Internet security
Cookies
A cookie is information that a Web site puts on your hard disk so that it can remember something about you at a later time. (More technically, it is information for future use that is stored by the server on the client side of a client/server communication.) Typically, a cookie records your preferences when using a particular site. Using the Web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), each request for a Web page is independent of all other requests. For this reason, the Web page server has no memory of what pages it has sent to a user previously or anything about your previous visits. A cookie is a mechanism that allows the server to store its own information about a user on the user's own computer. You can view the cookies that have been stored on your hard disk (although the content stored in each cookie may not make much sense to you). The location of the cookies depends on the browser. Internet Explorer stores each cookie as a separate file under a Windows subdirectory. Netscape stores all cookies in a single cookies.txt fle. Opera stores them in a single cookies.dat file.
Cookies are commonly used to rotate the banner ads that a site sends so that it doesn't keep sending the same ad as it sends you a succession of requested pages. They can also be used to customize pages for you based on your browser type or other information you may have provided the Web site. Web users must agree to let cookies be saved for them, but, in general, it helps Web sites to serve users better.
Spyware
In general, spyware is any technology that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge. On the Internet, spyware is programming that is put in someone's computer to secretly gather information about the user and relay it to advertisers or other interested parties. Spyware can get in a computer as a software virus or as the result of installing a new program. Data collecting programs that are installed with the user's knowledge are not, properly speaking, spyware, if the user fully understands what data is being collected and with whom it is being shared.
The cookie is a well-known mechanism for storing information about an Internet user on their own computer. However, the existence of cookies and their use is generally not concealed from users, who can also disallow access to cookie information. Nevertheless, to the extent that a Web site stores information about you in a cookie that you don't know about, the cookie mechanism could be considered a form of spyware. DoubleClick, a leading banner ad serving company, changed its plans to combine cookie information with database information from other sources to target ad campaigns directly to individuals without their permission. DoubleClick's current policy is not to collect "personally-identifiable" information about a user without their explicit permission or "opt-in."
Aureate Media, which distributes free software on the Web in exchange for the right to gather user information, is another company that has been criticized for not plainly indicating what data it gathers and for making it difficult to remove its programming.
Spyware is part of an overall public concern about privacy on the Internet.
Links
http://cexx.org/adware.htm
Am I infected?
http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/spyware
All about spyware on Cnet
http://www.cnet.com/internet/0-3761-...61-8-3217791-2
CIAC TECHNICAL BULLETIN 02-004 Parasite Programs; Adware, Spyware, and Stealth Networks
http://www.ciac.org/ciac/techbull/CIACTech02-004.shtml
Adware
Adware is any software application in which advertising banners are displayed while the program is running. The authors of these applications include additional code that delivers the ads, which can be viewed through pop-up windows or through a bar that appears on a computer screen. The justification for adware is that it helps recover programming development cost and helps to hold down the cost for the user.
Adware has been criticized for occasionally including code that tracks a user's personal information and passes it on to third parties, without the user's authorization or knowledge. This practice has been dubbed spyware and has prompted an outcry from computer security and privacy advocates, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Noted privacy software expert Steve Gibson of Gibson Research explains: "Spyware is any software (that) employs a user's Internet connection in the background (the so-called 'backchannel') without their knowledge or explicit permission. Silent background use of an Internet 'backchannel' connection must be preceded by a complete and truthful disclosure of proposed backchannel usage, followed by the receipt of explicit, informed consent for such use. Any software communicating across the Internet absent of these elements is guilty of information theft and is properly and rightfully termed: Spyware."
A number of software applications, including Ad-Aware and OptOut (by Gibson's company), are available as freeware to help computer users search for and remove suspected spyware programs.