The Spyware Nightmare
Paul McFedries · 2005
My parents, who remain spry and sharp well into their 70s, are wise in the ways of the real world, but are like innocent lambs when it comes to the increasingly nasty practices one encounters in the online world. On a recent visit, my father complained that his computer was sluggish and that his browser was doing weird things, such as taking him to some pretty unsavory sites when he merely clicked on a link in an otherwise normal Web page. The symptoms sounded all too familiar, and when I scanned his machine, I found what I suspected: it was infected with over 100 examples of various types of malware, the now common generic term for malicious software, such as viruses and Trojan horses. The worst offender in my father’s case was spyware, a plague upon the earth that threatens to deprive a significant portion of the online world of its sanity. As often happens with new concepts, the term spyware has become encrusted with multiple meanings as people attach similar ideas to a convenient and popular label. Spyware is generally defined, however, as any program that surreptitiously monitors a user’s computer activities—particularly the typing of passwords, PINs, and credit card numbers—or harvests sensitive data on the user’s computer and then sends that information to an individual or a company via the user’s Internet connection, the so-called back channel.