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Spyware in figures and facts
The current situation with mass expansion of such programs like spyware is regularly studied by specialists and experts in data protection in several interconnected spheres: electronic commerce, Internet-advertising, crimes prevention, which are commited with use of high-tech.
In order to give a real image of risk to a customer as well as to companies, a great deal of work is performed by representatives of government agencies, private companies specializing in software products, which allow to detect and remove spyware. In addition by those, who analyze situation in Internet, and also by specialists of independent public organizations, who are involved in securing of private life and important information. Results of the researches are regularly published; different associations were organized, the main aim of which consists in resisting spyware threat.
COAST became one of the first of such associations. It was created in 2003 by efforts of the leading developers in antivirus and anti-spyware solutions.
The creation of ASC was the next important step. It was created by the same leading companies but at this time with support of a remedial organization CDT. Big companies like AOL, Webroot, Forrester Research published vast documentation concerning spyware.
In order to withstand spyware on juridical level different bills are drafted, e.g. SPY ACT and SPY BLOCK Act. Some juridical precedents are known, when companies, which spread spyware, in the end were surcharged to pay millions of dollars for intrusion in private life and in business operations of companies.
But it doesn’t stop those entrepreneurs, who renounce professional business ethics for the sake of great profits. According to the research, the annual benefit of spyware distribution is estimated at more than 2 billion dollars, while the turnover of the adjoint market of adware is about 2,86 billion dollars a year.
In this research, even taking into consideration its competence, it is practically impossible to know for sure profit share, obtained by violators from preplanned attacks on concrete companies or private persons. Among the known cases — the attempt to rob London’s branch of the Sumitomo Mitsui Bank, when using a keylogger program the violators got access to confidential information and had an intention to steal 423 million dollars. Spyware had direct relation to stealing of the initial code of a popular computer game Half-Life.
The report of GAO Emerging Cybersecurity Issues Threaten Federal Information Systems also tells us about the threat to the US governmental informational systems, and produces proofs of insufficiency of some agencies in withstanding the threat.
Thus, it is difficult to overestimate the scale of threat from spyware: it is more likely, that several serious incidents remain unknown to researchers and to the general public accordingly.
The market of solutions aimed at struggle with spyware is also impressive: its estimation changed from 12 million dollars in 2003 to 305 million in the year 2005.
How widely did harmful programs spread in reality? The following data can be found in specialized reports: in comparison with the last months of 2004 the number of infected computers has lowered a bit (due to spreading of protective software products). Hence from 88% to 87% for office computers (55% of them were infected with dangerous forms of harmful programs; computers containing cookies — small text files, which can be used for gathering of information, were also included into the total number), and from 92% to 88% for private sector.
On many computers, which were tested, more than 25 spyware applications were detected at the same time, in general 1 computer had 7.2 spyware programs, and we should not forget, that even a single infection can be a threat to important information and slackens computer’s performance. Webroot in its published report «State of Spyware» gives the figure of 26.2 million — that’s how many spyware units were identified during their research.
Many users don’t even suspect about the spyware presence on their computers — until vital information is lost or a large number of alien programs do evidently slacken computer’s performance. In is essential to take steps in your security beforehand and not to give violators the opportunity to use shadowing technologies for profit.
Article Source: http://www.iKnowProcess.com/
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