Adware Lives On
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Are the reports of adware's demise greatly overstated? Ben Edelman thinks so. Edelman is an assistant professor at Harvard Business School. For years, while he studied for his J.D. from Harvard Law and his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, he became an expert and respected authority on spyware, adware and malicious Web sites. My own reports of adware's decline (that's right I said "decline" not "death") may be accurate, but nobody said it had gone away. As Edelman points out, ComScore, a market research company with shady software practices, just raised $82 million in an IPO. ComScore is not widely known for intrusive software practices, but Edelman documents these and his research is generally impeccable. He cites examples of nonconsensual installations of its tracking software and documents privacy concerns based on the claims in its own policies. And ComScore gets trust seals on its Web site from TRUSTe's Trusted Download program and Ernst & Young. Such seals are not always worth all the user might think. |
Comments (1)
In theory, this software is installed with "user permission" to redirect a user's internet traffic through its own servers and capture personal data, such as bank account passwords, credit card numbers and health information, for use in market research. What is the likelihood that there is a "meeting of the minds" between ComScore and its "panelists" (aka victims), regarding such invasive software? Although this market research data are useful to -- and purchased by -- major corporations, news organizations, etc., their collection constitute a major information security threat.
Until and unless our laws and technology make adware economically impractical, we can count on adware to continue to endanger our personal information.
Posted by Craig Herberg | July 7, 2007 8:34 PM