In computer news this week, 03/21/2002

In computer news this week, 03/19/2002

Things that go bump in the night, on the internet, and onto your computer ......

There are probably programs on your computer right now that are monitoring your internet surfing habits, taking up some of your computer resources and slowing you down, and violating your privacy.

If you surf the internet, your privacy is already invaded. In just the 10 short years since the WWW has been in operation, the usage of it has changed so much that its original architects must think that they have created a monster. Instead of the web being a wonderful educational communication experience (same as television in the 1950's) it has turned into a nightmare of advertising ploys, popup advertisements, and barrage of spam advertising (same as television today).

Several years ago when I started doing shows on the internet, I had already heard of "adware" or programs that installed themselves on your computer without your permission while you were innocently surfing the web. Just as internet advertising has increased exponentially, so has adware, and the most maddening part of this is that these programs install themselves on your computer, and you usually have no idea of their existence.

2 of the most common are Comet Cursor and Tsadbot. If you have comet cursor, it installs at startup and allows you to change your cursor to different cutesy shapes, while at the same time it is reputed to monitor and send your buying habits. You think it's a fun program, but it's not really funny. The Tsadbot program seems to be pre-installed on many computers, and seems to work silently in the background.

Both of these programs, and dozens of others, will install themselves on your computer silently without your permission, do their thing, and are as hard to remove as a computer virus, which in some cases technically they may be considered to be. Programs don't grow on your computer; you have to install them, or someone else does this.

Fortunately there is a free program you can download and run to see if your computer has any of these programs on it: Ad-aware by Lavasoft http://tomcoyote.com/lsindex.html

I was made aware of this program by Steve Gibson at http://www.grc.com/, a long-time industry goodguy. He is presently working on a program to combat these ad programs and many similar invasive programs, and I'll be reviewing that later.

I downloaded and ran Ad-aware on my main computer which is continually attached to the web. I have always used anti-virus software, internet high security settings, and other precautions, but Ad-aware found tracks of 38 files which it considered to be of the ad-robot types. This included both comet cursor and tsadbot files which I had previously detected and disabled years ago, but they still left footprints.

You will also find a long list of questions and answers related to this topic on these sites.

And if you're thinking "Gee, I never go the weird internet sites that Delaney and others of his ilk surf...." let me advise you that major name software companies, including Pkware - makers of pkzip - and Real Networks - makers of Real Player - have been accused of bundling these programs in their available shareware downloads.

So Protect your privacy - it's your internet constitutional right to do so!

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 624-7230