Applause! House Passes Spyware Penalty Bills

In addition to protecting you, I also want to let you know when I see something good happening. If I can find something worth awarding an “Alert” star to you’ll find it right here on Google Fraud Alert – keeping searchers safe. Two bills passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming majorities. If passed by the Senate; they will severely penalize spyware makers.





Leading anti-spyware makers and ISPs say that more than 75 percent of consumer (home computers) machines have some form of spyware residing in their systems.

The spyware applications download silently without most home computer users even knowing they are there. By visiting certain malicious web sites, disguised as something benign, the user triggers the download.

In some cases, the computer starts displaying ads for products almost non-stop. In others, the user's visits to sites get tracked and reported to the spyware companies. Users get stuck with sluggish and non-functioning computers crippled by the extra load.

In more criminal uses, spyware logs the keystrokes a user makes, capturing information like usernames and passwords to financial sites, and passes that along to a collecting site.

Greed is a powerful motivator. In the US it is a $2 billion market for these stealth services. It's too much money for some to ignore, and they all too easily toss aside any ethical considerations in favor of the payoff.

Two bills passed by the House prohibit a host of activity committed by spyware makers. Two examples are key logging and phishing (pronounced fishing).

Key logging: Key logging changes browser start pages would be prohibited
Phishing: Phishing identity theft scams also fall into the prohibited category.

Penalty: Violators face jail time of up to 2 years for nuisance spyware, and risk having an additional 5 years tacked on for criminal acts like identity theft.

Each incident could generate fines of up to $3 million per incident. Both of these bills passed the House last year, but the Senate adjourned before they could be presented there. If you want them passed in the Senate you might want to contact your Senator and let them know.

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