We all hate "spyware" on our computers, spyware being those annoying files you probably accumulate as you surf the web and download porn your e-mail and such. I assume we all use at least one program periodically to scan our computer for spyware and eliminate it.
Well, there's SPYWARE!!! and then there's spyware. A "key-logger" program that installs itself secretly in the computer's memory and records everything we type and which then transmits this data to an outside party is quite a bit different from a cookie that tracks some little thing you did online. I'm no expert but it appears to me that the competition between spyware-eliminating programs has caused some to define "spyware" down to a useless level, flagging cookies that are sent to us for some harmless purpose. They seem to want to be able to say, "Our program caught X pieces of spyware that the others didn't." That may not be because the program in question is better…just that it has broader (perhaps, too broad) criteria as to what constitutes spyware.
Example: Every morning when I get up, Giant Spyware has swept my system and it usually catches three or four cookies, all of which are probably harmless but I eliminate them anyway. Giant was acquired by the Microsoft company — as we all will be, sooner or later — and is now being rebranded as their spyware software. It's not necessarily the best. It's just the one I use.
First thing this A.M., I ran the free version of Ad-Aware, as I do every week or so. Ad-Aware is the granddaddy of spyware snaggers and it caught eleven pieces of what it believes to be spyware on my computer. In other words, Ad-Aware flagged as spyware eleven cookies that Giant felt were harmless. (And we're only talking about cookies here. A key-logger or some other kind of malicious program is another matter.)
After I ran Ad-Aware, I immediately ran the free version of A-Squared, which tracks spyware and "malware." It marked nine cookies, including one from comedycentral.com, one from comicbookresources.com, one from mediamatters.org and one from mediaputfile.com. You may have some of these on your system right this minute. That last one is the site that has the Smurfs video I linked to in the previous message. Giant and Ad-Aware think these cookies are fine. A-squared thinks they're spyware.
I'm suspicious of the A-Squared findings because all of the cookies it fingered are together in my Cookies directory in two groupings by alphabetical order. That is, when I look at a listing of all my cookies in alphabetical order, I see five of them together in one sequence of the listing and the other four together in another section. I think I'd like to get a fourth opinion here so I'm going to leave all the cookies that A-Squared wanted to delete and I'm going to run Spybot – Search and Destroy. I'll be back to you next paragraph with the results.
Okay, Spybot wasn't alarmed at any of the cookies that A-Squared didn't like but it did catch three that were overlooked or deemed benevolent by Giant, Ad-Aware and A-Squared. What can we learn from this?
That the word "spyware" can cover a multitude of intrusions, some so miniscule that they shouldn't worry us. Still, I wish I could set some sort of "level" of protection and tell my chosen spyware sweeper that I don't care about the ones that all the other spyware detectors thought were so unintrusive as to not be a problem. This review over in PC World tested all the leading spyware-nukers and says that the most instances of spyware were caught by Webroot Spy Sweeper. I'm not sure that's what I want.