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 is [...]
Adware is spyware with permission to snoop.
Spyware is adware without the license agreement.
OK, so defining two words as a variation of each other is circular reasoning, but it’s still vastly less convoluted than the definitions that the companies creating this stuff would have the government enact. Those definitions are a mess.
It would be better to [...]
stärt’-up-wãre, noun, any software that configures portions of itself to automatically start with the operating system of a computer, or to start with other previously-installed software.