OT: SPYWARE/TROJAN and Off Topic!

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Evil Dave:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Illwinter has been following this thread but they are headed out of town and wont be back till about Monday. The impression I get is that the reaction to this has been kindof a surprise.

Which I find both surprising and not surprising.

OT1H, I'm not surprised, cause many programmers/software designers are clueless about security and privacy matters. Or they figure nobody will notice or care (which is part of the cluelessness ).

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I wouldnt word it as clueless. Its a common enough thing and they dont strike me as people who would have been all that concerned when it was done by other programs on their machine. Unless you hang in certain newsGroups you dont tend to notice. In the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic newsgroup where Dom2 gets alot of coverage, such subjects dont get alot of discussion. Nor the rpg, action, flight-sim, war-history, etc etc.

On the other hand in the hacker Groups which I haunt then it does. Just as it does in cracker and warez Groups. Unless someone spends some time there it wouldnt seem like a major topic.

I sympathize with both sides of this discussion. Illwinter doesn't want to get ripped off (and we don't want them to!). Private individuals don't want to be spied on. Coming up with things that do both is hard.

I understand hating spyware, and being concerned about it. When this was first brought up I was very interested in what Illwinters comments would be. But now that they have answered I dont consider this spyware. Every programmer would like to have the program send info home on its useage and problems (Ive been there) but I get the impression that Illwinter purposely didnt do that. All this does is a key check of its own software. I have trouble considering that to be in the Category of "spying".

[ April 08, 2004, 16:52: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]