Drunken (but sound-ish) spyware theory

Lt Major Burns

Lt Major Burns

"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
Microsoft invented spyware.

hear me out.

they open up a hole in widows that lets everything in (the first time i put xp on the net without antivirus, sassar hit within 3 minutes and the computer wouldn't boot anymore.... fun.), then more and more people know about it, and accept it

even normal women know about spyware now. so lots of programs (adaware etc) come out to try and combat this worldwide, billion-computer problem. the programs do a sort-of good job.

micro$oft come in with their amazing program that kills it all dead (or actually just closes up the whole they created, is it so surprising that their program is the best? they wrote windows [badly]), which at first is free, then when people rely on it, start charging, therefore making mr Gates' bank account just that little bit bigger, because blatantly, he needs it.

yes it was drunken, but it does seem rather sound, no?
 
I don't think there's a neat conspiracy like that. However, I wouldn't be too surprised if MSoft tries to run the other Internet security companies out so people are dependent on MS security software. Scary thought.

Doug
 
I think it would be truly roll-on-the-floor classic if the Microsoft security software they're purportedly producing opened a serious flaw in the OS :p.
 
ok, I'll add to your conspiracy... but this one might make more sense.

Microsoft didn't invent spyware, but they're about to license out MS Windows licenses for spyware to all of these dubious companies out there. How?

Let me tell you how. Via Microsoft's acquisition of Giant, they now have a (currently in beta) spyware removal software program. They are at the crossroads a bit on whether or not they will charge for subscriptions to updates, what not. But imagine if they don't charge for updates, and they adopt the same methodology of "digitally signing" drivers so that they're MS Windows certified to spyware.

That's right, MS will not start to capitalize on the spyware income - it's higher than most people think, information is indeed worth a lot - that they currently don't have access to by charging a licensing fee, and suddently you have a new group of "software" that's digitally signed and trusted by Microsoft that is allowed to be installed onto your computer. The spyware people get massive distribution across almost all connected computers and the spyware manufacturers still get that revenue, but now Microsoft has a new stream of revenue.

Let that set in for a moment.
 
Freeky. I believe there may be more of some sort of conspiracy than thought. This whole virus/spyware/adware thing is creating a whole industry in itself. There for more people accually work around windows being educated trained and specialised in these areas.

I'ts also all free advertising for MS, there is no such thing as bad advertising. Then people go to the shop to buy a computer and reassured by sales guys that this is somthing that computers just have, so we must learn to live with it. People just buy the computer knowing this all the way.
 
and here we are with our anti-virus/adaware free macs.... hassle free peace of mind. i have a question though - is it still possible for mac to get virus/trojan/spyware? or do we just not get them but there is always a chance?
 
There's a chance. Macs mainly don't get them because a) it's harder to write them for it (but not impossible), and b) there are less people that use Macs.
 
or C... since MacOSX is BSD based, you have to have authentication in order to install damn near anything.

Not so in Windows.
 
just a curious thought... anybody remember the last time their computer was infected with a classic virus (nVirA, SevenDust, WDEF, etc...)?
 
MrNivit1 said:
just a curious thought... anybody remember the last time their computer was infected with a classic virus (nVirA, SevenDust, WDEF, etc...)?
Click to expand...

Can't remember the last time. My PCs have been running Linux since about 2000 when I started university, and I've been running Macs since 2003. No viruses for the last half a decade and I'm not even running a virus scanner :).
 
so everything needing a confirmation is a good thing....! i understand now - it's that small little curio that does a good job keeping my mac better leaps and bounds ahead of windoze users :)
 
although I run Mac mostly here, I also run PC's... haven't had a virus since the MonkeyB virus in '92 or '93.

Some users just are idiots. The computer doesn't mean a thing. In fact, I know a few Mac users that in their rush to avoid 10.0 - the MacOS 9.x hardcore anti-dock types are the quite the funny types, imho - they deleted stuff while within OSX that were necessary for OS9.

An idiot is just that... an idiot. An OS is just that... an OS. And a person that gets a virus... besides usually being a Windows user... they're usually a non-updating idiot.
 
gerbick,

It's worse now, the virus/worm/spyware situation with Windows. In a recent study, 80% of the studied computers were infected with spyware/adware, many without the owner's knowledge. And these weren'te all novice users. Some were experts.

I helped a couple family memebers/friends clean their computers. One was a complete novice, and the computer was trashed--over 1000 infected files. The other was a novice, but she was running and updating Norton Antivirus regularly. Regardless, she had hundreds of infected files!

I remember that the Netsky worm was particularly annoying. If you were connected to the Internet, it would shut down your machine.

Read reviews of spyware killers and security suites. None are completely adept at removing spyware. You have to use a combination of programs.

Doug
 
You say this like I don't have experience. I managed 270 servers for 6 years... 260 were windows, 5 were Mac Xserves, 4 were Sun, 1 HP UX machine.

And still no viruses (virii?) within the network until a week after I left that company...

I'm not talking about your rank novice. If that's the case, I have horror stories about the Mac for days as well. Even worse on Sun. And about the rest, it's just a simple matter of "hardening" your machine via the NSA standards to protect against unsolicited registry entries being added to your machine. The NSA has a free guide for that for all of the OS's, including MacOSX.

But I digress. These "experts" that people usually talk about fall back on their MCSE. I took 5 tests in 2 days for the MCSE track without reading one book and passed them all... and was pretty much hungover the entire time and took them on a whim... go figure.

Oh, and I don't use IE either, not since Mozilla ever came out with a beta, and before that, Opera. I was always avoiding IE due to the ActiveX security issues...

Anyway... I'm not tooting my own horn. Just saying that people have to be careful. And what's called "spyware" are sometimes just simply tracking cookies. I've found them on the Mac as well.
 
When I was originally writing the post, I was going to say something like, "I'm sure you're an expert user [obviously also an expert administrator]." That doesn't change the fact that people are struggling to keep the creepy crawlies off their Windows boxes.

It also appears to be getting worse. I didn't use an antivirus program at all between 1991 and 2002 when I was using Windows. Smart? Probably not. My machine didn't get infected. But I certainly am using security programs now with VirtualPC. I'm running an Internet security app (PCcillin 2004) and two spyware killers (Adaware and Spybot). I just read the article in the newest PC Mag that recomments a different spyware eliminator. I'm using ipfw as the firewall, as recommended by the VirtualPC docs.We'll see if the virtual machine gets infected.

I'm not concerned with cookies. There are more malicious chunks of spyware code floating around out there for Windows.

I wasn't cutting on your experience. But there's no question that it's an onslaught right now with lots of casualties under Windows.

Doug

P.S. _WHY_ am I using VirtualPC if I'm such a rabid Mac fan? I've always been fascinated by emulators. I'm going to get Bassilisk for X86 and run it under VirtualPC!
 
Oh, I didn't take it as you were cutting my experience, not at all. Just stating things from the other side of the fence. Security on Windows - a big, popular target - is just a full-time job.
 
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