Say Its Not So

Deleting Spyware: A Criminal Act?

Mark Rasch - The Register

On my computer right now I have three anti-spyware programs, three anti-virus programs, and three anti-spam programs, together with a hardware and software firewall, an IPsec VPN, and data level encryption on certain files (and no, this is not intended to be an invitation for you to try to test my security.)

The anti-spyware, anti-virus, and anti-spam software all work in very much the same way - they have definitions of known malicious programs, and they may also have algorithms to raise flags about unknown programs which operate in an unusual way. Depending upon user preferences, the programs either automatically block or delete the suspicious mail or program, stop a running process, or quarantine a file for the user to delete.

While I hate spyware as much as the next person, I also make a good living off the removal of it from people's computers. I'd hate to see it disappear altogether. Not much chance of that. - KS