Ina Fried, of CNET’s New.com, has posted an overview of ‘Crapware’ installations on new PCs. It’s a good survey of the big-box companies’ current and recent abuses, er, I mean practices. News.com Other news reports have been identifying this stuff as ‘craplets’ or ‘crap applets’. Some craplets are also startupware, if they’re pre-loaded software that [...]
The web evolves. Software security isn’t what it was. There was a time when backing up a computer was a reasonably straightforward operation, if a little time-consuming. Just run Archive Backup and back everything up to DC2120 tapes. Of course, that old program later became Backup Exec, was bought out at various times by Colorado, [...]
There is such thing as spyware, despite the news reports. No, really. I’ve been saying that since last year. But to review: Spyware is software that sends personally-identifiable information back to its publisher. But the software publishers involved all claim to send NON-personally-identifiable information back, and to be adware publishers. Therefore, there is no such [...]
Today’s the day. It’s the second Tuesday of the month. That’s when Microsoft releases a month’s worth of patches, most months. Sometimes, they’ll skip a month. Now, many of the people reading this are thinking, “Why do I care? Automatic update is turned on.” Wrong. Nope. Gotcha–you’re now a target for the spyware of the [...]
It should be possible to rate individual products as startupware. Not just good or evil–that’s not it. What’s needed is a measure of how invasive they are, and how hard to remove. Remember that this stuff isn’t all spyware; it includes antivirus software, overly-ambitious print drivers, and it’s not all evil, although most of it [...]
