“Spyware, adware and other code that lurks on hard drives has become so pervasive it’s bedeviling home users, driving corporate technology managers to distraction and has become the top complaint in customer service calls to computer makers,” Declan McCullagh reports for CNET News.com. “But participants in a one-day workshop convened Monday by the Federal Trade Commission couldn’t decide what to do about it.”

McCullagh reports, “Spyware and adware problems became the largest single customer service complaint late last year, Dell attorney Maureen Cushman told the FTC workshop. It’s become ‘a huge technical support issue for us,’ Cushman said, resulting in ‘slow performance, inability to access the Internet, extra icons and pop-up ads. This damages our brand and, most importantly, impairs the customer experience.’ McAfee Security manager Bryson Gordon, whose company sells the McAfee AntiSpyware utility, says his company detected fewer than 2 million adware or spyware products in August 2003. By March 2004, the total number had zoomed to just more than 14 million. It’s become ‘a larger technical support problem than viruses,’ Gordon said.”

McCullagh reports, “Nearly all known spyware programs infect Microsoft Windows, not Apple’s OS X operating system or other Unix or Linux variants.”

Full article here.

Information on how you can smoothly transition from Windows to Apple’s Mac OS X here.

Related MacDailyNews article:
Washington Post: Internet punishing for Windows users, Mac users surf with impunity – February 28, 2004