As a participant in the beta program for OptOut, I can tell you that this is
good solid software.  Steve Gibson continues to write fantasic apps.  I'm
also playing with another tool that he recommends called ZoneAlarm which is
a personal firewall program.  It is free and available at www.zonelabs.com
you can read about it on Steve's site at www.grc.com

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of COLE,GLENN (Non-HP-SantaClara,ex2)
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 7:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: OT: spyware


InfoWorld's Brian Livingston has an interesting summary of --
and a "cure" for -- an emerging class of apps sometimes called
"spyware."

Basically, some apps generate revenue for their authors by
displaying ads.  These ads are downloaded by the user, and
feedback about user responses (and maybe more info!) is
returned to the company supplying the ad software.

Among other problems, users generally are not told of the
ad-downloading nature of the apps, there is no guarantee
of what info is being returned, and the daemon lives on
even when the app which installed it has been deleted.

Supposedly, there are over 400 apps using this technique,
including LapLink FTP, CuteFTP, lots of MP3 utilities, some
games, and others too numerous to generalize here.

Mr. Livingston provides more info about the technique and
the problems it creates, and a link to much more info by
Steve Gibson (formerly of SpinRite fame).  Mr. Gibson has
a utility called "OptOut" which can be used to scan the
system registry for signs of the "spyware."

Both articles make for very interesting reading.

Brian Livingston (with apologies for any wrap):
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/00/03/20/000320oplivingston.xml

Steve Gibson:
   http://grc.com/optout.htm

(A screenshot for "OptOut.exe" and a link to the executable
are halfway down the page.)

List of apps known to install the daemon:
   http://www.aureate.com/advertisers/network_members.html

(An *alphabetical* list can be found a third of the way
down Mr. Gibson's page.)

--Glenn (happy they don't support the Mac :)