Security and Convenience

By Jerry Pournelle

March 25, 2005

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Can This Go On?

We not only suffer from adware and malware, but we have to put up with companies asserting their right to infect our machines, and to sue anyone trying to warn us. The ISearch toolbar is an example.

If you don't believe this, Google Cydoor and read what they brag about doing. Note also that I was never presented with any license agreement: what I saw was a routine Microsoft query about whether to allow something to download. Once I agreed to that, I got WinTools and Cydoor among other horrors.

Note that these malware pushers have sponsors, some of them rather large companies like T.D. Waterhouse. Fidelity Investments used to be one of the sponsors, but has recently acted to change that after discovering just what they were sponsoring. Perhaps other sponsors will realize that pushing their products through drive-by infections of user's computers is not a good idea, and invites retaliation by a community that has ample resources for doing just that.

Congress has been reluctant to get into this mess. The malware pushers have money and lobbyists and are organized, and their livelihood is at stake: In other words, they have more at stake in continuing to push their malware than any one of us has had in preventing it. That is changing, though: Adware and spyware are less and less distinguishable, and when they are installed through stealth the differences are no longer important. If you are infected with adware you must do something about it; you can't assume that the apparent infection is the only hit you took. In my case there were four infections, all from a site that offered me information about Cicero.

This can't go on. I don't say this because this time it was my ox that was gored, but the experience does bring home just how critical things have become. If I can be hit, almost anyone can be. And while I got out home free in an hour or so, imagine the devastating effect on Aunt Minnie.

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