In 2000 Stardock was presented with an opportunity. It was near the height of
the dot-coms and one of those dot-coms recognized a fundamental truth about
WindowBlinds: It had the ability to
fully control what was presented by the
Windows
GUI. So not only could WindowBlinds change the look and feel of your
Windows GUI (title bars, push buttons, borders, etc.). But it could add new
content. And one of these dot-coms came to us with a fairly straight forward
proposition -- integrate advertisements into the Windows GUI and you could make
big bucks. We turned them down.
While lots of money is always appealing, we did not want to be the company
that made it possible for advertisers to take over your desktop. But that was
before spyware really took off.
In the post-dot com collapse, advertising has lost much of its value but if
companies could advertise without having to be on an actual website, they could
still make money. And that's where spyware has come in. What is spyware?
Odds are you have some on your computer. In fact, odds are you have a lot
of Spyware on your computer. Spyware are various programs that manage to get
themselves installed on your computer, usually without you knowing it. They sit
there quietly informing their patrons what you are doing on your computer. Maybe
they'll just report what websites you visit. Maybe they'll send back what
programs you use. Maybe they'll list what songs you listen to. Who knows.
Different programs spy on different things. Some of them will hijack your web
browser so that you end up going to different websites than you intend to. Or
maybe they'll pop up an advertisement randomly on your screen.
What they definitely do, besides invade your privacy, is cause all kinds of
stability and performance issues on your computer. A couple of weeks ago I ended
up having my system brought to its knees simply from having visited a website
that used a vulnerability in Internet Explorer to install dozens of Spyware
programs onto my computer. It took the better part of the day to get them off.
They're as bad as viruses to remove and most anti-virus software won't remove
them.
The program I've come to rely on is called
Adaware. It'll scan your
computer and remove much of the Spyware. If you haven't ever run one of these
programs, you'll probably be shocked at a) how much of this crap has gotten onto
your computer and how much it has slowed your computer down.
But that's not the worst part of it. Legitimate companies are increasingly
putting Spyware in their software. The temptation is great. Stardock estimated
that it could have generated between $600,000 to $800,000 last year in
additional revenue by bundling Spyware with its software. It has rejected all
proposals because it doesn't need to make money that way. Stardock generates its
revenue by selling its software. On-line, you'll see on some tech forums people
complain that Stardock is "greedy" because it charges money to buy full versions
of some of its products. I would say this method is much better than the
alternative. Because increasingly, "free" software and "free" services aren't
really free anymore. They claim to be free but they put this stuff on your
computer.
WinCustomize, for example, is paid
for by the sales of software and subscriptions. But the revenue it receives is
nothing compared to some of the other sites in its market that now bundle
spyware with their downloads. As I make my rounds on the net, I see the trend
moving forward -- more and more sites, more and more products are moving to
Spyware. Why? Because its victims usually have no idea that they're even
victims. The distributors of Spyware can make millions of dollars while most
people are totally unaware that they are funding it.
The net result is that we are seeing a mini-resurgence of the Dot-Com era.
Entire companies and industries and even business models are being funded by
Spyware. Personally, I hope Microsoft updates Windows so that this junk can't
get installed on your computer without your knowledge. It's a serious security
issue. People shouldn't have things running on their computer that they haven't
given their okay to. But one has to wonder what will happen to the industry and
the products and services which have come to rely on it.
For this article I scanned one of my laptops. I have never
intentionally installed any Spyware on my computer. These are programs that
installed themselves after having been surfing the net. And I don't frequent
porn or warez sites.