Sober at the CIA

Hi folks,

worms have been hitting the news again. (Computer ones I mean, not the wriggly ones found in good soil.) The latest variant of the Sober worm is causing huge volumes of traffic around the world.

This latest variant generates an email which claims to be from the FBI or CIA and says that they have found evidence that the computer user has been visiting illegal web sites and asks the recipient to click on the attachment to answer questions.

If you're unwise enough to open the attachment your computer will be infected and the worm will copy itself to any email addresses it finds on your hard drive.

According to Allen Bell, marketing director at McAfee Australia, "(Sober) was generating around 15 million out of 16.8 million (virus-infected e-mails), so about 90 percent of the traffic is this particular virus,"

You have been warned - don't open attachments you are not expecting. You can find more advise on email handling techniques at http://www.careofwindowsxp.com/Email.html

Paul.

When is Software which Spys not Spyware?

Hi folks,

I've just read an article which has intrigued me.

RetroCoder, a maker of a spying software application is threatening legal action against Sunbelt Software because it's software label's the others as Spyware. RetroCoder's software, SpyMon, logs keystrokes and takes screenshots. Apparently it's intended to be use to monitor use of your own computer, e.g. by parents of young children or even employers concerned about their employees web usage.

Obviously the line between software which is downloaded in secret from some website and software which is installed by the owner of a PC must exist, but how that interacts with the expectation of being able to use a computer without being spied on by others is not at all clear.

Sunbelt Software suggest that the user should have the right to know that their actions are being logged. This seems fair to me and may be the right point. There is a difference between monitoring (openly) and spying. When I had issues with one of my own children accessing web sites which I thought inappropriate I added logging on my router and let the family know. Then if I examined the logs and found inappropriate access I could openly call the person to account; to my mind this is part of being a parent.

What do you think?

Paul.

PS If you want to read the original news report you can at:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5944208.html?tag=nl.e589