It's Not All Fun and Games

Dec. 22, 2003

There are plenty of little diversions to be had for your computer, adding tiny animated smiley face figures to your emails, free games that are reminiscent of 80's style video games, and utilities that block unwanted ads. 

But some of these seemingly harmless pieces of software have a dark side to them. Some of those programs have hidden programs that watch what you do (spyware), report it to their masters, and then send you advertisements in the form of Spam, pop-up ads, and Web sites (adware). Mark Gibbs of NetworkWorld, calls this type of thing "scumware" for obvious reasons. 

Most of this kind of product say they aren't spyware or adware, but that they only 'help' when you get 'lost'. A lawyer might agree with this distinction, but my common-sense-o-meter is telling me that these programs say one thing then do another. As Mark Gibbs says, "You have to admit there's a slickness to the whole idea: Offer users gadgets that will amuse them and then modify the way their systems operate for commercial advantage." 

So how can you fight against being taken advantage of by scumware? If you are already infected, there are anti-scumware programs that can help you remove the programs. But to really make a difference, every time you find scumware on any of your computers, send a nasty email to the people who wrote the software. Make it clear that they will never get any business from you - ever. If the commercial advantage to these programs is lost, then they will most likely go away and stop bothering us. 

The bottom line: Scumware can slow down your connection to the Internet, degrade your PC's performance overall, break other programs, and even damage your operating system configuration. Let's all work together to purge scumware from the Internet.