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Consider my septuagenarian father-in-law Exhibit A in the battle against spyware- the malicious software that operates on a computer without the user's informed consent. This past holiday season, I emailed him a link to the Apple Store, so that he could buy his beloved son an iTunes gift card. But when he clicked on the legitimate link, his computer took him to another website, where he forked over $40 for a $15 card. (He did actually get the card, but at an illegitimate $25 premium; Apple ships for free...
...Spyware can operate in a variety ways, from the annoying to the nefarious: It can generate pop-up ads and record which ones are clicked on; it can redirect searches; it can monitor a user's keystrokes in order to steal passwords and financial details...
...Spyware usually gets onto a user's computer by hiding behind other software downloaded from the Internet. "The first ones we saw were attached to end-user license agreements,"says David Perry of Trend Micro, a computer security services provider with a presence in 26 countries. "You were unwittingly agreeing to it [by not reading the agreement]. But the vast majority of spyware today is installed entirely without your knowledge...
...Whatever you do, watch out for spyware that's pretending to be anti-spyware. There are some 200 rogue anti-spyware applications out there, says Webroot CEO David Moll. Surreptitious software hijacks a user's computer, then pops up a little box-looking for all the world like it's been generated by Microsoft-warning the computer has been infected. It then asks the user to click on a link to download anti-spyware. The money goes into the rogue's pocket, and the computer is still sick. "That's as sneaky as it gets," says Moll. "Spyware is advancing...
...called Great Firewall of China--the government also made Google run annoyingly slowly, and sometimes not at all. The new site, Google.cn, is physically based in China and runs speedily and reliably, but its contents are censored by Google to accord with government preferences. (A warning label informs the user of this arrangement.) So basically, China's Web surfers have a choice: they can use slow, relatively uncensored Google.com or speedy, sanitized Google.cn...