Washington draws a step closer to outlawing spyware

Posted on 18 Jun 2004 at 09:54

Yesterday members of the US House Energy and Commerce subcommittee voted unanimously in favour of a bill that would force sites to notify visitors before loading 'spyware' on their machines according to Reuters

'Spyware' is defined as a piece of software that monitors user activities on the Internet. This bill would ban such practices as identify theft and logging keystrokes with fines of up to millions of dollars for the worst offenders. The bill would also demand that spyware be made easy to remove..

'We continue to meet people who have had their Web pages hijacked, their browsers corrupted, and in some cases their children exposed to inappropriate material via nefarious programs lurking on their hard drives,' the subcommittee chairman Rep. Cliff Stearns is reported as saying

The problem is that while everyone associates this kind of computer behaviour with 'spyware`, rogue software that bombards you with pop-up ads isn't actually spyware - unless it pops up ads in response to a particular page you are visiting. Often they are nothing so sophisticated and just appear at random or preset times. Whilst the bill also seeks to ban such 'adware' which is often embarrassing to the receiver and impossible to close, in many cases trying to draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate practices may prove almost impossible in court.

As with spam is that everyone can tell you what they think spyware is. The trouble is that, as with spam, a lot of the questionable practices associated with spyware are also used in legitimate marketing. Dropping cookies which monitor behaviour as a customer navigates a site, pop up windows and redirects to different pages are all used in less intrusive and legitimate ways by many web sites.

Unsurprisingly then the Federal Trade Commission, who will be charged with stamping out spyware, is said not to be overjoyed at the prospect of new powers. The FTC claims that offenders can already be charged under a variety of existing privacy and fraud legislation. The suspicion being that the Senate merely wants to be seen to be 'doing something' about a problem which infuriates the voters.

The next stage of this bill will be to the full House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Author: Steve Malone