Legalities...

[pittjulian]

Hi there!

I am an Mechanical Engineering with IT Endorsement student studying at the University of Johannesburg. I had a short chat with my Informatics lecturer after class the one day since we had just covered how companies employ AdWare to forcefully advertise their product or service. I asked him what he thought about the legality of producing AdWare and he says that it is not necessarily unlawful but a very unethical practice. He feels that since one has the choice to access a particular site and indeed chooses to do so, it takes the responsibility off of that company if that person gets infected with AdWare.

I personally feel that it should in some case be deemed unlawful practice to produce AdWare/Spyware for marketing purposes since alot of Internet users pick up these nuisances accidentally or without even knowing about it!

Keen to hear everyone else's views!

Julian. :bigthumb:

 

[shelf life]

Hi pittjulian,

my two cents worth:
alot of adware/spyware could be avoided if people know what they are installing to their computer. Most but not all add-ons are spelled out in the EULA. Most people do not read it, but simply check the " I agree box", and then wonder why they have ad's, popups, page redirects etc. Simply spending five minutes poking around the website beofre installing software could save you alot of grief.
Even the popular smitfraud has a varient that actually spells out what you are getting in EULA.
of course thats all probably "legal" because it puts the responsibility on the user who failed to read the contract (or EULA)before agreeing.

 

[pittjulian]

What's up?

I have to say that I agree with you! That makes alot of sense! I work with alot of freeware programs such as Bloodshed Dev-C++, and used AVG Free before. I still read the EULA on programs like that on top of other purchased software.

It seems that most of the time it is just a blatant case of laziness on the part of the user. That rules out the legitimacy of the situation. I still feel however that it is a very unethical practice! I'm sure everyone who has had some form of AdWare or SpyWare has not been happy with the company they picked it up from. Imagine what that does to a company's image!

Also, when does one cross the line with SpyWare? SpyWare which surveys an internet user's activity to find a market trend is not that bad, but what about SpyWare which is used to determine a user's banking details for example?

Cheers! :bigthumb:
Julian.

 

[shelf life]

if what you are getting is spelled out in the EULA and you fail to read it, its your fault. I think most of this type of spyware is limited to collecting web browsing data, delivering ads, popups. page redirects etc. Certainly annoying and intrusive and nothing i would want on my computer. Some malware scanners call this greyware or unwanted programs.

Crossing the line would be malware that is made for the the intent to infiltrate a computer to steal banking, credit card info, use it as spam or HTML proxy, or part of a zombie army, i would also include the popular vundo and smitfraud trojans, which attempt to scam money from people for worthless software. there is a grey zone between what some people might call spyware. I lump it all together as malware.