Your views on SpyWare and AdWare

[visualAd]

I'm sure you are all aware of the nuisence spyware and adware can cause. I'm not however talking here about malicous self installing applications which secretly watch your online activities or browser hijacking programs. I'm talking about programs which advertise themselves as such software iin advacnce. My question is, to what extent are you willing to accept a possible invasion of privicy and unwanted ads in return for useful application?

This brings me to my next question. What in your opinion do you classify as adware and spyware. Hotmail for example displays advertisments on the user interface and also appends them to e-mails, do we calssify this as adware? GMail goes a step further and uses the contene of your e-mail's to display related ad's, so do you view this as a kind of spyware?

Lastly, have you had any bad experiences with this type of software? Is it more awkward to uninstall? Can you ever gauruntee its gone forever? Do they take over other aspects of your computer use, such as locking down your browser home page.

[mendhak]

It's about necessity. If an average user needs an email account, he'll go for hotmail or yahoo. When hotmail changes its policy one day and decides that it'll add such-and-such ads to your inbox and emails, you don't have much of a choice other than to accept it. It's only a few people who are willing to go for a paid option.

I don't consider ads in the email to be an invasion of privacy though. It's becoming a norm or necessity on the Internet for a website to be supported by ads. VBF, for example. Would you consider VBF to be an 'adware' or 'spyware'?

I'd consider it to be adware/spyware/malicious if it did things without my knowledge and consent (which makes it somewhat a paradox) AndAlso if I wasn't informed of it earlier.

I've had only one minor incident with a spyware-plus-browserjacker, a couple years ago. It was easy to remove, but that was because I knew what to look for. An average user (read: non-VBFer) would not know what to do. I have often got calls from friends whose browsers have been taken over, and who just didn't know that they have things like Safe Mode, registry, search, GOOGLE, etc. at their disposal.

[dglienna]

i now have a few programs running that detect malicious things. they can sometimes be a hassle, and have to be turned off to do something that I want. I guess that you have to learn to live with it. They regularly find things that it finds objectionable, but I just let them be deleted if I don't recognize them. There are a few things that I let by, and add to them as I recognize what caused them.