Google earlier this year joined Harvard, Oxford, Consumer Reports, Sun Microsystems, and Lenovo to Stop Badware and will now begin warning searchers of dodgy websites. Badware means spyware, malware, and adware. If you got the Google warning too late, cleanup with AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy.
posted by CCBC on Aug 7, 2006 - 11 comments

Thought-provoking interview with former employee of hated spyware-maker 180 Solutions.
via /.
posted by Afroblanco on Apr 2, 2006 - 21 comments

"To tell the truth ... I'm sorta surprised they haven't caught me yet," The Washington Post ran an interesting interview with a botmaster, a young man who made serveral thousands of dollars a month installing XXX spyware on machines that he controlled. He installed the software on the machines of people he did not know by hacking into them remotely. The lenghty article included a partial photo of the botmaster along with vauge descriptions of the small midwestern town where the man lives, and was published with the understanding that the man's identity would be kept secret. Someone should have told that to the person that manages photos at the Washington Post. An estute reader over at Slashdot was able to locate some extra information stored in the picture's metadata including the photographer and the location the picture was taken, Roland, Oklahoma, a town of less than 3000 people. Whoops.
posted by daHIFI on Feb 21, 2006 - 56 comments

Dale Begg-Smith is being called the "golden boy of the slopes" by the Australian media after winning gold in the Turin Winter Games. However, when asked about his business, which has reportedly earned him millions of dollars and enabled him to buy a Lamborghini, Begg-Smith became "..vague about its nature." "It's complicated," he said. "We make the technology for companies to monitor their online advertising campaigns." What is emerging now is that Begg-Smith's companies, AdsCPM and CPM Media, are linked to home page hijacking, spyware, porn redirectors, and other unsavory internet practices. A quick WHOIS of AdsCPM.com reveals that the same IP address is shared with porn domain names and websites that are notorious for distributing spyware. Bloggers using the Wayback machine have turned up similar information. Is he a willing spyware merchant who has now reluctantly been bought to our attention, or a legitimate internet entrepreneur?
posted by davem on Feb 17, 2006 - 39 comments

wolves join federal sheep board (via dailyrotten)
posted by Tryptophan-5ht on Mar 6, 2005 - 16 comments

For those that use SpamAssassin, you may have noticed a degrading service since January 2004. As usual, Google has the Answer - it seems a spammer paid $200 an overly helpful geek on Google Answers to detail exactly how SpamAssassin works... I wonder if said geek ever got the money?
posted by wibbler on Apr 25, 2004 - 27 comments

Your Internet Connection Is Not Optimized! Are the ever-popular fake error message banners illegal? The people involved in the current class action suit against Bonzi Software (makers of the infamous BonziBuddy and several other programs that have been classified as Adware/Trackware and accused of being Spyware) believe so.
posted by c3o on Dec 4, 2002 - 27 comments

Brillian Digital has quietly attached its software to Kazaa and plans to remotely "turn on" people’s PCs, welding them into a new network. CEO sez a pop-up box will give people a chance to turn it off. Users who've accept "terms of service" already distributed with Brilliant’s and Kazaa’s software are already agreeing to let their computers be used without any payment at all.
posted by ao4047 on Apr 2, 2002 - 27 comments