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Though benign by comparison, a variety of programs suspected
of being spyware, such as Gator, Bonzai Buddy, Comet Cursor,
Webshots, and Kazaa may already be at work on your computers.
A suit filed in Federal court this summer by seven publishers,
including The New York Times, alleges that Gator violated
their copyrights and stole revenue. Gator positions itself as
a handy tool to help users manage passwords and fill out forms
on-line, but the suit claims “Gator sells advertising space on
the plaintiffs’ web sites without their authorization and
pockets the profits from such sales.”
Bonzai Buddy sings songs and tells jokes, Comet Cursor morphs
your cursor into any of over 25,000 custom cursors, and
Webshots offers beautiful wallpaper selections. All have been
suspected of watching your activity on the Internet in order
to build and sell marketing information, though exactly how
much information each sends back seems open for debate. None
are intended to be malicious, yet they can slow down computer
performance, use up drive space, cause crashes, and have been
known to be tediously difficult to remove.
Users who have downloaded the popular Kazaa music swapping
program may have unwittingly agreed to install the Brilliant
Digital Network, a piece of software that grants strangers the
right to access the unused computing power, storage space, and
Internet bandwidth of your computers.
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