“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
Joe – wait, there are two mikes here who find you befuddling. I will be mike k. from now on.
Now, you suggest that the ‘anecdotes’ will blow the issue out of proportion. Perhaps then you can explain why the article posits this issue as “pervasive” and as “the top issue.” We Mac users are not making this stuff up. This article is indicative of the normal user experience on Windoze. Clearly you have managed to make lemonade out of the lemon you use but others evidently lack your acumen. So, what conclusion ought we to draw from your claim to a pleasant experience: either your fellow PC users are quite dumb (which you suggest) or maybe it is not as easy as you say to keep one’s PC virus free and properly functional. I’d rather not have to worry: dumb or smart, my Mac just works.
The majority of PC users are still unaware of all the maintenance that is required to guard themselves when surfing the net.
Microsoft makes software which allows all this crap to be “installed” on this majority.
As long as the 95% or so of PC users allow Microsoft to get away with this, these problems will persist.
And with the increasing number of households using broadband, there will be more bedeviled hard drives.
How ironic. This same “technology” was first used by Microsft itself to spy on its user habits and because Windows is such a whore house, anything can get in and anyone can watch you doing what you are doing.
Mark, I agree one shouldn’t have to clean out that stuff. It is a fault of windows. However I was responding to Mike’s slightly irritated rant about it costing hundreds of dollars to fix wintels because of the garbage, and that affecting the mac/pc price comparison. Mike is WRONG.
Continue with anecdotes, ignoring the fact that 30 times more wintels than macs are currently humming away, “infected” with spyware and virii perhaps, but seemingly oblivious to your perceived armaggedon.
btw, while surfing on my bro in laws g4 with what I guess was the first osX version (wont handle safari he says) there were a ton of popups on IE. Can he avoid those other than by changing browsers?
Joe,
MS IE for Mac is a piece of shit. And I mean that – it really sucks bigtime! WTF would use that unless your ‘tard bank hasn’t wised up, yet?
Safari, dude, Safari:
http://www.apple.com/safari/
Surfing with Safari on Mac OS X Panther is simply a joy and the best way to use the ‘Net.
Concerning the questions about spyware and adware:
This programs ARE infact nothing else then viruses, the only difference is that their goal is not to be detected at all, say *benign viruses* but they screw up your PC performance as well.
How a spyware and adware get themselves installed? You guessed it: as a virus but without the spreading (in order not to be detected by increased traffic). A spyware/adware has to install itself on the PC without intervention by the user, just by reading an email or visiting a Web site. Then they start running and perform. Nothing different than viruses: actually, they use practically the same vulnerability.
To protect themselves some do get installed when you answer ‘yes’ to UNRELATED questions or open the email protecting the *owner company* legally: the user said ‘yes’ then in page 256 footnote we say we may help user tailor its surfing on the web, then the installation happens without user intervention or knowledge or need to provide admin password to install it.
On OS X at most what would happen is “Application SpyWare34b434beta wants to installs on /Library. OK?” that is installations do not come/happen undetected hence beating the very purpose of a Spyware.
thanks pork, but as I said safari wont run on his os. It’s about a $100 upgrade I guess?
I guess I should have asked is there a free way.
Joe, pop ups are not from spyware or adware. It is simply regular HTML code while visiting sites. Modern browsers have a simple option that says “Block pop-up windows”. Can’t be simpler.
IE does not provide that option but notice I said *modern* browsers…
There is Omniweb that did that before Safari but they now use the same rendering engine so I guess your bro wont be able to run it either. Also the other existing browers (say Mozilla family) expect (or need) a rather more modern OS X version than 10.0.x or 10.1.x (since you said Safari does not run)
Also, the above vs were touted by Apple itself as rather betaish.
Joe, all, sorry: the above post from 12:20 pm is mine. Unintentional.
Joe, Bora post points to something that can be installed to block pop-up windows on IE. Maybe it is free. Then again… Panther is so much better than any OS X previous versions around that I can’t imagine the twilight zone of still *living* in a pre-Jaguar OS X (not a typo, Jaguar is the first – MHO – version for everybody)
ok thanks for the help. I told him safari was cool (was hoping to check it out while at his house), maybe he will get with it.
Google has a popup blocker for windows that works fine.
Seahawk, I didn’t mean that popups were spyware, sort of mixed them up originally tho.
If viruses, worms and trojans aren’t such a big deal, why is the anti-virus industry a really big one? Why do companies keep losing money and/or productivity due to malwares? You may have an IT dept. that is pretty good at updating and upgrading softwares, configuring firewalls, etc. but then do they work for free? How about home users?
Regarding price comparison, if we go by your rule, we can’t make price comparison at all. You can’t just say PC is cheaper if you ignore the segment of the market that are affected by virus anymore than you can say PC is more expensive if you ignore the ones that are not affected. You have to take costs due to virus into account if you buy anti-virus software, if you lose money due to malwares, etc. and price comparison varies with each instances. How do you base your purchase on price performance then unless you know for sure you will/won’t be infected with malwares? You can just buy a PC, but then if you get hit by malware, oops! Price performance is one thing, but projecting costs that one may must pay during the lifetime of the product is part of the informed buying decision. Would you buy a car knowing that there is 70% chance that you have to pay monthly brake replacements? You may take your chances that you are in the 30%, but really, ignoring it completely is just plain stupid.
You want anecdotes? Here is one: Despite of crashes and unbelievable number of pop-ups, my roommates do not want to use alternative browsers on their PCs. They would rather reboot or furiously close windows than dump IE. What does that say about dependence over piece of crap?
The 30 minutes it takes to clean a machine is about right, for us we have to login with an Admin account on the machine, then run the spybot and adaware programs, hope they don’t have any new variety that we haven’t seen before, and then restart the machine and let them log in as themselves. We can’t just up and leave after we start the install because I’m not going to leave them with an admin account on their local machine.
mac users have no idea how bad its gotten in the last few months and its not letting up, I’ve switched more families in the last 6 months than in the previous 6 years. Any PC user how has ever had their homepage changed without them doing anything is amazed this doesn’t happen on a mac.
I guess you are talking to me nobody. I didn’t start price comparing on this thread, Mike did. He said “hundreds of dollars”, I said zero. The truth is of course somewhere between, since virus software usually does cost money.
tell your roomies to go to http://toolbar.google.com/ and install the toolbar. Their popup problem will be reduced 99%. They will thank you and buy the beer next time. Or, you can NOT tell them, and continue to berate them.
Joe, k. But, forgot to add that pop-up *may* be from adware which is triggered by the user launching a webbrowser. Those would not disappera with the popup blocker for Windows. So if some pop-ups still linger on it might be a sign of an adware running behind the scenes.
“He said “hundreds of dollars”, I said zero. The truth is of course somewhere between, since virus software usually does cost money.”
That is what I am trying to get accross. Despite my dislike of Microsoft and Windows shown on my previous postings, I prefer to try to get the truth, even if it is bad for Macs or good for Windows. Anecdotal evidences to both good and bad is useless. A collection of anecdotes can be useful if the number is reasonably high (then you talk about statistics).
“Or, you can NOT tell them, and continue to berate them. “
I didn’t berate them. I was stating a fact. And no, they won’t install Goolge toolbar or any other pop-up killers. Even when they are free.
Sometimes, computers can do weird things even to normally rational people.
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LOL nobody they are worthy of berating then! jeeeeez!
I agree with Joe McConnel, those are roommates worthy of berating. I’d be on the floor howling every time they ran into trouble. Eventually they might get so sick of it that they’d act like the “normally rational people” that you claim they are.
ONLY ONE THING TO SAY TO WINDOWS USERS…
“SWITCH TO MAC – YOU DESERVE BETTER THAN WINDOWS”
[url=http://www.apple.com]http://www.apple.com[/url]
I am continually amazed that people still use IE when a superior browser like Mozilla is available and free. I haven’t used IE in years, even back when I had a win2000 machine.
Nobody mentioned
“if viruses, worms and trojans aren’t such a big deal, why is the anti-virus industry a really big one? Why do companies keep losing money and/or productivity due to malwares?”
Its interesting that the “proof of concept” Mac MP3 trojan was “discovered” by and antivirus software company, that claimed it could delete your data and erase your info, UNLESS you purchased their software.
As far as spyware on the Mac goes, the real threat isn’t the usual malware, but “phone home” programs embedded into commercial software like Adobe Creative Suite and others that connect to their creators when you open an internet connection. Since an admin did password authorize the install of the application like photoshop, and launched the app after installation, OS X doesn’t ask for activity authorization. A shareware program called Little Snitch will monitor the “phone home” traffic, and ask for you authorization to let it access the net.
Joe, try out Camino 0.8 from [url=http://www.mozilla.org]http://www.mozilla.org[/url] Not as compatible as Safari (or the full Mozilla), but it’s fast and it works with OSX 10.1.5 Has a pop-up blocker built in.
I have a decent enough knowledge of windows to know how to keep it running at its best. Maybe I should maintain windows machines for a living.
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Seriously though, I only use my windows machine for gaming, email and web browsing. For everything else I use my iBook.
The problem with MSIE is that it allows ActiveX crap to execute from within ads. That is how spymware gets into your registry, how icons get on your desktop and so on. There is no equivalent piece of crap technology in Mac OS X to ActiveX, and that is why spyware doesn’t work and can’t work on a Mac.