TheMitchellSolution

SPYWARE – Past, present and future

Once upon a time, a long time ago, the internet was a fairly safe place. No popups, no malicious software waiting behind a webpage, kids could surf all day without parents having to worry about it… Ah, the good old days. When was this time? My recollection of this time period is anywhere between 1990 and 1995.. A whole five years of innocence.

Back in those golden days, there was also the issue of extremely slow connections (we didn't have DSL back then!), a lack of quality content, no true e-commerce, limited resources for research… While the internet was safe from trouble, it was also kind of boring. E-Mail was really the most exciting thing going on back in the day.

With time, faster connections and an expanding global user base, the internet neighborhoods started filling up. Everybody was moving in, building all kinds of digital structures and hoping everybody would come by for the open house. Faster computers and new web technologies allowed both would-be website designers and professional developers to rapidly create quality content for us to browse. Companies expanded their internet presence, quality content was becoming more and more avilable to professionals for many industries, and students soon saw their coursework and schedules available online. E-Commerce was being realized to as the next big thing, Amazon was booming (but not making any money), and the overall internet experience was improving on a daily basis.

One day, back in 1995, I saw my first pop-up ad. I was shredding the net to pieces with my 386sx PC that had two megs of memory. I remember I was browsing the net, looking for some software and then *pop*. There it was! It was the coolest thing. Here I was, surfing the net, and suddenly, I was contacted by this pop up window, with what was apparently a very important message! It was telling me to download a new tool that would help me surf the internet! Whoa. What followed is history, and has ever since been the number one reason that most home users call me for support.

By clicking the ad, I was invited to install “Bonzi Buddy” or some equivalent of. I did it, and within a few weeks, I realized that this program had more payload than what it promised and I was forced to reinstall my operating system. Back then, I was reinstalling my operating system four or more times a year because of the software I was downloading from the net.

Time has passed, popups became a regular nusiance, marketing companies and brainy twentysomething web savvy programmers have teamed up to create every possible type of marketing analyses tools that will make apparent the tracks of the websurfing public. Kind of like a forester might know where deer go to drink, marketing companies wanted to know where surfers were spending their time and money. While it was useful to look at all this online activity from the top down, it was finally determined that the best way to look at this activity was from right inside your computer.

By developing programs that keep track of all your online activity and report back to headquarters regularly, marketing companies were suddenly able to make millions in revenue by telling their customers where they could get the most bang for their buck, and their customers were seeing the results of using these types of marketing tools in capital gains. It was apparent, a new mode of marketing had been born

The problem was this: Who would ever want to install this software on their computer? If somebody approached you and said “Hey, I've got this software that I would like to install on your computer so that I can track all of your internet activity and submit it to a giant database of other user's activity!”, I don't think most people would be interested. In fact, most people are offended by the prospect of someone monitoring their online activity. This is where the concept of Spy-Ware was conceived.

Spy-Ware, Ad-Ware and Mal-Ware. You hear these terms every day, tossed around casually, like the names of common household objects. What are they, specifically? Here's the breakdown:

Spy-Ware: Any application that resides on your computer and tracks your online activity, then reports this information back to home base. Kind of like an inside operative that doesn't reveal itself.

Ad-Ware: Just like Spy-Ware, with one major difference: After reporting back to home base, instructions are sent back to the computer to launch specifically target ads that lure you to competitor's websites, based on where you are surfing. For example, if you are surfing amazon's website for books, you may get a popup for barnes and noble, with a coupon code for five bucks off your purchase.

Mal-Ware: Any application that resides on your computer, tracking personal information, logging passwords, credit card info, or that is intended to damage or disrupt your computer's processes.

So, who would EVER install any of these programs on their computer? I certainly wouldn't, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't, either!

So, how does it end up on almost EVERY computer that is connected to the internet, with even the most cautious user behind the steering wheel?

If you have kids, well, there is your answer. If you don't have kids, but occasionally misspell a web address, well, there is another possibility. If you surf at all outside of the “safe” zones of the internet, well, there you go. The internet is full of wolves in sheeps' clothing… cleverly disguising these applications, it's the pop up ads that tell you your computer is infected and that you need to click the page to install the latest spyware protection. It's also the misspelled webpages that take you to what appear to be useful search engines. It's the links to free internet optimizers, free computer speed boosters, screensavers, smileys, password savers and countless other applications. The fastest way to commit computer suicide? Go surfing for adult content or jump on a few gambling sites.

About eighty percent of my new customers always tell me the same thing: “I'm calling you because my computer is impossible to work with anymore. I can barely get onto the internet, and I get hundreds of popup ads.”. It's all the same thing: Ad-Ware, Spy-Ware and Mal-Ware. Generally, it takes me two hours to clean up all these programs, but about ¼ of the time, it is necessary to reinstall the operating system from scratch, just because the malicious software has totally compromised the computer, and there is no other remedy.

Every passing day brings new tricks and ingenious methods of getting you to unknowingly install these programs onto your computer. I find the industry to be quite fascinating, and have enjoyed watching it evolve, strictly from a technology standpoint. Let's face it: If it wasn't for these “bad” companies and crackers developing this kind of software, we wouldn't have seen half of the progress in internet security technology that we have. This negative activity forces companies like Microsoft and McAfee to develop better and stronger technologies to combat the onslaught of spyware and improve the overall quality of their products.
So, how do you protect yourself? Well, there are a few different factors that need to be accomodated:

What is the future of online marketing agents and malicious software? Well, if I've learned anything about this part of the industry at all, it is that nothing is foolproof, as fools are so ingenious. You make it, they break it. This is the classic tale of good versus evil. Marketing schemes and internet punks versus Microsoft and education of the masses on how to protect their computers, building pathways of intuition into the user's brain.

Next month: Keeping your email, calendar and contacts synchronized.

 

© 2008TheMitchellSolution