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Google's Anti-Spyware Project
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If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.
If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.
Google Toolbar? (Score:4, Interesting)
What is there to research? (Score:4, Interesting)
How? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this going to be like the spamm blacklists which can be subjective?
Include Ben Edelman in this! (Score:2, Interesting)
Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
PS: I'm waiting for Google to annouce its plan for world peace.
Re:How? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about Stanford? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong format?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe it might get cluttered with junk, too, though, hmm.
I wonder if a pseudo-moderated wiki capacity for a truly open editable document might work. Weighted by the user's real time previous moderations (+5 Neutral, -5 Troll, etc).
That leads me to the point, actually -- are there specifications for an open editable moderated document that falls towards neutrality in facts?
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
Google IS the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sun??? (Score:2, Interesting)
Marketting value. Somebody in the management thinks "Teaming up with Google, Oxford and Harvard" is cool.
Re:Google IS the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Damage control (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't expect them to not do that. But it would be nice if they stopped pretending to do no evil. I don't see any exemption in their statement saying that evil is OK, as long as millions are to be made.
Spyware is easy money (Score:5, Interesting)
You would not believe the number of computers that went out of commission within the first month just from being overloaded with spyware/adware. I often feel the urge to tell them "Stop surfing pr0n sites. Stop clicking on everything in sight just because it tells you to click it."
But I don't. Because I know that as soon as I fix it, they'll just ask me to come over again within a few weeks. I seriously doubt they would listen anyway. As I said, easy money.
Good idea but... (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a Trojan horse - No one will see it coming (Score:5, Interesting)
Google has an enormous information gathering capability. Seen those Goooooooogle ADS everywhere? While it may not be spy-WARE per say... it certainly feeds you a cookie. Noticed how MANY of these Goooooogle ADS sites there are? Theyre just popping up everywhere arent they?! Yes they are - and you dont even give it a second thought while you throw yourself into the Google anti-spyware projects. Google dont want competitors. A Spyware program is a competitor of Google as it gathers information about the users surfing habits just like Google does - but in a much more intrusive way (well...at least if feels that way).
Are we getting the picture yet?
I get what they're doing (Score:5, Interesting)
Google believes click fraud to be the most significant threat to the internet. This makes sense because click fraud is what makes all the malware, adware and virii PROFITABLE. What Google and Sun are doing with stopbadware.org is their answer to that. And it's an answer that is needed badly.
Why? As a very recent veteran of attempting to remove malware, I can tell you that the good side of this war is terribly, horribly disorganized. Let me explain:
If you get a massive infection of various kinds of malware, or if you want to protect yourself against all this stuff, you have to:
1. Protect yourself with a firewall (software example: Zonealarm)
2. Run or have available an antitrojan application (example: Trojan Hunter)
3. Run an antivirus program (commercial examples: Norton or McAfee; freeware example: Grisoft AVG Free)
4. Run several antispyware programs (examples: Spybot, Lavasoft Adaware, Microsoft Antispyware)
5. Use something like merijn.org's HiJackThis to find out what your system is infected with that all of the above cannot detect
6. If you're infected with something difficult like VX2 that can't be detected by ANY of the above, you may also need to hunt down very specific helper scripts and applications to deal with it, or even worse figure out how to remove it manually (which is generally VERY technical and difficult).
So, you have firewall, antitrojan, antivirus, antispyware and detection all covered by entirely different industries, most of which don't have much overlap (antivirus programs still do little against antispyware, for example). In the antispyware category, none of the legit programs can detect everything, so you need to run several of them.
You also have the fact that most of these anti-malware companies are commercial; they need to make money doing what they do, because what they do is very difficult, very technical, and has to be done VERY FAST. You see freeware versions, probably because they can't stand to see people who can't afford all these applications get run into the ground by the malware industry.
It doesn't help at all that you've got hundreds - literally, hundreds - of malware installers masquerading as antispyware, antitrojan and antivirus programs. The antispyware industry has had no choice but to put up www.spywarrior.com just so people can sort out the few good ones from the many bad ones. That site is run by one of the legit companies. That company would obviously much rather have nonprofit, noncommercial oversight declaring who is legit and who isn't - it puts a commercial company in an uncomfortable ethical position to be declaring legitimacy of other companies in its industry. But I don't see that they had any choice; to not do it would be even worse.
It looks like that is what badware.org is intended to be, and what is so badly needed - a nonprofit organization that has no base or funding from within the antimalware industries, to oversee and report on those industries.
Do you know what the process for cleaning an infected computer is right now? You post HiJackThis logs to a variety of different forums (just google "HiJackThis Logfile" for a sample) and people voluntarily, out of the goodness of their hearts, help you with incredibly technical removal procedures (google "VX2 removal" to see what I mean). If you want to look up these removal procedures yourself, you google around on various antispyware and antivirus web sites with various descriptions (often vague or assuming you have their commercial product). It's horribly disorganized, with different antivirus companies calling each virus by a different name. A good example: try and find out how to tell the difference between a Lo
Once you go Mac, you never go back!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
For all you Microsoft users who are trapped in your ActiveX hell, I feel for you. I have only one thing to say, "Free your OS and your @ss will follow!"
2 cents,
Queen B
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Harvord! (Score:2, Interesting)