From a Yahoo Internet Life article, Mike...
<<In their default configurations, RealNetworks's RealDownload, Netscape's Smart Download, and the NetZip Download Demon report to corporate headquarters the identity of every file that is downloaded using them. Some companies, including Quicken and FedEx, place tiny, transparent one-pixel-by-one-pixel images in Web pages and e-mail that can track who is reading them. Scores of software companies use "spyware," which gets downloaded along with their products and which sends back to headquarters information about the user's actions. Even Mattel Interactive, as Simson Garfinkel wrote in Salon.com, used the computers on which children played its Broderbund CD-ROMs to send out information without informing the kids or their parents.
Game companies seem particularly prone to spyware. When my teenage son downloaded Steve Gibson's free (for now) OptOut software, which detects and expunges spyware, he found half a dozen spy programs from games he had downloaded. But the use of spyware is rapidly spreading beyond games. In July, an antispyware Web site listed more than 400 suspected corporate users of spyware.
The thought of staying on top of the constantly changing world of Net security is indeed daunting. And there's no question that maintaining control of who's running your computer requires time and effort. But the alternatives are either giving up the Web altogether (a lousy option) or giving up control of your machine. It's comforting to realize that with a little prudence and work, I was able to get a thumbs-up from Shields Up, via the recent message: "All attempts to get any information from your computer have FAILED." Then, soberingly, it added: "This is very uncommon for a Windows networking-based PC."
Your software may be better, but just in case
grc.com
The test I ran on shields and ports of my computer said it was operating at full stealth ( which they say is very cool - but they urge me not to get too cocky---though as an Ampex shareholder that is never a danger). Yours probably is too. I accomplished my computers incognito status by simply going to the free Microsoft Windows Update site regularly and downloading all internal security updates.( I am running windows 98). So if some iNEXTV gremlin is trying to shout out, it can't.And the species is probably not unusual at all....( but other more expert board members here can add much more to this conversation than I can. Back to stealth mode ; - ) |
