Spyware on My Machine? So What?

[Steve Mehs]

Not all web surfers think spyware is a problem. Some say the snoopy software is a fair trade-off for free applications, even with the intrusion into their computers and lives.

"Typically the assumption has been that spyware sneaks onto computers, or users are unaware of what they have agreed to install," said Gregg Mastoras, a senior security analyst at antivirus vendor Sophos. "But some people actually do knowingly install adware because they want to use a particular application that comes bundled with it. Some just aren't particularly concerned by adware's presence on their computers."

IMesh, maker of a popular file-sharing application, recently began bundling an application called Marketscore. Some would view Marketscore as a privacy nightmare: The program routes all of a user's web traffic through Marketscore's own servers, where it is then analyzed to "create research reports on internet trends and e-commerce activities," according to Marketscore.

MORE (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65906,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1)

And some say I take a walk on the wild side by not believeing in anti virus software :)

[invaliduser88]

Yeah, who cares if the app brings your machine to it's knees. Just cleaned a friends laptop yesterday and it performs much better without that crap on it.

[HappyGoLucky]

And some people actually seek out great white sharks to swim with. Some people get a thrill from having their bodies whipped. Some people like to strangle themselves to the point of blacking out. Some people think it's "cool" to not run anti-virus software or allow malware to invade their computers.

The only difference between the others I mention and the semi-luddites with the computers is that those people who refuse to run anti-virus software and allow malware on their computers endanger and inconvenience OTHER people, via their computer. Their computer can begin sending out more virii and trojans and other malware to everyone on their email list, or everyone in their domain, which then spreads to even more computers, causing unnecessary traffic that slows the systems down for everyone.

Infirm and dangerous drivers are removed from the road, by force if necessary. So should infirm and dangerous computers be removed from the internet.

[MarkA]

Happy, the problem with that is that anti-virus software unnecessarily slows down and harms the performance of computers. It's especially pointless on anything other than Windows. I could see taking computers offline for sending virii, but NEVER should antivirus software be mandated to use the Internet. It's not fair to the rest of us. Those of us who are responsible and who need our computers to run WELL.

[djlong]

One piece of spyware probably isn't going to impact you much. But when you have DOZENS of them taking up cycles and resources - that's when you have a ral problem - especially when the spies start arguing with each other over said resources.

[HappyGoLucky]

Happy, the problem with that is that anti-virus software unnecessarily slows down and harms the performance of computers. It's especially pointless on anything other than Windows. I could see taking computers offline for sending virii, but NEVER should antivirus software be mandated to use the Internet. It's not fair to the rest of us. Those of us who are responsible and who need our computers to run WELL.
The performance hit caused by antivirus software is negligible, at worst. Since the vast majority of computers connected to the internet ARE running some form of MS Windows, requiring them to at least have some semblance of antivirus software installed AND running is not too big of a request, considering the impact their infected machines have on everyone else, including corporations. Though Linux and Macs aren't the focus of most attacks, they are not immune, either.

My machine does a LOT of video processing. I run an updated antivirus package continuously. I've tested with and without the antivirus running and there is essentially no difference in the performance.

Infected computers affect far more than themselves, they are potential timebombs to the rest of the internet and should be treated as such.

[invaliduser88]

Though Linux and Macs aren't the focus of most attacks, they are not immune, either.


I agree with that. Windows virus have a much greater install base, thus are a bigger target.

The unfortunate thing about Windows, is that in most cases to properly use the system as a desktop, you need to have administrator privlege on it. This gives malware an easy road to infilterate the system.

In Linux (and Unix in general) the distinction between normal user and root (superuser) is very distinct. And most end user apps are written such that elevate privledges are not necessary.

A good admin will take the time on Unix based systems to lock them down and eliminate unecessary services running on the box.

[MarkA]

"The performance hit caused by antivirus software is negligible, at worst"

Sure, if you've got a fast computer, are running just office and a web browser, and don't care about all the crashes.

Macs are much worse, the antivirus products that exist (which only exist because of companies requiring them - there's not a single MacOS X virus and only abot 30 for OS 9), especially Norton, are famous for causing problems. But I've seen lots of AV-caused Windows problems too.

Responsible Internet use should be maintaining a virus free system, but it's not right to force people to spend money to screw up their computers. If you spread a virus, get banned from the Internet sure. But not harm the innocent.

[Steve Mehs]

I see no need for an anti virus program for me personally, in a corporate environment or in a household where you have a few different people accessing the computer it’s a different story. As I said in another thread, as soon as I got this PC, (1 year as of December 19th) the first thing I did was remove Norton. I didn’t have any virus protection for almost a year until a few Saturdays ago I installed Norton ’05 for giggles. I downloaded the updates and did a full system scan, 0 infected files found, Norton was them removed maybe and won’t be seen again until 2006. Last week for more laughs I checked out AVG did a scan with them, same result as with Norton, nothing.

I don’t clam to be a security expert, but I have the latest versions of Zone Alarm Pro and Ad Aware Pro running on both computers, I’m behind a router, and in the past week or so I’ve been using Firefox and Thunderbird exclusively. I scan my systems with Ad Aware Pro weekly and it finds nothing other then cookies. For 11 months I used nothing but IE and Outlook and download from Kazaa Lite, my computer should be a sewer. Instead I’ve never had a virus, any malware, I have no idea what SPAM is and my computer boots up in about 30 seconds from when I push the power button until Zone Alarm Pro finishes loading. I really don’t understand how people can get hundreds and hundreds of spyware files other then by surfing porn sites or clicking Yes to everything they see or using P2P clients like iMesh or the real Kazaa. Maybe it’s just my surfing habits. Other then reputable message boards practically every website is that of a trusted corporation or news source. Bestbuy.com, amazon.com, news.yahoo.com, foxnews.com, pcworld.com, xmradio.com, nfl.com, Mapquest, Ebay, Snopes, DirecTV, IMDB, Slashdot, heck I even check out the SARC a few times month just to see the latest threats. These are the only types of websites I visit on a regular basis.

Getting virus’ in my email is the last thing I am worried about considering I probably get 25 emails per week depending on the on how many objectionable posts get posted here. On an average week my inbox is filled with DBSTalk and AVSForum Report a Posts and PM Notifications, Netflix shipment notifications and monthly statements from Nextel and EZPass and maybe an email or two from some of my classmates. That’s it. After 3 months, I have yet to get any unwanted email sent to me via my main Roadrunner address. Even when I was on Earthlink dial up, I really had no problems with email for years until about 2 years ago when I friend of mine submitted my email address to number of those Porn in your Inbox type services, after a month I would get hundreds of emails a day, I just got fed up and changed my email address and maybe got a half a dozen SPAM messages a week since.

The thing I love about Roadrunner email addressing scheme, it’s username@franchise.rr.com. Most of the SPAM I’d get with Earthlink would be sent to me and carbon copied to others with similar Earthlink email addresses. There are millions and millions of people out there with email domains like AOL, Earthlink, Yahoo and Hotmail, that usernames can be easily randomly generated by bots, but there’s a lot less of us out there that end in @rochester.rr.com.

[eichenberg]

"I really don’t understand how people can get hundreds and hundreds of spyware files other then by surfing porn sites or clicking Yes to everything they see or using P2P clients like iMesh or the real Kazaa. Maybe it’s just my surfing habits."

I think this is the main problem. My father in law was inundated with spyware and he could not figure it out. It wasn't until I was over at this house that we figured out what was going on. He kept getting this pop up that would say "your computer is low on resources, click here to fix it", or something to that extent. He would click the OK button and the message would dissappear. Then about an hour later he would get the same pop up and again he would click the OK button. This went on for about a month before he called me and asked why he kept getting this message. Needless to say he had about 200 different spyware programs running (not really, but he had a lot). He knows now not to click on any of that stuff.

[SimpleSimon]

I agree 100% with HGL on this. I spend hours EVERY DAY cleaning this s#!t off of people's machines. The one consistent complaint when they bring it in is "it's running slow". The one consistent response when they get it back (with an Anti-Virus package installed and active) is "Wow! It's really fast!".

MarkA: I think maybe you don't understand how AV programs work. They truly do have a negligible load - and not just on 'fast' PCs. The only measurable difference is at program load or file open time - and that's quite small. An exception can be large MS Office files with macro scanning.

[HappyGoLucky]

"The performance hit caused by antivirus software is negligible, at worst"

Sure, if you've got a fast computer, are running just office and a web browser, and don't care about all the crashes.

I have a 1.7GHz P4, hardly state of the art anymore. I use TMPGEnc Plus to transcode a lot of video for DVDs, which is extremely CPU and memory intensive. I have Norton AV 2004 running in Auto mode. I've tested with and without the AV running and there is no difference in processing performance. I'm running WinXP Pro SP2 and have only had 2 "crashes" in the last year, and that was from a badly-written DiVX codec that has since been fixed.

[MarkA]

Consider yourself lucky. Norton AV for Mac causes lots of crashes (usually just of the app but still) and has frequenty been reported to corrupt hard drives, along with performance decreases and higher app load times. On Windows, I've seen it correlated with random crashes, error messages at startup, and 5% or so performance decreases as well as increased application load times.

Just not worth it for a completely pointless product when the person in front of the computer has some intelligence. (and completely pointless on Linux and on Macs as long as the Classic environment is never opened (and nobody uses Classic these days..))

[Redster]

I recently upgraded my wife's pc. She was running a very old Presario 300mhz. Norton AV and ZoneAlarm Pro have been running on it since I bought it for her. She has never had an issue with either of those bogging down the pc. Only reason I bought her a new one is so she can burn the home movies to dvd's.

[HappyGoLucky]

In the past, antivirus programs were performance inhibitors. But in the last couple of years that has ceased to be much of an issue, at least with the major players in the field.

[Pepper]

One piece of spyware probably isn't going to impact you much. But when you have DOZENS of them taking up cycles and resources - that's when you have a ral problem - especially when the spies start arguing with each other over said resources.

Problem is, I've never seen a machine with exactly one spyware on it. Those things like to invite all their nasty friends over to party. Why this stuff hasn't been classified as "Trojan" by the antivirus industry is beyond comprehension.

[SimpleSimon]

Problem is, I've never seen a machine with exactly one spyware on it. Those things like to invite all their nasty friends over to party. Why this stuff hasn't been classified as "Trojan" by the antivirus industry is beyond comprehension.
Some of it IS. I've seen various cross-classifications between AV & SW, and more of them seem to be happening - as they should.