The biggest threat to personal computing is neither spam nor viruses. Rather, it's the proliferation of a new category of deceptive software that takes over unwitting victims' computers for the purpose of gathering their personal information and bombarding them with unwanted advertising.
Dubbed spyware, adware, sneakware or malware -- depending on who you talk to -- these programs embed themselves deep inside a computer's operating system and spawn windows full of advertising messages, preventing users from accessing any other application. Or, they hide in the background, secretly transmitting information about the user's Web-surfing habits to a server somewhere on the Internet. If the user tries to delete the programs, they act like a cancer and replicate themselves over and over.
The fast-growing phenomenon is already responsible for more than 12 percent of all technical support calls in Dell's consumer hardware division, the biggest category of complaints this year, company representatives said. And they are not alone -- Microsoft claims half of all computer crashes reported by its customers are caused by spyware and its equivalents. The support calls are costing the company "millions," said Jeffrey Friedberg, Microsoft's director of Windows privacy.
To make matters worse, recent studies suggest that the problem is larger than reported. For instance, a recent survey by the National Cyber Security Alliance found that nearly 90 percent of all personal computers could be infected with at least one form of spyware. A separate study by Internet service provider EarthLink found more than 29 million spyware-related files on the 1 million computers the company tested.
So how did all these programs end up on the computers in the first place? Surprisingly, many computer users invited them right in when they installed software downloaded from the Internet. That's because spyware and adware developers often pay to have their programs bundled into unrelated software packages.
For instance, Sharman Networks' popular Kazaa file-sharing application comes bundled with no fewer than three adware programs. Two of them serve ads right to the desktops of unwitting users and one regularly redirects users' Web browsers to a search engine full of advertiser-sponsored search results. (A fourth program can turn your computer into a sort of remote calculator, open to use by its creators whenever they want, for whatever they want.)
The developers all pay Sharman Networks to bundle their software with Kazaa. The developers in turn get paid by marketers who want as many people as possible to see their ads or visit their sites. Or, in the case of the remote calculator, the developers get paid, in theory, by companies that want to harness the spare computing cycles on thousands of computers to solve some complex computing problem.
Although Kazaa's licensing agreement is clear about the existence and intent of each of these programs, critics say consumers rarely take the time to pore over the legalese in licensing agreements before installing new software. Attaching all sorts of extra programs to a piece of unrelated software abuses the consumer's trust, the critics charge.
"Part of it is that the agreements are too hard to read and understand," said Roger Thompson, vice president of product research at PestPatrol, a Pennsylvania-based developer of anti-spyware software. "I don't think any of my kids would read the agreement and would just click 'OK' to install the software."
Still, children and overly trusting consumers can't be blamed for all the cases of spyware being installed on computers. Even the most savvy Internet users have fallen victim to spyware infections. That's because more sinister tactics are at work, according to Thompson. The tactics exploit known vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Windows operating system and Internet Explorer browser to sneak spyware onto users' computers without their knowledge.