By Erich Vieth on November 19th, 2008
Court bans sale of spyware
What do you think? Should this sort of software be offered for sale? One federal court based in Florida said “no”:
When consumer victims clicked on the disguised file, the keylogger spyware silently installed in the background without the victims’ knowledge. This spyware recorded every keystroke typed on the victim’s computer (including passwords); captured images of the computer screen; and recorded Web sites visited. To access the information gathered and organized by the spyware, RemoteSpy clients would log into a Web site maintained by the defendants.
The Linux operating system, which is available for free, avoids many of the problems with spyware, viruses, etc. It takes a bit more effort by the user to install and maintain this OS, but it is a good option if security is a major concern.
Another strategy for fighting malware is to use different Web browsers for different situations. In my case, I use Firefox, which is relatively less susceptible to attack, for general surfing, and I use Internet Explorer, which is a huge target for malicious hackers, only for sites I know. This way, I don’t expose IE to nearly the volume of attacks that I would if I used it for general surfing.