interesting spyware article on alternet.org

[denolth2]

http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=12380

just fyi... :D

den 2 :O

:rolleyes:

[blebs]

What VX2 boils down to is this: A program you never wanted squats in your computer's hard drive, sending personal information to a company with whom you never had any direct contact and never agreed to give such access; a program that, furthermore, can upgrade itself and add any other program to your computer that it sees fit. It is the kind of application that would make the CIA drool, but once again, private industry has beaten the public sector to the punch.

The most popular application known to have used VX2 is the Audio Galaxy Satellite, a music-downloading application similar to Napster. Portal of Evil, a Web site that collects pages "from the margins of society," and one of the first sites to break the whole sordid VX2 story, has attempted to make Audio Galaxy accountable for bundling VX2 along with their Satellite freeware. In responses to both Portal of Evil and Wired.com, Audio Galaxy merely stated that VX2 was no longer included with their freeware, refusing to state when it was and for how long. The company said it had little knowledge of the program's use and blamed its presence in their software on Onflow, a software company that supplied Audio Galaxy with advertising graphics enhancers. Onflow maintains that it had never heard of VX2 until it was alerted by Portal of Evil.

Ignorance is a poor excuse for what companies such as Audio Galaxy have unleashed on the Web. What is now crystal clear is this: many companies offering freeware attach add-ons to their software willy-nilly, presumably under the spell of sleazy marketers, not knowing or not caring what this software will do to its users. Imagine the slaughterhouse conditions of The Jungle, transposed to the Internet, and you will have a good idea of the situation we find ourselves in today. (Audio Galaxy did not respond to this writer's request for comment.)

Incidentally, VX2 happens to share a name with a component of a variety of nerve agent. This brand of biological weapon is ten times more powerful than other nerve agents, and is characterized by its oily texture and long half-life. Whether the spyware's nomenclature was a loving tribute or a dark coincidence remains to be seen.