12 Companies that Spy on Your PC
June 4, 2008 by Pablo Palatnik
What is Spyware? For those of you who are unaware, according to wikipidia, “the functions of spyware extend well beyond simple monitoring. Spyware programs can collect various types of personal information, such as Internet surfing habit, sites that have been visited, but can also interfere with user control of the computer in other ways, such as installing additional software, redirecting Web browser activity, accessing websites blindly that will cause more harmful viruses, or diverting advertising revenue to a third party. Spyware can even change computer settings, resulting in slow connection speeds, different home pages, and loss of Internet or other programs. In an attempt to increase the understanding of spyware, a more formal classification of its included software types is captured under the term privacy-invasive software.â€
Here is a list of 12 companies that spy on your PC by installing spyware on your computer:
Adrevolver
Advertising.com
BlueStreak
CasaleMedia
DirectTrack
DoubleClick
FastClick
MediaPlex
StatCounter
TagaSaurus
TraderDoubler
Zedo
You can remove Spyware by donwloading anti-spyware software. I personally use Spybot (Search and Destroy) to find out what my computer has and remove it. Doesn’t always work, but it does for the most part (this is not a paid advertisement!) It’s free to download and there are many more out there to download.
Comments (2)
Wendy Piersall
June 4th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
DoubleClick is just an ad serving platform. All they do is use cookies - hardly what I would call ’spyware’.
The reason I bring this up is because my ad network, which is hyper-anal about taking on only high-quality brands (like Disney, CoverGirl, etc.), uses DoubleClick as their ad serving solution. I’d hate to think that someone who comes to my site and sees an ad from them would then assume that my site is placing spyware on their computer.
Pablo Palatnik
June 4th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Wendy, I can’t argue too much about what you say because I’d be lying if I said I know exactly how DoubleClick works but it’s to my understanding and believe that any company that tracks your activity online as far as what sites you’re visiting, etc and serves related ads, is Spyware.
There’s a fine line about what is breaking that privacy boundary and what isn’t. I think some may even call dropping cookies Spyware, I don’t know.
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