Mike Healan of Spyware Info fame is becoming my hero when it comes to fighting spam and spyware. More on that in a couple minutes, though.
If you’ve never had to perform a spyware exorcism on a PC, consider yourself lucky. If you have, you know what a major pain in the ass the process has become recently. I’ve run into systems at work which required three different removal programs and nearly an hour of my time to clean completely. It’s a waste of my time and department resources, a waste of the users’ time, and it’s only going to get worse unless something is done soon.
I feel the greatest fault lies with the companies developing and spreading this software. They are rapidly blurring the line between spyware and virus by designing their software to actively resist removal and even polymorph to avoid detection by spyware removal tools such as Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-aware. I’m sorry, but any software which comes back after being “uninstalled” or otherwise removed is a virus. Software which installs itself and runs using the name of a legitimate program to avoid being noticed during a cursory glance through a task manager is obviously hiding something — there is no legitimate reason for a piece of third-party software to be named “C:\Windows\SvcHost.exe.”
The spyware companies themselves are not alone in holding the blame, however. A very large portion of this software would never be able to install if Internet Explorer were not so poorly designed and full of gaping security holes. Any Web browser which allows software to be downloaded and installed without the knowledge or consent of the user simply by visiting a Web site deserves to be uninstalled. Oh wait… you can’t uninstall IE. My mistake. 
If you try to disable any of the insecure aspects of IE, it becomes so annoying with its nearly endless string of nagging dialog boxes that most people just turn ActiveX and other components back on to maintain their sanity. Supposedly Microsoft will take steps to correct this — or at least make it less annoying — when Windows XP Service Pack 2 is released with a new version of IE. Sorry, Microsoft, but it’s too little, too late.
The spyware that isn’t installed automatically using IE is often installed alongside file sharing apps such as KaZaA. At this point, if you’re still using these sharing networks and their spyware-infested client software, you deserve whatever you get. Unfortunately, when someone installs such software at work, we have to clean up the resulting mess.
So what can be done about this? Clearly the spyware “industry” will not regulate itself to stop abuses such as this because companies don’t view themselves as being a problem. In his latest Spyware Weekly Newsletter, Mike Healan shares some of his insightful and remarkably logical ideas to get adware and spyware under control. Sadly, I suspect his views and those of many others will be largely ignored when he sends them to the FCC…
While I agree Dave, I’ve made $2000 this year on virus/adware removal this year already
That’s true; there is the whole “job security” aspect of it. That said, I’d rather spend my time working on projects or getting something useful accomplished, than wasting hours out of my work day removing this bullshit from peoples’ PCs.
Well said Dave. Job security in the removal aspects may seem like a plus now. But if this assult on privacy… this assult on computer functionality… this assult on the very security of use that almost every person, business & institution has [hastily] come to rely on, continues at this rate, there will be no “job securtiy” anywhere.
There will be no security… period. Anything and everything that relies on computers, and the current means of information exchange (and what doesn’t these days) will have to change. That may seem improbable right now, with the current importance of computers, the internet, etc. But only one truth has held up throughout time… “Given time, all things change”