Spyware everywhere!
You might have heard of the term "Spyware" in different medias, and it's something more and more people are talking about. In general, spyware is any technology that gathers information about a person or organization without their knowledge. The information it gathers can be your surfing habbits, sites you have visited, items you have bought, credit card info and passwords. This information is then most likely being used to send targeted advertisments to you via email, instant messaging and web.
For now the Mac has been saved for the worst types of SpyWare, mainly because we only have a 5-6 % share of the market. Yet again PC users are taking the worst way out. On the PC platform P2P sharing utilities like KaZa, morpheus and AudioGalaxy are installing Spyware clients together with the actual software. KaZa is believed to install a piece of Spyware that will make your computer use its unused CPU power to participate in distributed computing projects, and delivering pop-up ads on random webpages you surf. And all this happens without you even knowing anything of it. While legitimate adware companies will disclose the nature of data that is collected and transmitted in their privacy statement , there is almost no way for the user to actually control what data is being sent. The fact is that the technology is in theory capable of sending much more than just banner statistics - and this is why many people feel uncomfortable with the idea.
As I've mentioned earlier the Mac has been pretty much saved from the Spyware hype so far. But the Mac has been haunted by another form of Spyware lately. This form for Spyware is becomming more and more used, and not only by small unknown firms, but from big-shots like Adobe and Intego. Adobe is one of the largest Mac developers around, but they still turn to dirty tricks to control piracy. Adobe is believed to send your registration-number and your IP address to a central server uppon install and use of their applications. Adobe claim that they do not send information that can reveal your identity, but they do. Your IP address. Piracy is of course not acceptable, but I believe that Adobe should use other tactics to fight piracy.
But Adobe isn't alone, you can find similar features in products from Intego, Alladin and even the nice guys at Ambrosia Software.
The latest Escape Velocity game from Ambrosia Software phones home and reports serialnumbers, and all Alladin products are believed to do the same. But shouldn't software firms be able to fight piracy? Of course they should, but the methods are wrong. The technology is capable of sending much more than just serialnumbers, banner statistics etc.. and the user have no way of controling what kind of data that is being sent from their computers. That's the main problem.
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