A Cyber War Of The Wares

The Age

Tuesday June 7, 2005

David Adams

PC owners are at the centre of a battle over spyware, writes David Adams.

State and federal laws covering deceptive conduct in business are insufficient to deal with the threat of malicious software such as spyware - which secretly reports a user's activities to unknown third-parties without consent - says Darren Sommers, a technology lawyer for Australian anti-spyware maker PC Tools.

"There really needs to be some clarity on what is acceptable from a consumer perspective," he told Next after a Federal Government spyware workshop in Melbourne last Thursday. Mr Sommers said he regularly received threatening letters from companies demanding that PC Tools' flagship anti-spyware software, Spyware Doctor, not target their adware - PC software to deliver ads.

There is "a considerable element of legal risk for anti-spyware vendors" tackling malicious elements within the multibillion-dollar adware industry, he said.

"The situation is that these guys have lots of money and they're getting richer and richer and more and more brash in their actions," Mr Sommers said. "That's resulted in them threatening lawsuits and sending threatening emails and threatening letters. I probably receive three a week. There is a war going on between the malicious adware companies and the anti-spyware companies and the public doesn't know about it at the moment."

Although a Federal Government legislative review last year found that spyware was covered under legislation such as the Trade Practices Act 1974, Criminal Code Act 1995 and Privacy Act 1988, Mr Sommers says new legislation is needed to clarify what constitutes spyware.

The workshop was one of a series the Department of Communications, IT and the Arts is holding around the country to gather public feedback after the release of a discussion paper on the issue last month.

The paper defines spyware as software that is secretly installed on a computer and takes things from it without the permission or knowledge of the user. This includes personal or business information, bandwidth or processing capacity.

Speaking at the workshop last week, Ashley Cross, general manager of security and business environment in the department's information economy division, said that the government was keen to discuss what could technically be done to diminish the impact of such offences.

Colleague, Andrew Maurer, said new legislation must ensure it didn't inhibit legitimate uses. "We need to be careful when we're defining spyware that we're not going to hit targets we don't want to hit," he said.

US statistics show that more than 90 per cent of PCs connected to the net were infected with spyware.

Last month, the Australian Democrats introduced its Spyware Bill 2005 into Federal Parliament under which it was proposed that anyone convicted of installing spyware or cookies without permission on someone else's computer would face up to two years' jail.

Submissions on spyware are being received until June 17.

LINK www.dcita.gov.au/spyware