Your PC's Privacy - Big Brother IS watching YOU!

Do you know you're being watched? More specifically, do you know that your web surfing behaviour is being watched? Do you know that your PC's resources may be being used against your wishes, even though have legally allowed it?

The web is not what it once was. It used to be innocent, the domain of geeky-but-harmless "computer folks" who liked computers because they did neato things really fast! Now, greed has taken over the Net, and the Web has become the playground of that great money-making machine...MARKETING & ADVERTISING.

We've all seen and suffered "banner ads" for years now, but it has gone a step beyond "web noise". Now, some software companies employ not-so-nice (downright immoral if you ask me!) strategies for gathering marketing information from you, so that they may sell you more stuff faster! The scary part is HOW they gather this information. When you install some software from the Net, like RealPlayer for example, did you know that when you click that "Accept" button on their licence agreement, it gives them permission to install "Spyware" on your PC? "Spyware" is a type of network-enabled software which is designed to gather information from the PCs that it is installed on, and reports that information back to the people who made that software (ie: "big brother").

Other software companies have also been known to deploy even nastier "big-brother-esque" software which, when you click the "Accept Licence Agreement" button, allows them to actually make use of your PC's resources (unused hard drive space, unused network bandwidth on your high-speed connection, etc.) for their own ends!! The scariest one of these is a piece of "TakeoverWare" that gets installed when you install "Kazaa", a popular file-sharing utility. The "TakeoverWare", written by Brilliant Digital, was designed to tap "unused computing power and storage space" on your PC for their own ends. Luckily, the courts stopped them.

However, fear not young web-surfer! There are tools to fight off big brother's evil ways! Here's a few anti-Spyware sites & utilities that you can trust.

• Ad-Aware by LavaSoft - this German company makes FREE software which detects and cleans up spyware, not only installed spyware processes, but also spyware "cookies" that are created simply by browsing a web page, and other nasties. On April 21, 2002, I ran this on my PC , which I generally thought was quite clean. It came up with a dozen spywares on my PC! No wonder my PC was so slow!
• Spychecker.com - a great little website that you can use to determine if software is laced with hidden Spyware. Check this site BEFORE you download free software!
• OptOut by Gibson Research Corporation - similar to Ad-Aware. www.grc.com has lots of good links to other privacy sites.
• VoiceOfThePublic.com - a website devoted to the protection of privacy on the net. They also have a great Privacy News page.

Here's a couple of articles that you should read. It's just an example of what software companies are trying...luckily they stopped these guys!

• Peer-To-Peer Network Hides Inside Kazaa (from ZDNet - Australia)
  
• PC Invaders Camp Out in Your PC - with Your Express Consent! (from c|net news)

So, what is the moral of this story?

READ & UNDERSTAND THE LICENCE AGREEMENT OF ANY SOFTWARE THAT YOU ARE GOING TO INSTALL ON YOUR PC BEFORE YOU INSTALL IT!

Here endeth the lesson.

PS: Thanks to Steve Dotto's "Dotto on Data" for publicizing this issue. It's a great wake-up call! Steve Dotto's show is excellent and I encourage you to check it out!