If your adult sites are still fool enough to slip spyware into your visitors' computers, be advised that cyberspace is watching the stuff more closely than before. Two million scans for spyware during the first six months of the year produced almost 55 million instances of spyware being slipped onto Netizens' computers, according to a study by Internet service provider EarthLink and privacy protection software maker Webroot.
Those results, the two companies said this week, equal an average of 26.5 spyware traces per scan, using EarthLink's SpyAudit tracking application, while the same results showed adware, tracking cookies, system monitoring programs, and even Trojan horses dropped slightly in the same period. The SpyAudit tracking turned up 11,446,152 adware traces in the six-month time period and 42,668,641 adware tracking cookies, while turning up 332,809 system monitoring programs and 366,961 Trojan horses.
And there are variants of spyware which are known or heavily suspected of adding porn-related materials to user computers whether the users want them or not.
"As the saying goes, big things come in small packages," said EarthLink vice president of core applications Matt Cobb, announcing the survey results. "And our SpyAudit application, which is small and easy to run, has enabled millions of consumers to find the spies that reside on their PCs. So have applications like the popular free downloads Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware."
Webroot and others define adware being advertising-suppoted software that can send you pop-up, pop-under, or banner ads that you didn't want to see in the first place, though some adware also produces tracking of your Web surfing habits and most of it slows your browser performance and, worst case, downloads third-party software without your knowledge or consent, as spyware so often does.
For now, Webroot says, one of the top adware threats in cyberspace is CoolWebSearch, with an estimated number of variations nearing one hundred and each more complicated to remove than the previous – some of which also add porn links to favourites lists whether or not the surfer visits porn sites at all. The CoolWebSearch group is also said to be able to change your browser settings and dump large numbers of files into your computer to slow its performance dramatically.
"The increased prevalence of adware in the report is concerning, and consumers should know that not all adware is harmless or benign," said Webroot chief executive David Moll in a statement. "Some of the most notorious programs in the spyware family are classified as adware. CoolWebSearch is a nasty example of adware that hijacks homepages and Web searches, triggers a crippling amount of pop-ups, and changes a user's browser settings."
System monitors, EarthLink says, "can capture virtually everything you do on your computer, from keystrokes, emails, and chat room dialogue to which sites you visit and which programs you run. System monitors usually run in the background so that you don't know you're being watched. The information gathered by the system monitor is stored on your computer in an encrypted log file for later retrieval. Some programs can even e-mail the log files to other locations." The ISP said there has been a recent rash of such tools turning up in disguise as e-mail attachments or free software products.
