Even though people are getting more aware of the Spyware issue, it still amazes me how many computers end up in front of me with stability and speed problems caused by an abundance of spyware on them. To that end here is a list of the top ten spyware programs to watch out for.

For those of you that want your system to run as fast and stable as a Windows machine can (It’s not much, but you have to start somewhere right?), head over to tips.littlehosting.com and grab yourself some free protection.

US senators have introduced a new “Spy Block” bill designed to target deceptive spyware tactics. Thus far such laws have been only partially successful but we can hope right?

Word has it that the latest target of scammers is Internet phones, which are used via techniques like senderID spoofing to collect credit card numbers from unsuspecting customers, (by pretending to be banks for example). The low cost of Internet VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) makes this sort of thing almost as cheap as SPAM. I guess we can call this “Phoice” scams? (Phishing over voice).

In related news, Phishing attacks in general are on the rise, Symantec says that one in every two hundred emails was a phishing scam and 60% of mail was SPAM between the months of July and December last year. From our own server statistics, I’d say that about matches what we’ve found here also. Phishing is the process where users are lured to a fake website (usually a copy of a banks website) in the hopes of stealing their username/password for the real site.

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Microsoft was found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour by the US DOJ a few years ago, and got what many see as a slap on the wrist as punishment for their crimes. Their punishment didn’t really do much good, but it didn’t actually do any damage either. Now flip to 2005 where Microsoft have again been found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour, this time by the European Commission. Microsoft have appealed the decision, but in the mean time they are being forced to comply with the punishments which include a half a billion Euro fine, offering a version of Windows without their Media player (and not being allowed to call it “reduced media edition”) and most importantly, to offer information on their protocols to third parties who wish to create software that is interoperable with Windows on the client and server.
That last one is where this little story kicks in. Microsoft appear to have viewed this ruling as a way of excluding their biggest competitor (Open Source) from being being compatible with their products, and to create another huge revenue stream by selling licenses requiring royalties on each product sold that used the information covered by the license. Does anyone there remember that this was supposed to be a punishment for their anti-competitive behaviour?

Microsoft have made it clear (to me at least) that they want to choose their own opposition, and they’ve also made it pretty clear that they want Sun to be their main competitor by making several press releases touting Sun/MS interoperability programs. They want Sun as their “competitor” I suspect, because Sun is a traditional software company that they have proven in the past they can win against. Linux and other Open Source has already proven itself immune to Microsoft’s normal “competitive practices”, it can’t be bought or crushed because it isn’t owned by any single corporate entity, criticizing it seems to hurt Microsoft more then OSS, lawsuits don’t appear to be working (SCO), security is not an effective selling point for your software when your own house is not even made of glass, but rather of sand, and cost comparisons don’t seem to look so good unless Microsoft pays for the research. So what can they do? Why they can make sure that OSS software can’t have access to any of the interoperability data and help along their chosen competitor who is apparently not smart enough to realise that they are but a pawn and that this will only last till MS doesn’t need them any more.

Don’t take my word for it, read this ZDnet article covering the same issue in a more humorous and factual manner then I have here. It should be noted that the EC are not happy with the progress of Microsoft’s compliance, and may end up fining them 5 million a day till they reach compliance with the court appointed sanctions.

EDS has come out with a scathing review of Linux and it’s potential in enterprise business as part of the “EDS Agility Alliance” saying that it lacked the security, scalability and stability of other offerings and wasn’t really any cheaper to boot. Cracks start to appear however when you look back a little further to some of their other press releases where they tout running Linux and Open Source software themselves “to ensure stability and security while keeping costs low.” Apparently their new alliance with Microsoft and Sun has changed their minds about Open Source’s validity in the market place. Since both Microsoft and Sun are competitors of Linux, it makes sense that you probably wouldn’t get their support if you had a pro Linux stance. Read the EDS anti Linux report and ZDnet’s observations of EDS’s contradictory statements for more detail. It should be noted that EDS was apparently behind the massive outage of most of 80,000 UK government “Department for Work and Pensions” PC’s after a failed patching process late last year.

INSERT: EDS is now in a bit of a scrap with the UK government for failing to get their new systems working correctly on time or on budget and the government has apparently withheld some payments till EDS gets it’s act together. Apparently, the system has some issues that have brought staff to tears as well.

It seems that a new generation of hardware/game enthusiasts is learning the hard way what many of us in the IT industry have known for a long time. Microsoft makes some dodgy gear, be it software or hardware and then seemingly absolves itself of liability wherever possible. Early versions of the Xbox are said to have a dodgy connection between the power socket on the power supply and the PSU circuit board to which it is soldered. Rather then fix the real issue, which would be expensive and require people to deliver their Xboxes to repair centers, Microsoft has seemingly offered a band aid fix in the form of power cables with what is essentially a circuit breaker built in. As many have pointed out, that is likely to stop your Xbox burning your house down, but it isn’t going to stop your Xbox from failing. Read a new petition from users upset about the “cover up” and demanding action, and read TheRegisters account of the issue. If you own an old Xbox, head over to Xbox.com to find out if you need a replacement cable, and visit xbox-scene to see a pictures of what is apparently the underlying cause of the problem.

Can you trust this company (Microsoft) to correctly decide what is and what isn’t spyware? I worry that they will be inclined to be more lenient on companies with whom they have deals and partnerships, and harder on companies competing with them or their partners. But that’s just me, they could be pillars of decency and integrity and I’m just paranoid. The final product isn’t even out yet, and they are already talking about “shades of grey”, I find that somewhat worrying. As far as I am concerned, spyware is any program or tracking method placed on my PC that I didn’t authorize. Pretty simple really, almost black and white you might say. Lets face it, Microsoft don’t have a great record of playing nice with others, they have twice been found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour, and their legal history makes Judge Judy look like Days of our lives. Read more at TheInquirer.

It is well known that Google makes use of cut down Red Hat Linux servers to do the grunt work behind the search engines, but now they have taken it a step further and started giving code to the Open Source community. All the links and news can be found at code.google.com.