emilie | March 12, 2007 9:48 AM
You need to fix your clock!
Posted by: Emilie | March 12, 2007 9:48 AM
AT&T/Yahoo DSL has an excellent spam filter. I see maybe one piece of spam per day in my inbox. Every month or so, I login and check the "Bulk" folder just to see if the filter caught any legitimate e-mail. Occasionally, the filter flags legit mail from big distribution lists that I subscribe to(e.g. Microsoft security advisories, Mcafee daily update notifications), but I've lost nothing from family, friends, or business e-mail.
From personal experience, if you use Evite.com, they will share your address with spammers.
Direct Revenue has been a longtime resident of the blocklists from mvps.org (HOSTS file) and spywarewarrior.com (IE-Spyad).
Posted by: taskforceken | March 12, 2007 10:58 AM
AT&T Yahoo's spam/spyware is only for PC's -- not for Macs, so I have not been able to use it. I have heard it is good. Why don't they get on board for Mac's too -- even to get my DSL I had to put IE on my Mac to complete registration as the disks provided by AT&T were only for a PC.
Kind of sad being neglected....but not sad enough to go back to a PC!
Posted by: rjrjj | March 12, 2007 11:26 AM
Tracking cookies may or may not be something you want on your computer, but they're not spyware or anything close to it. Being inert text files, they're not software of any kind at all.
- RP
Posted by: Rob Pegoraro | March 12, 2007 1:23 PM
rob, good point, but you missed emilies. i think her concern was privacy in general. *** an executable is just one file. executables are active and cookies are passive. executables read and write cookies. the difference is where the executable resides -- their machine or mine.
Posted by: egalitaire | March 12, 2007 2:18 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
Kick'em in the bottom line. It is the only thing they understand.