Spam's rotten partner in Internet annoyance is spyware. Owen Courreges provides a link to an InformationWeek article on the subject:

Business-technology managers are looking for all the help they can get. "We're starting to see more spyware issues," says Gene Fredriksen, VP for information security at financial-services firm Raymond James & Associates. New and better tools are needed because those available aren't able to "effectively handle the problem for a large company," he says.

Florida Cardiology P.A., which provides heart-disease diagnosis and treatment in six locations around Orlando, has 88 PCs. IT administrator Nick Butler discovered earlier this year that virtually every computer had been infected with some type of spyware. It created a serious drag on productivity, with some systems taking more than 12 minutes to start and others unable to properly connect to the Internet.

Since Florida Cardiology handles personal medical information, the presence of spyware scared Butler. "No one knows for sure what this stuff is doing," he says. "What if one of these things is keystroke logging or captures patient information? That's an unacceptable risk."

Owen surprisingly goes all big-government on the issue. The truth is that most spyware doesn't just creep on to someone's computer. Very much of the time it's part of that largely unread "terms of usage" disclaimer at the beginning of a software install. A lot of the office infections start when an employee downloads a screen-saver or some sort of freebie program. Free software is rarely free, folks; they have to get their money from somewhere. KaZaA is notorious for installing all kinds of crud you don't want on your computer unless you buy the "Plus" version. For my part, I have a freebie program that tells me the temperature and weather conditions. It has random pop-ups, but no spyware.

There are instances where such tracking is done via something viral. Those ought to be (and are, I'm pretty sure) illegal. There is also an argument to be made for a recent senate bill that legislates that users must be informed of every program being installed. Truthfully, though, I'm not sure how much good that's going to do when most of this stuff gets started after a user neglects to read (or simply consents to) a "terms of usage" contract. There isn't much the law can do about that. On the matter of notices, though, I'd imagine this is something that the private sector can handle.

My father recently cracked down on their spyware with Spybot, which has been pretty successful in that regard. A big part of all of this is just staying on top of it. So if we neglect to do so, should the government be asked to step in?

The issue at hand here is how much privacy a computer user is allowed to give up. Obviously, it's a terrible thing when a private company gets ahold of keystroke-monitoring software. Furthermore, I'm not sure what legitimate use there is for such a product. That said, I'm a believer that anyone ought to be able to sell or barter any privacy if that's there choice. It's often been said that Americans value their privacy, but would sell a splice of their DNA for a free Big Mac. In the past, I've handed over my drivers license to my friend Phil in return for some knicknacks (on a side note, I forgot to tell Phil that I moved, dangit!). People are also willing to have programs on their computer that watch the websites they go to in return for the ability to download illegal files. Well, they're willing by omission (neglecting to read the Terms) as much as anything, but it's not really the government's job to make people read a contract before they sign it (or click on it). Actually, I willingly allowed the late, great AudioGalaxy to do just that.


So what about the medical records? Well, companies with sensitive documents need to be careful about what they let employees do on their computers. Programs need to be in place to prevent employees from so much as saving an .exe file to their computer. Much of this is already done, but the private sector ought to be able to pick up the slack.

In short, I'm unconvinced that the government needs to get involved here to save the ignorant computer user from himself. A better solution would be for OS developers to come up with a rating system of intrusiveness. OS developers may then be able to prevent programs that don't subject themselves to the rating system from being installed. The ones that do submit (which is most of them, I'd wager) will also benefit because if they have a lower intrusiveness rating (if they just have pop-up ads for example), their rating will be fairly benign and people can make their decisions accordingly. Those programs that monitor keystrokes or whatnot would then have a lot more trouble making headway on most peoples' PC. Those that do so covertly could be subjecting themselves to criminal prosecution for hacking.

Update: I take back what I said about most of them being partners of free software. I apparently had security on highest, so my check came out clean. I should have noticed this, but I figured that the web sites I couldn't access were due to a slow modem's sloppy handling of the net, which has happened (to a lesser degree) in the past. In any case, I turned the security down a couple notches and I was able to start accessing all sites. Then I ran a check and sure enough, as Owen said, two peeping cookies have appeared in the last couple of hours.